Clothesline

“ The clothes will be more injured and worn by one day’s snapping on the line, in a very high wind, than in weeks of wear; and unless one has a good, roomy attic with windows at each end to admit free air, it is wise, if not agreeable, to put the clothes in soak, after washing, in plenty of clear water, and wait for the calm, or defer the entire washing to that propitious moment.
Yet a good, brisk March wind, with an unclouded sky, has its excellences. There is no better time to put blankets, carriage-robes, and heavy winter garments out to air. ”

“ You perhaps cannot believe that until you have gotten away from the idea that laundry must be done all at once. In the woods it is much handier to do it a little at a time. Soap your outershirt at night; rinse it in the morning; dry it on top of your pack during the first two hours. In the meantime wear your sweater; or, if it is warm enough, appear in your undershirt. [43] When you change your underclothes—which should be one garment at a time—do the same thing. Thus always you will be possessed of a clean outfit without the necessity of carrying a lot of extras. ”

“ We found the road strewn with blankets, overcoats and other clothing and articles discarded by our troops who had marched ahead of us. Owing to the warm weather, the heat of the burning woods and the rough state of the roads, we felt the weight of our knapsacks on our backs more than ever before; and we also began to shed clothing. We reasoned that there was a long summer before us, during which we would need but little clothing in this climate; and if we were still alive in the fall we could draw more blankets and overcoats. ”

“ She had been employed many years in the laundry, and always imagined she was to be removed elsewhere—that on Monday morning a waggon would call at the gate for herself and her property. Accordingly, every Monday morning throughout the year, at 10 o’clock, she was accompanied to the gate, dressed with a coloured handkerchief pinned fancifully over her cap instead of a bonnet, and carrying a small parcel (her property) of the most heterogeneous contents—thimbles, ends of tape, polished bones, pebbles, pieces of smooth coal, &c. ”

“ The problem of clothing had become a very serious one. Tents and wagon covers that had seen service from the Mississippi to the Columbia would shed rain when made into coats. Lined with the remnants of some old woolen garment, and with a broad collar and cuffs faced with the fur of beaver or otter, these garments would pass without criticism even though their ancestry might be known to every one by indelible marks that had been on the tent or wagon cover. ”

“ After a person has changed his fur garments and underwear, he hangs them outside when the temperature is from 20 to 50 degrees below zero. The colder it is, the better for the clothes that are to be cleansed. These are left hanging for several days, during which time all the noxious things are killed by the intense cold. After this the underwear and the fur garments are well shaken and beaten, and then they return from this kind of laundry clean, according to the views of the Arctic regions, and are ready to be worn again. ”

“ No matter how people might seek to shelter themselves, they got wet on all sides. The moisture slid down the back of your neck, laid itself like a wet towel about your knees, penetrated into your boots and far up your trousers. ”

“ But those who make my bed, clear up, and wait on me in my tent, cannot help giving me a most liberal share of their surplus, and therefore my underclothing has to be frequently washed in boiling water. ”

“ Many live in huts without either window or chimney, the door serving every purpose of ingression and of egression. The poor women and children were generally without shoes and stockings; the men, however, almost always wear both, and even in the midst of summer appear dressed in great coats. ”

“ By using a continuous running shelf, like an amplified plate rail, any place in the laundry can be a handy one for placing a bit of soap, a clothes-pin, washing powder, clothing waiting for starching, or any other thing. ”

“ Every household has a store of warm, loose over garments, which are offered, if needed, to the guests; and each carriage is provided with one or two blankets, manufactured and sold expressly for this use, to envelope one's feet and limbs; besides all which, should the weather be cold, comes out a long stone reservoir, made flat on both sides, and filled with hot water, for foot stools. This is an improvement on the primitive simplicity of hot bricks, and even on the tin foot stove, which has nourished in New England. ”

“ I had washed my one change of raiment, and though I never iron my clothes, I like to bleach them till they are as white as snow, and they were whitening on the line when some furious gusts came down from Long's Peak, against which I could not stand, and when I did get out all my clothes were blown into strips from an inch to four inches in width, literally destroyed! One learns how very little is necessary either for comfort or happiness. ”

“ For the space of half an hour, I sit in solitary state on the carpet, and endure the wondering gaze and the parrot-like chattering of a thin, long row of villagers, sitting astride the high mud wall that encloses three sides of the compound, and during the time find some amusement in watching the scrambling and quarrelling for position. ”

“ Nearly all of the many thousands there were in dirty rags. The rain was pouring, and thousands were without shelter, standing in the mud in their bare feet, with clothes in tatters, of the most unsubstantial material, without blankets. I tell the truth, and Mr. Charles C. B. Watkins dare not deny it, when I say these men suffered bitterly for the want of clothing, blankets and other necessaries. ”

“ When the weather is too hot to wear clothes they are left off, and a wisp of straw for the feet, a loin-cloth, and a huge flat hat, a yard in diameter, weighing less than a feather, are enough for him. ”

“ So I drew my underwear from beneath my pillow, where I had learned to tuck it in cold weather, and sprang from the friendly shelter of the blankets. One needs no incentive to quick dressing in a temperature only a few points above zero. ”

“ Two old hags, camping on the pavement, are dispensing stale bread, baked not in loaves, but in the shape of big wreaths like exaggerated crullers, out of bags of dirty bed-tick. There is no use disguising the fact: they look like and they probably are old mattresses mustered into service under the pressure of a rush of trade. ”

“ Why, the dry air cracks your boots so that you carry about with you a private desert on each foot, and the sand gets between you and your clothes till you feel your shirt is made of sandpaper! And talking of your clothes, you may be thankful you and they are well scoured with sand, for there’s no such thing as a clean shirt. You turn the one you have on your back inside-out when it gets too shockingly dirty, and when t’other side has got considerably worse you turn it back again, and so on till you’re like a set of colliers. ”

“ If you enter the wretched abodes where they live, you will find that they have no fuel, that they are unprovided with beds and other furniture, and that generally they have not a single blanket to protect them from the cold. ”

“ Rain fell drearily; every buttress and lamp-post had its fibrous reflection underfoot, as if the pavement had grown transparent, revealing the deep roots of the things embedded in it. The heavy air floated with umbrellas, like a last swarming of antediluvian bats; labouring omnibuses were packed to suffocation ”

“ In one place, at a bank of ranges, works an army of men cooks, in another spins the big machinery of the Ellis Island laundry, washing blankets, drying blankets, day in and day out, a big clean steamy space of hurry and rotation. ”

“ All furniture was thrown out into the street, old men, women, small children, exhausted and famished, were obliged to drag themselves away to the place of destination. If a woman sank down fainting by the way, the husband had to go on notwithstanding. ”

“ It is much more likely that the simile of a line hung with linen and which employs the idea of washing garments in moonlight, should occur to a woman of strong poetic imagi nation, the routine of whose life was the wash-tub and the kitchen, than to a languid and dyspeptic man. ”

“ Besides the bath-rooms and the ablution cubicles, there is in every camp one or more drying-rooms, which are always heated, and where the [69] wet clothes of the girls, who of course have to be out in all weathers, are hung to dry. Laundry, kitchens, recreation rooms, mess-rooms, long Nissen huts for sleeping, I went the round of them all, and, while genuinely admiring them, admired still more those who lived in them. ”

“ This meant that each man had, left, one blanket, one small haversack, one change of underclothes, a canteen, cup and plate, of tin, a knife and fork, and the clothes in which he stood. When ready to march, the blanket, rolled lengthwise, the ends brought together and strapped, hung from left shoulder across under right arm, the haversack,—furnished with towel, soap, comb, knife and fork in various pockets, a change of underclothes in one main division, and whatever rations we happened to have, in the other,—hung on the left hip ”

“ Every American house has a grass-grown, fenced-in space at the back of the house called a yard, for the drying and bleaching of the laundry. Ours was invaded by three decent men and piles of pine boards, and then the making of cases and the packing began. ”

“ Men who spend days and weeks in tramping through the woods, without a change of clothing, can not preserve the most presentable toilet, and the washing of clothing, which at other times was done by those at home, was looked after to a greater or less degree by him who was many miles away. ”

“ Hundreds of them in clumsy wooden shoes, with their tucked-up skirts, bare arms, and close-fitting caps, were bending over tall wooden tubs that reached as high as their waists—gossiping and rubbing, rubbing and gossiping—with perfect unconcern, in the public thoroughfare, and all washing with cold water instead of using hot, as we do. ”

“ Leaning against the railing or sitting on their baggage, there were bevies of unkempt men and women in shabby dress of every cut and color, holding on to ragged, bulging parcels, baskets, or sacks, and staring at space with a look of forlorn, stupefied, and cowed resignation. ”

“ In the next back-yard a ridiculous young person in bare-legs, blue denim overalls and a small red sweater, was industriously turning up the earth with a six-inch trowel, and chanting cheerfully to himself an improvisation in honour of his garden that was to be. ”

“ These mud-huts have no doors even! The men as well as the women wear long flowing garments, like those represented in our picture Bibles. Many of the poor women have but a single garment to cover their bodies with. ”

“ Wrap yourself up in one, lie flat and motionless on the floor, and we guarantee that in an hour the blanket has unrolled itself and is making frantic efforts to escape. Every night on the road resolved into a half-dazed attempt to hold on to the elusive wrap. ”

“ Imagine, children, a huge encampment like a small town,—with sections, and streets, houses of green canvas on stout poles, tall caravans 63 on wheels enclosing everything as though with impassable walls, and in the centre all sorts of people, in all sorts of costumes, walking up and down.
There were brown men, yellow men, red men, black men, big men, little men, thin men, fat men, lame men, deformed men, men with goitres, men covered with feathers, men covered with fur,—in fact, men of every possible kind, size, and land,—men to suit every possible taste. ”

“ These huts, in which the most wretched poverty and uncleanliness reign supreme, contain nothing that we should call furniture; as a rule there is no bed but the hardened soil or a few coverings of ragged sheepskin. ”

“ Much time could be saved in the laundry if whenever it were possible a chute could be built into which clothes can be thrown and go directly to the laundry where is situated a basket or a terminal closet to receive them. ”

“ Half-naked people cowered from the winter under bush-tents in the thickets, under the eaves of houses, under the railroad sheds, and in old cars left them along the route. All these repeated the same story of suffering, violence, poverty, and nakedness. ”

“ You know what it is to lay out on a topsail yard in the thick of it, bucking sleet and snow and frozen canvas till you’re ready to just let go and cry like a baby. Clothes? She won’t be able to tell a bundle of skirts from a gold pan or a tea-kettle. ”

“ The huts are scarcely big enough to hold human creatures, nor strong enough to bear the pelting of the storm. When you enter them you will find neither floor nor window, and very little furniture; neither chair, nor table, nor bed—nothing but a large earthen bottle for fetching water, a smaller one for drinking, a basket for clothes, a few earthen pans, a few brass plates, and a mat. ”

“ In the alleys, where the very houses seemed afraid of earthquakes, and huddled together to support one another, people moved their miserable old furniture out on the street into the rain, and spread tents of bed-quilts over them. ”

“ Beyond was a little market-place where men were ranging their goods on long forms under a zinc roof. All round lay huge bundles of wearing apparel—one bundle would contain men's underwear, another trousers, another coats, not to mention piles of old boots, hats, and indiscriminate rubbish. ”