Peck's Sunshine: Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun,; Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
General
Peck's Sunshine: Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun,; Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882
Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
American wit and humor
There is nothing that is more touching than the gallantry of men, total
strangers, to a lady who has met with an accident. Any man who has a
heart in him, who sees a lady whose apparel has become disarranged
in such a manner that she cannot see it, will, though she be a total
stranger, tell her of her misfortune, so she can fix up and not be
stared at. But sometimes these efforts to do a kindly action are not
appreciated, and men get fooled.
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:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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