Wearied rather than refreshed by my night of unrest, my arms sore, and my limbs heavy, I labored with double zeal to get up an excitement, which should carry me through the remainder of the day.  My head began to feel sensations of giddiness—­for I had hardly eaten since my husband left.  Of the pleasures of house-cleaning, I had at length a surfeit; when a ring, which I knew among all others, surprised me.  I looked at the clock.  It was past four, and the kitchen still in confusion, and the hearth cold.

I sank in a chair-in a swoon from sheer exhaustion.  When I awoke to consciousness, an overturned pale of water was being absorbed by my clothing, my nose was rejecting with violent aversion the pungency of a bottle of prime Durham mustard, to which Kitty had applied as the best substitute for salts which the kitchen afforded; and my husband, carpet-bag and cane in hand, was pushing his way toward me with more haste than good speed, as the obstacles witnessed, which he encountered and overturned.

I was confined to my room a week—­which I could not conceal from Mr. Smith.  But he does not even yet know the whole amount of the breakage, and, thank fortune, he is too much of a man to ask.  I am only afraid that he will succeed in forcing me to admit, that what he calls his classical proposition is true; that to clean a house does not require the feat of a Hercules, to wit:  turning a river through it.

This is my story of house-cleaning, and it is in no very high degree flattering to my housekeeping vanity.  Perhaps the thing might be managed differently.  But I don’t know.  Out of chaos, order comes.  While on this subject, it will be all in place to introduce another house-cleaning story, which I find floating about in the newspapers.  It presents the matter from another point of view, and was written, it will be seen, by a man: 

Talk of a washing day!  What is that to a whole week of washing-days?  No, even this gives no true idea of that worst of domestic afflictions a poor man can suffer—­house-cleaning.  The washing is confined to the kitchen or wash-house, and the effect visible in the dining-room is in cold or badly cooked meals; with a few other matters not necessary to mention here.  But in the house-cleaning—­oh, dear!  Like the dove from the ark, a man finds no place where he can rest the sole of his foot.  Twice a year, regularly, have I to pass through this trying ordeal, willy-nilly, as it is said, in some strange language.  To rebel is useless.  To grumble of no avail.  Up come the carpets, topsyturvy goes the furniture, and swash! goes the water from garret to cellar.  I don’t know how other men act on these occasions, but I find discretion the better part of valor, and submission the wisest expedient.