A FEMALE PRANK.
WHEN a woman puts three mackerel to soak over night in a dish-pan whose sides
are eight inches high, and leaves the pan on a stairway, she has accomplished
her mission, and should go hence. This was what a Division-street woman did
Friday night,—filled the pan at the pump, and then left it standing on the
steps to the stoop, while she went into the next house to see how many buttons
would be required to go down the front of a redingote. And a mighty important
affair that was, to be sure. And there was her husband tearing through the
house in search of a handkerchief, and not finding it, of course. And then
he rushed out into the yard, wondering where on earth that woman could be;
and started down the steps without seeing the pan, or even dreaming that
any one could be so idiotic as to leave it there. Of course
he stepped on
it; or at least that is the supposition, as the neighbors who were brought
out by the crash that followed saw a horrified man and three very demoralized
mackerel shooting across the garden, and smashing down the shrubbery. And
he was a nice sight, was that unhappy man, when they got him on his feet.
There wasn't a dry thread on him; and his hair was full of bits of mackerel;
and one of his shoulders was out of joint; and his coat was split the whole
length of the back; and he appeared to be out of his head. He was carried
in the house by some of the men, and laid on a bed, while others went after
a doctor; and sixteen women assembled in the front-room, and talked in whispers
about the inscrutable ways of Providence, and what a warning this was to
people who never looked where they were going.
