University of Virginia Library

TEMPEST IN A TUB.

IT was all about a wash-tub. Mrs. Villiers had loaned Mrs. Ransom her wash-tub. This was two weeks ago last Monday. When Mrs. Villiers saw it again, which was the next morning, it stood on her back-stoop, minus a hoop. Mrs. Villiers sent over to Mrs. Ransom's a request for that hoop, couched in language calculated to impugn Mrs. Ransom's reputation for carefulness. Mrs. Ransom lost no time in sending back word that the tub was all right when it was sent back; and delicately intimated that Mrs. Villiers had better sweep before her own door first, whatever that might mean. Each having discharged a Christian duty to each other, further communication was immediately cut off; and the affair was briskly discussed by the neighbors, who entered into the merits and demerits of the affair with unselfish zeal. Heaven bless them! Mrs. Ransom clearly explained her connection with the tub by charging Mr. Villiers with coming home drunk as a fiddler the night before Christmas. This bold statement threatened to carry the neighbors over in a body to Mrs. Ransom's

view; until Mrs. Villiers remembered, and promptly chronicled the fact, that the Ransoms were obliged to move away from their last place because of non-payment of rent. Here the matter rested among the neighbors, leaving them as undecided as before. But between the two families immediately concerned the fires burned as luridly as when first kindled. It was a constant skirmish between the two women from early morning until late at night. Mrs. Ransom would glare through her blinds when Mrs. Villiers was in the yard, and murmur between her clinched teeth,—"Oh, you hussy!"

And, with that wondrous instinct which characterizes the human above the brute animal, Mrs. Villiers understood that Mrs. Ransom was thus engaged, and, lifting her nose at the highest angle compatible with the safety of her spinal cord, would sail around the yard as triumphantly as if escorted by a brigade of genuine princes.

And then would come Mrs. Villiers's turn at the window with Mrs. Ransom in the yard, with a like satisfactory and edifying result.

When company called on Mrs. Villiers, Mrs. Ransom would peer from behind her curtains, and audibly exclaim,—

"Who's that fright, I wonder?"

And, when Mrs. Ransom was favored with a call, it was Mrs. Villiers's blessed privilege to be at the window, and audibly observe,—

"Where was that clod dug up from?"

Mrs. Ransom has a little boy named Tommy; and Mrs. Villiers has a similarly sized son who struggles under the cognomen of Wickliffe Morgan. It will happen, because these two children are too young to grasp fully the grave responsibilities of life,—it will happen, we repeat, that they will come together in various respects. If Mrs. Ransom is so fortunate as to first observe one of these cohesions, she promptly steps to the door, and, covertly waiting until Mrs. Villiers's door opens, she shrilly observes,—

"Thomas Jefferson, come right into this house this minit! How many times have I told you to keep away from that Villiers brat?"

"Villiers brat!" What a stab that is! What subtle poison it is saturated with! Poor Mrs. Villiers's breath comes thick and hard; her face burns like fire; and her eyes almost snap out of her head. She has to press her hand to her heart as if to keep that organ from bursting. There is no relief from the dreadful throbbing and the dreadful pain. The slamming of Mrs. Ransom's door shuts out all hope of succor. But it quickens Mrs. Villiers's faculties and makes her so alert, that when the two children come together again, which they very soon do, she is the first at the door. Now is the opportunity to heap burning coals on the head of Mrs. Ransom. She heaps them.

"Wickliffe Morgan! What are you doing out there with that Ransom imp? Do you want to catch some disease? Come in here before I skin you."

And the door slams shut; and poor Mrs. Ransom, with trembling form, and bated breath, and flashing eyes, clinches her fingers, and glares with tremendous wrath over the landscape.

And in the absence of any real, tangible information as to the loss of that hoop, this is, perhaps, the very best that can be done on either side.

THERE is a vast difference in the conduct of a man and a woman in new clothes. When a woman gets a new suit, she immediately prances down town, and for hours will walk contentedly along a crowded thoroughfare, receiving fresh impulses of joy every time another woman scans her wardrobe. But a man is so different! He won't put on his new clothes for the first time until it is dark; then he goes down town so cautiously as to almost create the impression that he is sneaking along. If he sees a crowd on a corner, he will slip across the way to avoid them; and, when he goes into his grocery, he tries to get behind as many barrels and boxes as he can. All the time he is trying his level best to appear as if the suit was six months

old, and all the while realizes that he is making an infernal failure of it. We hope the time will come when new pants will be so folded by the manufacturer, that they won't show a ridge along the front of each leg when the wearer dons them.