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DES PERCHES
87
more lifting up his voice, we also remembered
That often in the dead waste and middle of the night, while meandering about the black backyard,
We were suddenly and violently smitten on the nostrils by the treacherous clothes-pole, hidden between lines of white sheets and shirts that waved their empty arms like spectres.
Also, we remembered how the wet linen fell upon our sacred person; and how we tried to lift up the clothes-pole again but could not; —
For the cunning of the washerwoman was not given to us.
But notwithstanding these things we do bless the clothes-poles, and him that sells them, remembering the service they do to the indispensable washerwoman.
Des perches! — des perches!
