|LD DINAH in " Uncle Tom's Cabin" had, you remember, a great and awful occasion which she called her " clarin' up time." But she had no fixed season for it. Like Easter, it was a "movable" feast. Some years, I think Mrs. Stowe hints, it didn't come at all. At all events everything in the line of cleaning, and setting matters to rights, had to wait for it. That doesn't do for most housekeepers. They fight dirt and disorder every day, of course, yet in spite of that the grand annual battle must come off. It is & radical, drastic, heroic time. No quarter is asked or granted. Nothing is privileged or sacred against it. The women are in command and the men must obey or fly. The writer an experienced man of familyusually flies. Imperative business engagements take me from home during house-cleaning week. I know it is a cowardly procedure, and cannot honestly recommend it to other men. Better, no doubt, to stop at home and# help; and brave men who love their wives will do so. For there is work enough to keep them warm. There are carpets to take up, beat, and lay down again ; heavy furniture to be moved about and put in new places ; closets and other dark retreats to be rummaged and the dusty accumulations to be dragged to light and redistributed ; step-ladders to be carried from point to point, like the artillery that rushes where the enemy threatens our lines; A Seigers Pill at night will insure a clear head in the morning.