y clearness
and good sense. His pen did much to forward the cause of American
independence. His "Essay on Whitewashing," from which the following
extract is taken, was mistaken for the composition of Dr. Franklin, and
published among his writings, It was originally in the form of "A Letter
from a Gentleman in America to his Friend in Europe, on Whitewashing."
###

There is no season of the year in which the lady may not, if she pleases,
claim her privilege; but the latter end of May is generally fixed upon for
the purpose. The attentive husband may judge, by certain prognostics, when
the storm is at hand. If the lady grows uncommonly fretful, finds fault
with the servants, is discontented with the children, and complains much
of the nastiness of everything about her, these are symptoms which ought
not to be neglected, yet they sometimes go off without any further effect.

But if, when the husband rises in the morning, he should observe in the
yard a wheelbarrow with a quantity of lime in it, or should see certain
buckets filled with a solution of lime in water, there is no time for
hesitation. He immediately locks up the apartment or closet where his
papers and private property are kept, and, putting the key into his
pocket, betakes himself to flight. A husband, however beloved, becomes a
perfect nuisance during this season of female rage. His authority is
superseded, his commission suspended, and the very scullion who cleans the
brasses in the kitchen becomes of more importance than he. He has nothing
for it but to abdicate for a time, and run from an evil which he can
neither prevent nor mollify.

The husband gone, the ceremony begins. The walls are stripped of their
furniture--paintings, prints, and looking-glasses lie huddled in heaps
about the floors; the curtains are torn from their testers, the beds
crammed into windows, chairs and tables, bedsteads and cradles, crowd the
yard, and the garden fence bends beneath the weight of carpets, blankets,
cloth cloaks, old coats, under petticoats, and ragged breeches. Here may
be seen the lumber of the kitchen, forming a dark and confused mass for
the foreground of the picture; gridirons and frying pans, rusty shovels
and broken tongs, joint stools, and the fractured remains of rush-bottomed
chairs. There a closet has disgorged its bowels--riveted plates and
dishes, halves of china bowls, cracked tumblers, broken wineglasses,
phials of forgotten physic, papers of unkn