This was illustrated at Watertown last week. People have no doubt noticed that one of the late fashions among women is to wear at the bottom of the dress a strip of red, which goes clear around. To the initiated it looks real nice, but a man who is not posted in the fashions would swear that the woman’s petticoat was dropping off, and if she was not notified, and allowed to fix it, she would soon be in a terrible fix on the street.
It was a week ago Monday that a lady from Oshkosh was at Watertown on a visit, and she wore a black silk dress with a red strip on the bottom. As she walked across the bridge Mr. Calvin Cheeney, a gentleman whose heart is in the right place, saw what he supposed would soon be a terrible accident, which would tend to embarrass the lady, so he stepped up to her in the politest manner possible, took off his hat and said:
“Excuse me, madame, but I think your wearing apparel is becoming disarranged. You might step right into Clark’s, here, and fix it,” and he pointed to the bottom of her dress.
She gave him a look which froze his blood, and shaking her dress out she went on. He said it was the last time he would ever try to help a woman in distress.
She sailed along down to a grocery store and stopped to look at some grapes, when the practiced eye of Hon. Peter Brook saw that something was wrong. To think is to act with Peter, and he at once said:
“Miss, your petticoat seems to be dropping off. You can go in the store and get behind that box of codfish and fix it if you want to.”
Now that was a kind thing for Peter to do, and an act that any gentleman might be proud of, but he was amazed at her when she told him to mind his own business, and she would attend to her own petticoat, and she marched off just a trifle mad.
She went into the postoffice to mail a postal card, just as Mr. Moak, the postmaster, came out of his private office with Hon. L. B. Caswell, the congressman. Mr. Moak, without the aid of his glasses, saw that there was liable to be trouble, so he asked Caswell to excuse him a moment, and turning to the delivery window where she was asking the clerk what time the mail came in, he said:
“I beg a thousand pardons, madame. It ill becomes a stranger to speak to one so fair without an introduction, but I believe that I am not violating the civil service rules laid down by Mr. Hayes for the guidance of postmasters when I tell you, lady, that something has broke loose and that the red garment that you fain would hide from the gaze of the world has asserted itself and appears to the naked eye about two chains and three links below your dress. I am going abroad, to visit Joe Lindon, the independent candidate for sheriff, and you can step into the back office and take a reef in it.”
He did not see the look of fire in her eyes as he went out, because he was not looking at her eye. She passed out, and Doc Spaulding, who has got a heart in him as big as a box car, saw it, and touching his broad brimmed felt hat he said, in a whisper:
“Madame, you better drop into a millinery store and fasten up your—”
But she passed him on a run, and was just going into a hardware store, with her hand on her pistol pocket, when Jule Keyes happened along. Now, Jule would consider himself a horse thief if he should allow a woman to go along the street with anything the matter with her clothes, and he not warn her of the consequences, so he stopped and told her that she must excuse him, a perfect stranger, for mentioning her petticoat, but the fact was that it was coming off.
By this time the woman was mad. She bought a pistol and started for the depot, firmly resolved to kill the first man that molested her. She did not meet anybody until she arrived at the Junction, and she sat down in the depot to rest before the train came.
Pierce, the hotel man, is one of the most noticin’ persons anywhere, and she hadn’t been seated a York minute before his eye caught the discrepancy in her apparel. He tried to get the telegraph operator and the express man to go and tell her about it, but they wouldn’t, so he went and took a seat near her.
“It is a warm day, madame,” said Pierce, looking at the red strip at the bottom of her dress.
She drew her pistol, cocked it, and pointed it at Pierce, who was trembling in every leg, and said:
“Look-a-here, you young cuss. I have had half a dozen grown persons down town tell me my petticoat was coming off, and I have stood it because I thought they were old enough to know what they were talking about, but when it comes to boys of your age coming around thinking they know all about women’s clothes it is too much, and the shooting is going to commence.”
Mr. Pierce made one bound and reached the door, and then got behind a white grey hound and waited for her to go away, which she soon did. As she was stepping on the car the conductor, Jake Sazerowski, said to her:
“Your apparel, madame, seems to be demoralized,” but she rushed into the car, and was seen no more.
Since then these gentlemen have all learned that the fashion calls for a red strip at the bottom of a dress, and they will make no more mistakes. But they were all serious enough, and their interference was prompted by pure kindness of heart, and not from any wicked thoughts.
THE MAN FROM DUBUQUE.
Last week, a young man from the country west of here came in on the evening train and walked up to Grand avenue, with a fresh looking young woman hanging on to one handle of a satchel while he held the other. They turned into the Plankinton House, and with a wild light in his eye the man went to the book and registered his name and that of the lady with him.
While the clerk was picking out a couple of rooms that were near together, the man looked around at the colored man who had the satchel, and as the clerk said, “Show the gentleman to No. 65 and the lady to 67,” he said, “Hold on, squire! One room will do.”
On being shown to the room, the bridegroom came right out with the bell boy and appeared at the office. Picking out a benevolent looking gentleman, with a good place to raise hair on his head, who was behind the counter, the groom said:
“Say, can a man enjoy religion in this house?”
Mr. White said a man could if he brought it with him. They had none on hand to issue out to guests, but they never interfered with those who had it when they arrived.
“Why,” says the manager of the house, “has anybody interfered with your devotions here?”
“No, not here,” said the man, wiping his fore-head with a red handkerchief. “But they have at Dubuque. I’ll tell you how it was. I was married a couple of days ago, and night before last I put up at a Dubuque hotel. My wife never had been married before, any at all, and she is timid, and thinks everybody is watching us, and making fun of us.
“She jumps at the slightest sound. Well, we went to our room in the afternoon, and she began to cry, and said if she wasn’t married she never would be the longest day she lived. I sort of put my arm around her, and was just telling her that everybody had to get married, when there was a knock on the door, and she jumped more than thirty feet. “You see that finger. Well, a pin in her belt stuck clear through, and came near making me faint away. I held my finger in my mouth, and telling her the house was not on fire, I went to the door and there was a porter there who wanted to know if I wanted any more coal on the fire. I drove him away, and sat down in a big rocking chair with my wife in my lap, and was stroking her hair and telling her that if she would forgive me for marrying I never would do so again, and trying to make her feel more at home, when there came another knock at the door, and she jumped clear across the room and knocked over a water pitcher.
“This seal ring on my finger caught in her frizzes and I’ll be cussed if the whole top of her head didn’t come off. I was a little flurried and went to the door, and a chambermaid was there with an armful of towels and she handed me a couple and went off. My wife came into camp again, and began to cry and accuse me of pulling her hair, when I went up to her and put my arm around her waist, and was just going to kiss her, just as any man would be justified in kissing his wife under the circumstances, when she screamed murder and fell against the bureau.
“I looked a
round and the door had opened, and there was a colored man coming into the room with a kerosene lamp, and he chuckled and said he begged my pardon. Now, I am a man that don’t let my temper get away with me, but as it was three hours before dark I didn’t see what was the use of a lamp, and I told him to get out of there. Before 6 o’clock that evening there had been twenty raps at the door, and we got sick. My wife said she would not stay in that house for a million dollars. So we started for Milwaukee.
“I tried to get a little sleep on the cars, but every little while a conductor would wake me up and roll me over in the seat to look at my ticket, and brake-men would run against my legs in the aisle of the car, and shout the names of stations till I was sorry I ever left home. Now, I want to have rest and quietude. Can I have it here?”
The manager told him to go to his room, and if he wanted any coal or ice water to ring for it, and if anybody knocked at his door without being sent for, to begin shooting bullets through the door. That settled it, and when the parties returned to Iowa they said this country was a mighty sight different from Dubuque.
THE GIDDY GIRLS QUARREL.
A dispatch from Brooklyn states that at the conclusion of a performance at the theatre, Fanny Davenport’s wardrobe was attached by Anna Dickinson and the remark is made that Fanny will contest the matter. Well, we should think she would. What girl would sit down silently and allow another to attach her wardrobe without contesting? It is no light thing for an actress to have her wardrobe attached after the theatre is out. Of course Fanny could throw something over her, a piece of scenery, or a curtain, and go to her hotel, but how would she look? Miss Davenport always looked well with her wardrobe on, but it may have been all in the wardrobe. Without a wardrobe she may look very plain and unattractive.
Anna Dickinson has done very wrong. She has struck Fanny in a vital part. An actress with a wardrobe is one of the noblest works of nature. She is the next thing to an honest man, which is the noblest work, though we do not say it boastingly. We say she is next to an honest man, with a wardrobe, but if she has no wardrobe it is not right.
However, we will change the subject before it gets too deep for us.
Now, the question is, what is Anna Dickinson going to do with Fanny’s wardrobe? She may think Fanny’s talent goes with it, but if she will carefully search the pockets she will find that Fanny retains her talent, and has probably hid it under a bushel, or an umbrella; or something, before this time. Anna cannot wear Fanny’s wardrobe to play on the stage, because she is not bigger than a banana, while Fanny is nearly six feet long, from tip to tip. If Anna should come out on a stage with the Davenport wardrobe, the boys would throw rolls of cotton batting at her.
Fanny’s dress, accustomed to so much talent, would have to be stuffed full of stuff. There would be room in Fanny’s dress, if Anna had it on, as we remember the two, to put in a feather bed, eleven rolls of cotton batting, twelve pounds of bird seed, four rubber air cushions, two dozen towels, two brass bird cages, a bundle of old papers, a sack of bran and a bale of hay. That is, in different places. Of course all this truck wouldn’t go in the dress in any one given locality. If Anna should put on Fanny’s dress, and have it filled up so it would look any way decent, and attempt to go to Canada, she would be arrested for smuggling.
Why, if Dickinson should put on a pair of Davenport’s stockings, now for instance, it would be necessary to get out a search warrant to find her. She could pin the tops of them at her throat with a brooch, and her whole frame would not fill one stocking half as well as they have been filled before being attached, and Anna would look like a Santa Claus present of a crying doll, hung on to a mantel piece.
Fanny Davenport is one of the handsomest and splendidest formed women on the American stage, and a perfect lady, while Dickinson, who succeeds to her old clothes through the law, is small, not handsome, and a quarrelsome female who thinks she has a mission. The people of this country had rather see Fanny Davenport without any wardrobe to speak of than to see Dickinson with clothes enough to start a second hand store.
DON’T LEAVE YOUR GUM AROUND.
A woman at Wyocena, who chews gum, laid her “quid” on a green paper box, and when she came to chew it again was poisoned and it was with difficulty her life was saved. This reminds us of an accident that happened to Mary Anderson when she was here last. Mary will remember that in the second scene of “Ingomar,” just when Parthenia was winding herself around the heart of the barbarian, she looked pale, and whenever she would try to say sweet words to him, she acted as though she was on a lake excursion.
During some of the love passages we remember a far away look in her eyes, as though she was searching for the unfathomable, or looking for a friendly railing to lean over, and when her bosom heaved with emotion she acted as though she expected to hear from down country, and doubted whether her boots would remain on her feet or throw up their situation. Those who sat in the left box will remember that when she threw her head on Ingomar’s shoulder, that she spit cotton over towards the back of the stage, and acted like the little girl that had been eating tomatoes.
Ingomar seemed to notice that something was the matter, and he kept his face as far from Parthenia as the rules of polite society would admit, and the theory that she had been eating onions, which was advanced by a bald-headed man in the dress circle, found many believers. However, that was not the case, as we found by inquiring of a gentlemanly supe. It is well known that Miss Anderson is addicted to the gum chewing habit, and that when she goes upon the stage she sticks her chew of gum on an old castle painted on the scenery.
There was a wicked young man playing a minor part in the play, who had been treated scornfully by Mary, as he thought, and he had been heard to say he would make her sick. He did. He took her chew of gum and spread it out so it was as thin as paper, then placed a chew of tobacco inside, neatly wrapped it up, and stuck it back on the old castle. Mary came off, when the curtain went down, and going up to the castle she bit like a bass. Putting the gum, which she had no idea was loaded, into her mouth, she mashed it between her ivories and rolled it as a sweet morsel under her tongue. It is said by those who happened to be behind the scenes, that when the tobacco began to get in its work there was the worst transformation scene that ever appeared on the stage. The air, one supe said, seemed to be full of fine cut tobacco and spruce gum, and Mary stood there and leaned against a painted rock, a picture of homesickness.
She was pale about the gills, and trembled like ap aspen leaf shaken by the wind. She was calm as a summer’s morning, and while concealment, like a worm in an apple, gnawed at her stomach, and tore her corset strings, she did not upbraid the wretch who had smuggled the vile pill into her countenance. All she said, as she turned her pale face to the painted ivy on the rock, and grasped a painted mantel piece with her left hand, as her right hand rested on her heaving stomach, was, “I die by the hand of an assassin.” And the soft scenic moon rose up slowly, and calmly she looked down from the flies, and Mary was saved. Women can’t be too careful where they put their gum.
THE WAY TO NAME CHILDREN.
The names of Indians are sometimes so peculiar that people are made to wonder how the red men became possessed of them. That of “Sitting Bull,” “Crazy Horse,” “Man Afraid of his Horses,” “Red Cloud,” etc., cause a good deal of thought to those who do not know how the names are given. The fact of the matter is that after a child of the forest is born the medicine man goes to the door and looks out and the first object that attracts his attention is made use of to name the child. When the mother of that great warrior gave birth to her child the medicine man looked out and saw a bull seated on its haunches; hence the name “Sitting Bull.” It is an evidence of our superior civilization that we name children on a different plan, taking the name of some eminent man or woman, some uncle or aunt to fasten on to the unsuspecting stranger. Suppose that the custom that is in vogue among the Indians should be in use among us, we would have, instead of “George Washing
ton” and “Hanner Jane,” and such beautiful names, some of the worst jaw-breakers that ever was. Suppose the attending physician should go the door after a child was born and name it after the first object he saw. We might have some future statesman named “Red Headed Servant Girl with a Rubber Bag of Hot Water” or “Bald-headed Husband Walking Up and Down the Alley with His Hands in His Pockets swearing this thing shall never Happen Again.” If the doctor happened to go the door when the grocery delivery wagon was there he would name the child “Boy from Dixon’s Grocery with a Codfish by the Tail and a Bag of Oatmeal,” or if the ice man was the first object the doctor saw some beautiful girl might go down to history with the name, “Pirate with a Lump of Ice About as Big as a Solitaire Diamond.” Or suppose it was about election time, and the doctor should look out, he might name a child that had a right to grow up a minister, “Candidate for office so Full of Bug Juice that His Back Teeth are Afloat;” or suppose he should look out and see a woman crossing a muddy street, he might name a child “Woman with a Sealskin Cloak and a Hole in Her Stocking going Down Town to Buy a Red Hat.” It wouldn’t do at all to name children the way Indians do, because the doctors would have the whole business in their hands, and the directories are big enough now.
ABOUT RAILROAD CONDUCTORS.
About the time the Wisconsin Central conductors were being hauled over the coals, some paper did a very unjust thing by insinuating that there was about to be a general overhauling on the old established roads, and carried the idea that there was crookedness among conductors who have been trusted employees for more years than the reporters of the papers making the insinuations have lived.
This is entirely wrong. It is well enough to joke conductors about “dividing with the company,” and all that, and the conductors take such jokes all right, and laugh about them, but when a serious charge is made by a newspaper it is no joking matter.
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