Evening Star Newspaper, December 21, 1895, Page 18

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18 THE EVENING STAR, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1895-TWENTY-FOUR PAGES. PERSIAN LAMB One Reason Why It is a Favorite Dress Material. NEW IDEAS IN FASHIONS FOR WOMEN Velvet is Popular Alone and in Combination. SOME PRETTY GOWNS ——— UST COMMON PINS. are not in It any more. A woman who supplies a missing button. with a plebe- ian pin of thé common brass variety con- fesses judgment of her poverty and ought to retire from public gaze. The small maid who lev- ies tribute with her “please, buy my flow- ers” on the avenue ®ports a sparkler of the rhinestone class to fasten her thin shawl, and your colored “wash lady!’ would not think of fastening her pompadour back with anything less stylish than en imitation filigree silver pin. You can get pins now with pink and blue heads, green and yellow. Pearl embedded, or japarned black ones. All you have to do is to select the color of goods you want to ™atch, nominate the stone and the pins are handed out to you. Fancy “stick” pins are a drug on the market. They are pretty enough to chal- lenge admiration on a well-dressed woman, and to make a poorly dressed one conspicu- ous, even though they cost only a nickel each. It is nice to think that even the very poor may have some pretty things, but the cheapness of the excellent imita- tions aggravates the woman who can wear a twenty-diamond buckle on her hat If she likes, but who gets no more attention with her $1,000 ornament thau the little clerk does with her fac simile that cost one dollar. These stick pins are so useful for hold- ing stocks, Icops of ribbon and laces in place that it is probable they will stay a long time, perhaps forever. But then for- ever fs a long time. A single stone is now the favorite, and it may or may not match color of your hyst { the am gown or ribbon. The coming back into favor, and is beautiful when set about with clear white stones or pearls. Topazes share the popularity of the amethy If you want to be very ell, you must have a dress skirt of Persian lamb! Of course, it is heavy and bulky and not pret- ty to look upon, but it has also the merit of not being capable of successful imitation, and mighty few women can afford cae. Perhaps you might acquire one by paying about a thousand dollars down, but it would have to be of moderate width and not extraordinary skins. There is a kind of plush made now that resembles the Persian"lamb, but it is only twenty-two inches wide, and costs $5 a yard. All the new capes and jackets have im- mensely high collars. The Medici collar in moidilficati and adaptations is the ap- proved one. Nearly all handsome visiting toilets have capes made to match, for It is quite out of reason to suppose that a lady is going to build up fine sleeve struc- tures just to have them crushed under Jackets. If a jacket is worn, it has only a soft! be tak disr seu not meant to nm off tntil t © is ready to and don a h e of house n the ially plaitin terial. ng of this y to line it for » horsehair ma. and stiff. ar are adjusted at d hold the sleeves down. Velvet overshadows ev velvet gown is a thing to it Is not to be had, then j A full but if as much vel- vet as can be piled on silk or cloth is the next best thing. An elegant velvet gown that has the true Parisienne touch Is of a shade called “rose roi," which means a red about the color of an American beauty rose. It has a beauti- ful adjustment of guipure and fur ‘trim- ming about the shoulders. The skirt is of a lighter shade, and has a front panel of guipure lace and marten band at the foot. The collar is of marten, with a choux of pink velvet, and the gigot sleeves are fin- ished with the marten. Garnitures for gowns are now most con- spicuously of jet and embroidery. Entire waists are made of them, and frequently skirts are a mass of jet. The handy extra bodice is to continue in favor, but it will have a rival in the po- lonaise, which a few women have never given up. It is said, tco, that skirts for the street are to be made a little narrower, a little shorter and to have frills at the foot. That is such a nice, economical fash- fon, for the foot of a skirt gets worn so quickly, and a ruffe or a band of fur or velvet cover it up so beautifully. A pretty street gown might be construct- ed of the now fashionable veloutine. It is as pretty as velvet and appreciably cheap- er. The front breadth of the design is plain, the first side seams strapped with Persian embroidery. The corsage is orna- mented in the same manner. The opera collar is open in front in a point. A very elegant reception gown made for a charming young matron was designed of yellow satin brocaded with lilies of the valley in colors.. The front is of ivory fatin embroidered with pearls. A serpen- tine band of sable is mounted on each side of this, and the edge of the front panel Is finished with a jabot of knife plaited crepe de chine. The pcinted low bodice has an embroidered vest of ivory colored satin and revers of the same with a double ruf- fle of the mousselaine. The great sleeves neve a jabot of the crepe falling over em. ——._—_. STYLES IN #EADWEAR. Features of the Principal Modes and Some Variations. Fortunately for the health cf the women who wore them, the finicky litle Dutch bornet has gone. It was cute and pretty once, but when a thing is caricatured to its death, one grows tired of it even if it is a pretty bonnet. The thingsS that have come to take the place of the Dutch freak are not much larger, but at least they cover the top of the head, and that is a ccncession that fashion does not often make to health. -There is no longer any- thing that is the “‘style” or that everybody wears, if you except the Tam and the sailor. Women have commenced to learn the a, b, c of attractive dressing, and, be- ginning at the head, have asserted their rights and tastes. Bonnets and hats only “go” wnen they are becoming. A woman now buys her head gear to suit the contour of her head and face, and its trimmings to harmonize with her hair and eyes and her com- plexion. That is why women all seem to be better looking than they used to be. While small hats are worn, and a few bonnets, it must be confessed that the hat de rigueur is broad of brim, lavish as to feathers and & florid in architecture. They call -them pic- ture hats, and some of the women who wear them. are “sights,” and no mis- take. Many of these hats have crushed crowns of satin, silk or velvet, generally of a vivid contrast to the hat itself, while the feathers will be yet another color. The everlasting sailor is with us in a bunty- looking felt that has wings sticking out at the sides from a rosette or bow of plaid ribbon. Bright ribbcns are very much used for hats, mixed in with feathers and lace, both black and white. Jeweled laces are among the novelties, and rhinestone and jet ornaments are real works of art. Everything that glitters and sparkles is acceptable. Feathers were never more numerous. Wings and birds divide the honors, for feathers in this climate are a delusion and a snare, but there,are women who will insist upon wearirg them, though they have to be curled twice a day. One of the newest shapes is of braided felt and chenille, introducing green and brown. The brim is drooping, and the crown is of green chiffon. The only decora- tion is amethyst green ribbon ts stiff set bows at the sides. An example of a straight, wide-brimmed hat of red velvet has a handsome rhine- stone ornament in front, on a band of black velvet, and is built out at the sides like the panniers on a burro, with black plumes and black vel- vet. Rabbit's ears 9 dark green velvet stand straight up from the center of the feathers. A hat that is a memory of the Na poleon craze turns uy from the face and is edged with fur. Plumes stand straight up from a medallion of rhinestones, and some more plumes fall over the back. The hat is a study in green and blue, the awful combination that some color-blind hat-mak- er is trying to shove upon us. And there you have the three reigning styles. Their medifications are millions. Hat pins are now purchased as one would buy any other bit of jewelry, and they are costly enough. Ncbody thinks of wearing a common black-headed pin. — Christmas Morning. From Life. Willie—“I bet I get a lot of presents this morning.” Willie's mamma—“Why, Wille?” Willie—“Why, last night I heard Santa Claus stumbling upstairs, and I-heard him say he had an awful load and’ hoped -you wouldn't wake up.” The Proper Way." From the Chicago Record. “Mr. Farmer," she said,- please, Is this the way to Wareham?” The farmer looked up from his work with a grin, At the “Well, I guess that’ “will you tell me, »loomered-girl on her bicycle thin, he sald, “if t'ain’t no the way to wear ‘em. Tne Year of Big Sleeves. THE NEW WOMAN Pauline Pry Pays a Visit to One Boston. FROM VARIOUS POINTS OF VIEW in Modern Ideas and the Final Con- clusion of the Whole Matter. IN THE HOME CIRCLE WANT TO WRITE an unwritten chapter in the history of the New Woman. It ts a chapter of her fail- ures. Her successes you know, but “all success means partial failure; every ad- vance something left behind,” a fact which no woman's club dis- cusses, “which does not get into the pa- pers, and yet a fact of the New Woman's experiences as 1 mean pow to show. That you may be sure I know what I am talking about, let me tell you I have been spending a week in the bosom of the New Woman of Boston, thes imon pure article— you can have no question of that. The very air of Boston is so infected with deadly germs of the New Woman I would not dare stay there longer than a week. It would mean certain loss of all but my intellect, and heaven help the woman divested of her heart and every becoming human infirmity! I had an appointment with the New Wo- man at her office. She edits a magazine. Not that this is all she does. Dear, no! She conducts classes in parliamentary law in seven separate cities round about Boston. She ts president of the largest woman's clup in Boston, vice president of two lesser ones, an officer in the National Federation of Clubs, and only the day before I got there she had resigned ten vice presidencies in a bunch! This was not to rest, however, but to allow her more time to devote to certain work she was conducting at the Atlanta expcsition. Oh, yes—it is natural to forget them—she also operates a home, a husband and a baby. I don’t mean to say she forgets these herself. She reconciles them, and of course when you have reconciled anything so insignificant as a man, anything so tri- fling as a baby, with the stern, supreme recessities of the business. world and the relentlessly advancing cause of human pro- gress, these domestic factors can’t cut very much of a figure. Highly Intellectual. The editorial New Woman was not on hand when I arrived, but there were others —her business asroclate and one of the leading female pedagogues of Boston. On the side, there was a man. I don’t know whether the pedagogue carries this man around regularly to {l- lustrate her theories, but he certainly was too pat with all she said to possibly be accidentally present. He was intellectual- ized to a point at which sex and almost personal identity disappear in the nebulous potentialities of immortal thought. He had even sacrificed the human habit of articulate speech to his passion for higher things, and, striving to convey his soul in words, he stuttered. As a whole—indeed, any way one might take him—he accorded perfectly with what the pedagogue was saying of how immaterial men and women are as such—that fs, as physical beings-- to the final equations of human existence. She,was speaking with particular refer- ence to the relation of the sexes in mar- riage. “The divine marriage,” she said, “is in- herent in our natures and actualized in our self-consciousness or soul. When actualiz- ed it is eternal. The marriage with which we are familiar is a measure of discipline in which souls are developed for the higher union."* “Then, you don't think marriage is a failure,” I ventured timidly. The peda- gogue was not a person to toy with in these spiritual altitudes where our minds were now exercising. Therefore it behoo ed me to speak cautiously and with every appearance of not meaning anything I said, in case she didn’t like it. There was no harm done. She answered me authori- tatively, but with mercy in her tones. “You do not grasp the truth,”’ said she. “Nothing depends upon marriage as it is commonly understood. It can be neither a failure nor a success. The success or failure is in the individual, as he or she applies himself to the duty of discovering his soul mate.” About True Mates. “But,” I said, “do not soul mates when found usually bring about a divorce and so attest the failure of at least one in the marriage series?” “No; divorce as little as celibacy enters with the real marriage question. As we conform in soul to the eternal patterns of our being, we find our true mate, and ac- tualize the divine marriage, independent of any circumstances. Every one has his soul mate, and he must seek it in himself. When it is found, he becomes androgyn- cus.” I wanted to ask the little man if that was what he was, but without any ques- tionine he went on to tell me that he is out of it «\‘ogether. “Hi i \-here is wh-where the real woman move:zent op-p-p-operates,” he said; “men are largely wh-wh-what women ‘permit them to be. When woman, coming out of the subjection in which she has been held ty the intellectual or male nature, sees her f-f-f-fund-f-fundamental equality yet distinct office as the intuitive rather than the r-r-reasoning power, she will erect a standard for both sexes which ac- cords with f-f-f-fund-fundamental neces- sity rather than with custom which is founded on a p-p-perverted view of it, and of her ever-virgin nature m-m-man will be reborn.” “Poor little thing,” I thought, thank heaven the “let New Woman has us at least left you the hope of a second time on earth.” The business New Woman, who had been viewing with an unfriendly eye the expression of maternal sympathy I could not help turning on the new man, began catechising me with the cold, calculating, impersoral curiosity of a census taker, and when she got as far as “How many chil- dren have you?” and I blurted out the truth, replying ‘“‘two,” I was made to feel guilty of such an unpardonable anachron- ism that in my embarrassment I gasped, “How many have you?” Harmless Remark After All. Then I recalled she had been introduced to me as Miss! I trembled at what was to follow, needlessly. “I have no chilcren,” she replied, calmly. “Happily, I arrived at the truth of the na- ture and aim of woman before any mistaken conception of this point had involved my soul in the degrading complications of ma- ternity.” it was an immense relief to me to have the New Woman Editor dash in and bring us back to earth, Oddly enough, this New Woman with the purely intellectual mission in life was not a bit transcendental. She looked as if she might even fall in love in the good old-fashioned way, if she had time, but she hadn't. There isn’t time enough in the whole extent of duration of the whole human species to supply that woman with all she needs for her purposes. She really hadn’t time for anything she did. Yet, how beautifully she managed without it! All at once, without time for any one of us, she planned with the pedagogue to address a club in Roxbury the next evening, though in all probability she would be obliged on that evening to be in New York; she planned with the New Man to be present at an ex- hibition of cookery he was to give the fol- lowing Tuesday, though if she did not go to New York the next evening she would cer- tainly be in Atlanta on that day; she plan- ned with her business associate about changing printers, about getting a new il- lustrator for the magazine, and how to de- coy an advertisement out of a man who was a crank on antiques by taking to him that afternoon an old china teapot that had been given one of her ancestors by Daniel Web- ster, then, while the business associate Wrapped up the teapot, she scribbled off a few paragraphs, and between them planned but where she and I would. junch, and a dozen places where she was going to take me that afternoon. ye = A Busy Woman. I can never tell you how we got through the afternoon. I had “always believed it impossible for one body. to be in more than one place at the sama,;time, yet without anything like astral projection or any East Indian fakir’s ability to help us out, we were never in fewer than six piaces at any given moment during the afteygoon. With the fail- ures of the New Wom: clear in my mind, I am still mystified at way these Boston women do things. In the course of our af- ternoon, we visited a famous woman chem- ist, who calls all the migrobes of the earth by name, and also c: Six sons her own. She practically lives in the laboratory of the great institution of le: Ing with which she is connected, yet keeps house for her hus- band and six sons, and she actually told me that she is not a bit upset when her cook flares up and goes. Ah! to be sure; I hadn't thought of that before. Perhaps her husband is handy in the kitchen. When the afternoon was spent, the New Woman Editor wanted to take me to dinner with her at a hotel. She said she would like to take me out to her house, but that she hadn't thought she would be through in time to get home that night, and that her husband was not coming home, and that, under those circumstances, no dinner was Prepared at home. Of course, as the baby wasn’t big enough to eat, there was no good reason why they should have a din- ner, but somehow from her point of view of my conservatism, a dinnerless home, whether allied with soapless poverty or as the reasonable concomitant of a. wife’s and mother’s higher aims, indicated to me an elusive failure in the career of this New Woman. I did not go to dinner with her—I couldn’t. To save my life I had to go off by myself, and reflect that, though the Lord made heaven and earth in six days, He rested on the seventh,thus by precedent establishing for His creatures the right to Test also. The New Woman's Husband. During the evening I met the New Wo- man’s husband. The man who introduced me sald to him: “I suppose you are going to assist tomorrow night, Dick?” “Assist what, where?” Dick echoed in a helpless sort of fashion. “Why, up at your house—your wife’s re- ception. . “Didn't know one was on,” said Dick, adding, addressing me, “I and the boy don’t keep up with all the social and intel- lectual functions of the day. We usually have a reception by ourselves at night, on the top floor, with malted milk, instead of chocolate frappe for refreshments.” “Poor Dick,” the man with me sighed when he had passed on; “I’m afraid malted milk isn’t his only refreshment. He has got down to absinthe, while his wife is looking up.” Then I wondered {f the triumphal car of no New Woman has a small seat some- where for her husband and her sons. The next. day I actually found one who has her car bullt this way, and, dreadful as it may sound, I want to tell you that of all the New Women to be decorated ts the one with a conscience—not an old-fash- foned conscience, which is uncomfortable enough, goodness knows, but a conscience that, remembering the injunctions of Moses and all the prophets, is also ever mindful of Herbert Spencer, Pasteur and Max Nordau. That woman doesn’t neglect her family, she persecutes them with her strict ad- herence to their interests on scientific prin- ciples. They are all so ham-strung and handcuffed by hygienic laws that as surely as I know human nature her boys when they're big enough to defy her will go gorge themselves on deadly microbes just because they've been cheated out of the amount due their youth, and as for her husband—well, if he'were left a widower. how that man would skirmish for a sinful little fool and make her the stepmother of his over-sainted sons! ~ What Some Wonien Don’t Know. I can just fancy him roaming with Satan up and down, the would lpoking for a girl who could truthfully answer “no” to all these questions: Have you @ singW' iea about ‘the re- sponsibilities of a wife and mother? Are you determined to do your duty at any sacrifice of animal delight and crea- ture comfort? fie eo Are you up in dietarieg and the science of nutrition? 2 x Do you helfeve in ary germ theory? Do you taink three @lgars a day will give me heart failure, and have you any notion that kissing is unhealthy? Not the least painful. feature of this case is, the man is altogether likely to become a widower. “His wife admitted to me that her up-to-date consctence is kill- ing her, yet she resolutely refused to act on my suggestion and try to kill the con- science. I found one New Woman who freely ad- mitted that she is a failure. Yet to my mind, as the admission of sin {s the greater half of repentence, so I think this New Woman's confessed failure is the beginning of enduring success. She was an all- around newspaper man before she got married. Now she ts “nothing but a wife and mother’’—absolutely nothing else, she says, and the degradation of her position so unmans her she doesn't care who knows that she knows she is a failure. She doesn’t try to be anything else. She is a perfect mush of concession to her husband's will, and she even wheels her baby in {ts carriage on the street! She says nothing matters now; that In marry- ing she was false to her higher nature, and her only hope is death. She keeps house beautifully; her baby is fat and happy, and her husband, the insensible clod, is not only happy, but thinks she is. I know etter, now that she has told me, but secretly, as I said at the beginning, her future seems to me full of hope. The New Grandmother. But of all the New Women I saw in Bos- ton the New Grandmother was the rudest shock to my belief in tradition and my faith in any revealed knowledge of what is a woman's function in the world. This New Grandmother—and I am told she represents a large element of ths New Woman—this New Grandmother, as coon as her good husband died, proceeded to gather in his life insurance and travel around the world. That she was sixty-five years old then and due to settle down !n a corner in a pretty cap and 'kerchlef and dress dolls for her grandchildren—that had no effect whatever upon the delayed action of her higher aims. She told me her hus- band was a great baby, as most men are, and that while, of course, she was sorry to have the poor man die, for he really was not calculated to get along even in heaven without her to nudge him when it was time to stir, yet she had thoroughly enjoy- ed the privileges his death had given her. She had found her fate in Egypt, and was now the happlest she had ever been in her life, presiding over a woman's club de- voted to the study of archaeology. Her daughter, with whom she lived, was also president of a woman's club and the daugh- ter’s husband and two girls—the husband, there was nothing left of him but an ap- proving smile, which Madam President, whether the office spoke in the person of his wife or motherrin-law, regularly re- ceived, no matter whatcwas uttered. The daughters—poor girls! They were inclined to regard themselves as more failures along the line of the New. Woman, but I could see in them, how, {n the touching senti- ment of tombstone poetry, their loss was others’ gain. Their iintellectual parts had necessarily atrophied, while they did house- work and other domestic duties—“‘Of course mamma has no timé for anything but the club"—and when the'huffian race advances as far as these girls’ gints, there will be a natural return to the original sphere of woman. What One Girt Would Do. eae The younger girl, with the outspoken habit of sixteen, said grandma was an “awful guy” on a bicycle, and that “Mamma made her so everlastingly tired of the higher aims of the sex that she would,aim just as low as she could when she got the chance, just to give everybody a rest and a new sensation.” On the way home from Boston I read the story of the life of Russia's original New Woman, Sonya Kovalevsky, and I haven't been able to feel any pride in woman's in- tellect since. With her doctor's degree from the Univer- sity of Gottingen, pr or of mathematics at the University of Stockholm, successful litterateur, recipient of the Prix Bordin fromi the French Academy of Science, the greatest scientific honor which any woman has ever gained, Sonya Kovalevsky’s career compasses the single hope and the whole de- spair of the future of the New Woman. She was emancipated—emanc! ted frem the thralldom of custom, and so emancipated from the thraildom of sex, she sacrifi supreme passion of her check the activity of her m 1 short of its ultimate expression. She was successful. At the same time she wrote to a friend: “i receive many letters of congratulation, and the life rather than by a strange irony of fate, I have never been so miserable. Unhappy as a dog; but—I hope for the dog's sake—it is not so un- happy as a woman can be.” What the Woman Sighs For. ‘When the coveted prize was won it had no measure in her sight but the lover she had lest. “Such an honor,” she said, ‘does not increase a woman’s value in men’s eyes. A singer or an actress covered with laurels may find her way to a man’s heart in spite of her celebrity. Oh, beautiful woman is admired for her superior beauty! But the weman who studies seriously until her eyes are red and her brow wrinkled in order to win an academic prize—what is there in that to catch a man’s fancy?” What, indeed? “But why should she care for a man’s fancy?” you say. I don’t know, I am sure. Still, she does care, you see. Yes; when in rare instances, as that of Madam Kovalevsky, the New Wo- man has conquered the world, like Alex- ander of old she weeps, not, however, for more worlds to conquer, but for a lover to conquer her. And here, it seems to me, is the real seri- ous question about the New Woman—Where is the man who will dare make love to her? PAULINE PRY. oo HAIR DRESSING STYLES. Some of the Latest Forms as Dictated by Fashion. “There is a radical departure in the man- ner of dressing the hair,” said a hairdresser the other day. “The mania for Madonna- faced girls is now dead as last year's leaves, and Madame Pompadour has the stage. If you want to be very distingue and smart you must brush your hair straight back from the face and let it form a soft puff, held back with fancy pins and stick combs. It does not in the least matter whether your face is the right shape or not, or whether you have a high forehead that will make you look like ‘peeled onions’ with your hair that w: it is ‘the go,’ and if you would Se in the swim you must do as the swimmers 0. If one has a low Greek forehead, of course this style of dressing the hair will be be- coming. It calls for absolutely clean hair, too, because the puffs simply will not puff if the hair is oily or unclean. If your forehead is very high you may wear a few love locks about the temples, but — they must be very unob- trusive, indeed. This style was once a fa- vorite with Mrs. Cleveland. She may adopt it again. Too few women are care- ful of the manner in which they dress the hair for evening, let- ting stray locks fly in every direction, be- cause there is no confining vail, but the pompadour will do away with that entirely, for it requires dainty treatment to make it “go.” To cover up the ears ts always a crime, and not many will regret that the ugly fashion is entirely obsolete. In the matter of hair adornments you can pay your money and take your choice. Jew- eled combs come all of six inches long, which catch back the ends of the pompadour roll end tuck in nicely around the knot in the back. Then there are tiny little combs scarcely an inch long encrusted with gems or bright in cut silver, which are to hold down the rebellious bangs in front of the pompadour There are daggers, and swords, and combs, big and little, giant and dwarf, made of most of the precious metals and im- itated in all the base ones. There are dainty iittle coronets of colored gems, and haif crowns of pure white rhinestones to set just back of the pompadour, and there are aigrettes and feathers for more formal even- ing wear, Rats and mice, such as were worn just af- ter the war, will be on deck again this win- ter. They will be changed a little from the style of those days, but are palpa- bly “rats and mice,” made of woven hair into tiny little cush- fons, over which my ladies’ locks will be combed. One of the popular styles for an evening coiffure is to draw the hair back from the face, waving it a little, and allowing a few soft curis to fall over the forehead at the temples. The hair is parted directly in the middie and rolled down over slender false puffs and back toward the long knot, which is slightly like the bath bun of the summer. A jeweled comb is stuck in close to the knot in the back. Another style, much affected by young ladies, is to part the hair and roll it back from the face over a puff, and do it in a kngQt_ midway of the back of the head. It is quite effective on some faces. For evening wear the hair is waved in front for a matron and parted in the cen- ter and turned back from the face with a tendril or two about the temples. At the back is a twist of the hair, with a soft curl or two on the neck and jeweled combs holding the waves back. An aigrette or feather is a pretty addition. — THE TOUTS REVENGE. Being a Tale Concerning the Methods of a Race Track Man Who Got Even. The horse reporter of The Star met Jim- mie the other morning, the same Jimmie who recently was downed by his venerable old Dad to the tune of $25, as published ex- clusively in The Star, and Jimmie had a broad smile cn his guileless face. “Hello, Jimmie,” exclaimed the reporter, “the luck must have changed since I last saw you.” “If it hasn't I'm a ringer,” responded Jim- mie with a grin. “At St. Asaph’s or some other track?” ‘Right over there at St. Asaph’s,” said Jimmie, with a sling of his thumb over his shoulder to the southward. “How much ahead are you?” “’Tain’t so much how much ahead I am ¢s how much behind the chump is what tried to do me,” and Jimmie’s chin stuck out ag- gressively. ‘Somebody trying to work you2” “You're dead right, an’ I done him out of sight.” “Good for you, Jimmie,” said the reporter, lapping the young fellow on the back. ‘Now tell us about it.” You won't give it away?” queried Jim- mie, suspiciously “Never in a thousand years,” the reporter assured him You see,” end Jimmie became very confi- dential, “our mare, Bee Sting, was in fine form th’ other day and I sent word over to a frien’ of the family in Philadelphy that she was a winner fer keeps, an’ if he had any money that he wanted to grow, we had the ctance of his life waiting fer him, an’ no- body onto the find. He wrote a letter back, an’ me an’ the old man sent him another, an’ the next day he come over with a t’ree hunderd roll in his inside pocket. He seen how things looked, an’ he was feelin’ so good he put up the roll on the mare at 20 to 1, scatterin’ it "round where it would do the most good. “Then I sees him. says L ‘Here’s a ticket for $25 at 20 to 1,” says ‘What do I git out of Then I says a few cuss words. ‘Whet's eatin’ you?’ says he. ‘If the mare wins ain't the ticket good for five hundred? Do you want the earth?” ““«No,’ says I, ‘but I want half. Didn't I give you the tip?” “You did,’ says he, ‘an’ ain't I takin’ all the chances to lose my roll? You can’t loose anything, and you've got a big chance to win five hundred. If you don’t like it, you can go to,’ and he stuck his finger down at the ground as if he was going to jab a hole in it. “That's all right,’ says I, shakin’ head and gittin’ hotter in the collar eve sinute. With that I give him the good-bye and left him chuckling to himself and went over to the paddock “Here, Bob,’ says I to the stable boy, ‘you put the lead belt on Bee Sting. Boo kicked, for he wanted to see the mare win, but I held him up and the lead belt went. That made eighteen pounds extry fer the mare to carry, and when the race was fin- ished, Bee Sting had five heads hetween her and the wire, an’ me dear frien’ from Phila- Gelphy didn't have a red cent to git home with. No Philadelphy chump can do Jim- mie, Bi fellow champed his bits with as great s faction if it had rot cost him at his ‘frien’ from Philadelphy”’ out of ten times as much. HOLIDAY EXCURS ANTES PENDISYLVA RAILROAD. d19&21 Tickets sold December 21 to 25, in clusive, and December 31 and January 1, good to return until January 7, 1896 On account of the Christmas Holidays the Pennsylvania Railroad will issue round-trip tickets on dates as above at reduced rates between all stations esst of and including Pittsburg and Erie and west of Elizabeth and Sea Girt. Also to Frederftksburg, Richmond and other points south, on December 16 to 2, inclusive, and December 29 to Jan« uary 1, inclusive, good for return pas sage until January 7. = = A WOMAN OF NERVE. She Had a “Habit of Shooting First and Then Fainting. During the past summer a Star reporter found it necessary, in one of his trips through the West Virginia mountains to take a wagon from the small town at the railroad station, in order to reach a county seat he was seeking. The driver of that wagon was a character. Lank and lean and wiry, he was the color of saffron, and there was a varying expression in his black eyes which indicated that he could be fully as bad as he could be good, with ample capacity to be cither, according to circumstances. He was talky and interest- ing, and before five miles had been tra- versed he became confidential. In the mearntimo his passenger had become familiar and was calling him by his first name. “By the way, Sam,” he inquired, “how did you lose that forefinger?” The driver looked down at the place where only half a fipger remained and smiled. ‘Shot off,” he sald sententiously. n a mountain fight?” “Kinder sorter that a-way.” “How did the other fellow come out of ‘Thar wuzn't no other feller,” he grin- ned. ‘0? Did you do it yourself?” eercely.” He stopped, but he showed such an in- clination to go on with the explanation that The Star man asked him for it. “Weil, yer see, it wuz this a-way: "Bout twenty ye'rs ago, that ts, when I wuz twenty-five, I reckon I wuz the orneriest cuss in these parts. I wuz drunk most uv the time, and when I wuzn’t, I wuz huntin’ ‘round fer liquor to git drunk on. Fightin’, too, an’ raisin’ Cain gener’ll: disturbin’ public worship on Sundays when thar wuz any, and bustin’ up the school church house on week day: Nobody couldn’t do nothin’ with me, an’ I got ter thinkin’ I owned the whole neck uv woods. “I reckon it must have been goin’ on fer five er six ye'rs that a-way, an’ I wuz gittin’ wuss, when one winter a little slip uv a red-headed gal come to town to teach school. Some said she come frum Pennsyl- vany, an’ some said she come frum old Virginny, but that didn’t make no Giffer- erce to me, and when she'd been thar about two weeks, it come ‘round time fer me to go on a spree, an’ I went, an’ the fvst place I struck fer wuz the school house. knowed the little gal wuz powerful an’ she knowed I wuz powerful ‘y, but I wuz jist drunk enough to fergit all the sense I ever did have, in- ciudin’ uv a knowledge that the little schoolmarm wuz mighty handy with a pop-gun sort uv a rifle she useter to tote to school with her and bang away at squir- rels up in the woods atter school. “When a man gits fool drunk thar ain’t no bigger kind uv fool and Sam sighed and laughed a little. Well, I struck the school house ‘long in the atternoon, jist as the children was goin’ home, an’ when they seed me, they fairly went a whoopin’, leavin’ the schoolmarm all by herself. I wuzn't lookin’ fer that egzactly, but I thought I'd tackle her anyhow, an’ in I bolted an’ commenced yellin’ like an Injin an’ tryin’ to pen her up in a corner, jist to skeer her, yer understand.” “Yes, I understand,” and the passenger felt like knocking the driver out into the , I reckon, I didn’t; that is notyvery much,” he went on, “fer afore I knowed what was comin’, she grabbed that dern little pop-gun uv _hern and had it p’inted straight at me. She didn’t look so purty that a-way, an’ her red head looked like a ball uv fire, an’ somehow I stopped right in the middie uv the floor. “*You'd better stop,’ says she, coldern ice an’ hardern iron. ‘Now hold up both hands,’ says she, an’ somehow I put 'em up almighty sudden like. ‘Drop that left one across your breast an’ keep it thar,’ says she, an’ somehow I done that too, an’ I stood before her with my right hand up, an’ feelin’ like I'd ruther be in jail a dern sight thin whar I wuz. Then she made me take a solemn oath never to come inside that school house ag'in, an’ I wuz glad enough to do it, an’ thought I wuz gittin’ off mighty easy. “*Hold-on,’ say8 she, ez I made a move like ez ef I wuz goin’, an’ kinder grinnin’ at her; ‘hold on, I ain't through with you yet. You've swore to keep out of this school house an’ not disturb me no more, but jist to give you somethin’ to keep it in mind, I'll do this, and dern my buttons, afore I could wink that gun uv hern crack- ed an’ I thought a red-hot nail had been druv through my forefinger. I give a yell an’ a jump an’ went out uv that school house like lightnin’, yellin’ at every jump, tll the town marshal picked me up, an’ I told him what had happened. “Then he handed me over to the doctor an’ went back to the school house, an’ I'm a mule ef he didn’t find the little red-head- ed schoolmarm layin’ stretched out on the floor in a-dead swoon. It wuz the blood er scmethin’ he added, reflectively. “Any- way, she didn’t have no occasion to learn me no more lessons, fer that one done the bvusfhess fer me, an’ when that finger grow- ed over,my ornery streak had growed over, too, an’ I’ve been hard workin’ an’ respect- able ever since.” “To make the story come out right, you cught to have married her,” suggested The Star man. “Did you?” Sam smiled warily and shook his head. “Nary a marry,” he said. “Ef I marry at all, I want a gal that'll do her faintin’ afore she does her shootin’,” which pose sibly was wisdom on the part of Samuel. ee A HOSPITAL WARD. IN It is Pleasanter to Be One of Ma Than in Solitude. From the New York World. A Wall street broker who had spent riz weeks in a big city hospital said: “I have been in the hospital three times, and this visit was the shortest and least tedious of any of tnem. The fact is, I found that I could no. get a private room, as I had in previous years, and so I had to go into a common ward, although the idea was very repugrant to me.” “I don’t see how a man accustomed to the soft side of everything, as you are, could stand being in a common hospital ward for six weeks,” interrupted one of his listeners. The broker, who Jooked so sleek and pros- perous and well fed that it Was difficult to imagine him in a hospital ward and on the same level as a charity patient, said: “I ¢an tell you, however, that I learned one thing this trip that I never knew before, that it is much easier to get well in a ward where you're one of two dozen pa- tients than in a private room, where you're all alone and have nothing to distract your thoughts from your own hurts. It's sur- prising how soon you learn to take an in- terest in the people about you, even if they are only bricklayers or Italian laborers, or hack drivers, and of course the majority of the patients belong to what we call the ‘lower cla * of society. And in getting acquainted with these poor fellows and lis- tening to their talk you are often able to forget yourself and your own broken leg or cracked skull or whatever misforiune may have befallen you. “For example, if you're in a private room and happen to see a man carried -by your door on a stretcher you're just crazy to know who he is and how he got hurt, and it won't do you any good to get your curi- osity excited, because neither nurse nor doctor nor orderly will give you the slight- est information on the subject—it seems to be against the rules for them to tell any- thing that they know about the patients. But if you're in a ward there are alway two or three men to hobble out to the ele- vator man and get the whole story from him, and then come back and spread the tidings from bed to bed. You've no idea how much better you feel when you are able to keep track of all that's going on around you. “I suppose you were glad to get out, just the same,” remarked one of the compan. “Of course I was, but there was plenty of men in my ward who would have been glad enough to stay there all winter. You see, it's pretty hard on a man to turn him cut on the street at the very beginning of the cold weather, with very little prospect of getting any work before spring. There was one fellow named Maginnis, whose bed was next to mine, and he had been playing "pos- sum, as every one of us knew, for six weeks. Just as I was going away Maginnis hobbled slowly down the room, with agony on his face and groans on his lips, and an Irish bricklayer, who had had his leg am- putated the week before, called out to him, ‘Look out, Maginnis, you're limping on the wrong leg this morning; the doctors'll catch you! and I'll be hanged if the fellow wasn’t so broken up that he changed h lump from the right leg to the left before he realized what he was about THE BALANC From London Punch. Mrs. Herry else thought an ony Mr. Henry Peek (wearily)—“Ah, well, my dear, everybody pities me now RESTORED.

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