I have seen a large woman take her teeth in one hand and a shawl-strap
full of hair in the other and adjourn to the ladies' dressing room at
Camp Douglas and finally emerge therefrom, with a smooch of prepared
chalk over each eye, at Winona. All that time half a dozen ladies in the
car gnawed their under lips and tried to look happy. I have known a
timid young lady to lose her breakfast because this same ogress, with
bristles along the back of her neck, as usual moved into the
dressing-room and lived there till the train reached its destination and
the dining-car was detached.
Some day this dressing-room will be made on the plan of a large
concertina, operated by means of clockwork, and after this venerable
hyena has laundered herself and primped and beautified and upholstered
herself and waxed her mustache, and insulted the plate-glass mirror for
an hour or two by constantly compelling it to reflect her features, the
walls of the apartment will gradually approach each other, and when that
woman is removed she will look like the battle of Gettysburg.
MR. SWEENEY'S CAT.
Robert Ormsby Sweeney is a druggist of St. Paul; and though a recent
chronological record reveals the fact that he is a direct descendant of
a sure-enough king, and though there is mighty good purple, royal blood
in his veins that dates back where kings used to have something to do to
earn their salary, he goes right on with his regular business, selling
drugs at the great sacrifice which druggists will make sometimes in
order to place their goods within the reach of all.
As soon as I learned that Mr. Sweeney had barely escaped being a crowned
head, I got acquainted with him and tried to cheer him up, and I told
him that people wouldn't hold him in any way responsible, and that, as
it hadn't shown itself in his family for years, he might perhaps finally
wear it out.
He is a mighty pleasant man, anyhow, and you can have just as much fun
with him as you could with a man who didn't have any royal blood in his
veins. You would be with him for days on a fishing trip and never notice
it at all.
But I was going to speak more in particular of Mi. Sweeney's cat. Mr.
Sweeney had a large cat named Dr. Mary Walker, of which he was very
fond. Dr. Mary Walker remained at the drug store all the time, and was
known all over St. Paul as a quiet and reserved cat. If Dr. Mary Walker
took in the town after office hours nobody seemed to know anything about
it. She would be around bright and cheerful the next morning, and attend
to her duties at the store just as though nothing whatever had ever
happened.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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