Standard Household-Effect Company | Page 4

LITERATURE AND LIFE--The Standard Household-Effect Company
by William Dean Howells

THE STANDARD HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT COMPANY
My friend came in the other day, before we had left town, and looked
round at the appointments of the room in their summer shrouds, and
said, with a faint sigh, "I see you have had the eternal-womanly with
you, too."

I.
"Isn't the eternal-womanly everywhere? What has happened to you?" I
asked.
"I wish you would come to my house and see. Every rug has been up
for a month, and we have been living on bare floors. Everything that
could be tied up has been tied up, everything that could be sewed up
has been sewed up. Everything that could be moth-balled and put away
in chests has been moth-balled and put away. Everything that could be
taken down has been taken down. Bags with draw-strings at their necks
have been pulled over the chandeliers and tied. The pictures have been
hidden in cheese-cloth, and the mirrors veiled in gauze so that I cannot
see my own miserable face anywhere."
"Come! That's something."
"Yes, it's something. But I have been thinking this matter over very
seriously, and I believe it is going from bad to worse. I have heard
praises of the thorough housekeeping of our grandmothers, but the
housekeeping of their granddaughters is a thousand times more
intense."
"Do you really believe that?" I asked. "And if you do, what of it?"
"Simply this, that if we don't put a stop to it, at the gait it's going, it will
put a stop to the eternal-womanly."
"I suppose we should hate that."
"Yes, it would be bad. It would be very bad; and I have been turning
the matter over in my mind, and studying out a remedy."
"The highest type of philosopher turns a thing over in his mind and lets
some one else study out a remedy."
"Yes, I know. I feel that I may be wrong in my processes, but I am sure
that I am right in my results. The reason why our grandmothers could
be such good housekeepers without danger of putting a stop to the

eternal- womanly was that they had so few things to look after in their
houses. Life was indefinitely simpler with them. But the modern
improvements, as we call them, have multiplied the cares of
housekeeping without subtracting its burdens, as they were expected to
do. Every novel convenience and comfort, every article of beauty and
luxury, every means of refinement and enjoyment in our houses, has
been so much added to the burdens of housekeeping, and the
granddaughters have inherited from the grandmothers an undiminished
conscience against rust and the moth, which will not suffer them to
forget the least duty they owe to the naughtiest of their superfluities."
"Yes, I see what you mean," I said. This is what one usually says when
one does not quite know what another is driving at; but in this case I
really did know, or thought I did. "That survival of the conscience is a
very curious thing, especially in our eternal-womanly. I suppose that
the North American conscience was evolved from the rudimental
European conscience during the first centuries of struggle here, and was
more or less religious and economical in its origin. But with the
advance of wealth and the decay of faith among us, the conscience
seems to be simply conscientious, or, if it is otherwise, it is social. The
eternal-womanly continues along the old lines of housekeeping from an
atavistic impulse, and no one woman can stop because all the other
women are going on. It is something in the air, or something in the
blood. Perhaps it is something in both."
"Yes," said my friend, quite as I had said already, "I see what you mean.
But I think it is in the air more than in the blood. I was in Paris, about
this time last year, perhaps because I was the only thing in my house
that had not been swathed in cheese-cloth, or tied up in a bag with
drawstrings, or rolled up with moth-balls and put away in chests. At
any rate, I was there. One day I left my wife in New York carefully
tagging three worn-out feather dusters, and putting them into a
pillow-case, and tagging it, and putting the pillow-case into a
camphorated self-sealing paper sack, and tagging it; and another day I
was in Paris, dining at the house of a lady whom I asked how she
managed with the things in her house when she went into the country
for the summer. 'Leave them just as they are,' she said. 'But what about
the dust and the moths, and the rust and the tarnish?' She said, 'Why,
the things would