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“You see we would like to have you stay
as late as any body,” the ancient dame would
add. “But neither Mr. Murray nor I can
stand fatigue as we could once; and so—”

“Why, my dear aunt, you are only too
good to go with me at all,” interrupted Josie.
“The instant you feel tired, give me a
sign and we will leave. Now, promise me
that, or I shall be uneasy all the evening.”

So Mrs. Murray imagined that the enterprise

would be made short and easy for her
old members, and for the rector's determination
of blood to the head. Little did she
know the nature and forces and possible orbit
of the indefatigable young comet of society
upon whose train she was trusting
herself. She and her husband were destined
not to return home that night until
long after fatigue had begun to swell their
ankles and tie knots in their muscles.

“Yes, we will let you know when we are
fatigued,” said the confiding rector. “Of
one blessed circumstance I feel comfortably
sure this year: there will be no jam; there
can not be one. They had an awful crush
last year in the White House. But to-night
the reception is to be in the Treasury, where
the tag-rag and bob-tail will find plenty of
room. We shall be able to keep together
and to make the rounds without difficulty.
See here.”

And he actually produced a plan of the
first floor of the Treasury building, which
he had got the colonel to draw out for him
with all the accuracy of an old West Pointer,
a precaution justified to his mind by the
necessity and duty of taking good care of
Mrs. Murray.

“There we go in,” he continued, pointing
with his great pulpy forefinger to guide his
wife's investigations. “There is the entrance-hall.
There is the ladies' cloak-room.
There is the gentlemen's cloak-room.
We leave you there; go here to get rid of
our overcoats; then go to this other door to
meet you. Then we move on together to
this room to shake hands with the President.
Then around through this long suite
of rooms to the entrance-hall again. I think
one tour, taken very leisurely, and without
tiring ourselves, will answer our purpose.”

It was an excellent plan of campaign, but,
like many another, it worked best on paper.
When the Murrays drove up to the Treasury,
they found it besieged with carriages, while
the great entrance-hall swarmed with people,
whose numbers were rapidly increasing.

“It is going to be splendid!” exclaimed
Josie. “Really something worth coming
to.”

“This is awful,” murmured Parson Murray,
aghast. “Huldah, I think you had
better go back at once.”

“No, no! I can bear it — a little while,”
gasped the old lady, a trifle frightened, but
eager to see somewhat of the revelry, after
the social manner of women.

So the two men scuffled along to the door
of the feminine dressing-room, and poked
their ladies, with much difficulty, through
the jammed door of it, considerably maltreating
a number of other females in the
conflict, and duly apologizing to the wrong
people. Next they fought or manœuvred
their way to the masculine cloak-room, gave
up their great-coats to an already over
worked, bewildered, and breathless servitor,
and then commenced a fearful struggle to
reach the exit-door of the ladies' room.

Meantime, old Mrs. Murray was pretty
nearly at her wit's end, with the crowd and
the confusion. That dressing-room was a
terribly tight fit for the number of ladies
within it. Before our couple had fairly got
rid of their wrappings and received checks
for them, there was a woman to every square
foot of the floor, and each one seemed to be
doing her solid best to incommode, crush,
cast down, and trample to death every other.

“Dear me! I never knew before how
hard ladies were,” laughed Josie, as she pushed
herself and hauled her aunt through the
press. “I begin to believe they are the real
bone and sinew of the country.”

“I think I can stand it a little longer,”
gurgled Mrs. Murray, from beneath the hoops
and flounces of a giant dowager who was
combating in front of her. “I wonder how
the gentlemen are getting along,” she added,
laughing rather hysterically, yet with good
pluck for one of her ripe and, indeed, wilted
condition.

Fortunately for their chances of advancing,
there was no possibility of retreat. The
general tendency of this phalanx of silks and
satins was toward the exit-door, while a constantly
thickening mass poured in through
the entrance-door, rendering flight thitherward
a chimera. Furthermore, Josie had
not the least notion of giving up; she meant
to see the reception, or perish in the attempt;
she would have fought her way to it over
dead bodies. So on they squeezed, and on
they were shoved, until the pressure became
terrific. Could the rector have seen his
dear old wife in that maddened throng of a
thousand millineries, he would have lifted
up his loving voice and wailed with fright.
He never imagined that she could be in such
dire extremity. He did not know, and no
man could suspect, without having physical
experience of the fact, how savagely a thousand
eager and frightened women can push
and kick and trample.

He, meanwhile, clinging desperately to the
arm of his elder but sturdier brother, was
striving and suffering in the great hall outside.
There also there was a wrestle as
of giants; for every man who had wife or
daughter or sweetheart inside of the dressing-room
was butting toward the door of it;
and the mightier were the obstacles in his
way, the more anxiously he struggled to overcome
them.

Thus it happened that in that much-sought-for
portal two fierce crushes met,
composed in large part of people who, while
jammed face to face, were strangers to each
other. Smith was almost in the arms of Mrs.
Robinson, but her he did not want, and she
did not want him; and meantime Mrs. Smith
was hidden from him by a solid silken phalanx.

As for Robinson, he was rubbing noses
with Mrs. Jones, whom he did not know by
sight from the spouse of Melchisedek, while
a giant Brown divided him from the wife of
his bosom, the said Brown being quite wild
and dangerous because he could not discern
Mrs. B.

How they did dig each other, and bend
each other's ribs inward, and lift each other
off the floor, by dint of mere simple squeezing!

The portly and flabby and, so to speak,
doughy rector was jammed and kneaded and
moulded pretty nearly out of recognizable
shape. He sought to bear it bravely; he
smiled at his brother, and whispered, “This
is like fighting with beasts at Ephesus;” but
presently he got indignant, and grumbled at
his fellow-sufferers as “bulls of Bashan;”
and finally he became both gravely alarmed
and earnestly wrathful.

“Sir, you are smashing my ribs!” he exclaimed,
in the face of a raw-boned, untrimmed,
unbroken gentleman from the mountains
of North Carolina, who was doing his
best to get beyond him without going through
him.

At almost any other time the Southerner
would have apologized to a clergyman whose
physical boundaries he had invaded; but
just now he was himself in great trouble,
both of mind and body, and consequently
not disposed to say any thing nice to any
body; was indeed much inclined to be aggressive,
or, at least, retaliatory. So he cruelly
replied: “Your ribs are pooty well covered,
my friend; they oughter stan' it better'n
mine.”

“Sir, I consider that remark—” puffed the
rector.

But he was graciously prevented from
finishing the perhaps unhallowed sentence.
Just then a fresh squeeze of the mob took
his breath away.

“This beats me!” continued the North
Carolinian. “I never see a crowd of more'n
a hundred men befo'.”

And that was the last word he spoke in
this world, so far as Parson Murray ever
knew.

“Julian, I think I shall drop in a minute
or two,” groaned the rector, as soon as he
had recovered speech.

“Hold on by me, John,” answered the
bony and heroic colonel. “Keep your hands
up and your elbows over your ribs. As for
dropping, a dead man couldn't do it. We
must tussle it out. The ladies are having
as sharp a fight as we.”

“Are they?” gasped the rector, in affectionate
terror, clutching at the shoulders of
his neighbors as if he would climb on them,
and peeping as well as he could between
bumping heads to get a glimpse of his fragile
old wife.

But he could only see a door full of female
faces, all tossing and troubled, as if they
were on a raft in a storm, and all unknown
to him. Then he tried to shout, “Oh, Huldah!
Huldah!” only his voice failed him, and
the call was little better than a gasp.

But no Huldah responded. The venerable
lady was hidden deep under skirts and
flounces which did not belong to her; and
moreover she was so occupied in mind by
her buffetings, that had an elephant trumpeted
in her ear she would hardly have heard
him.

Well, we must leave the two gentlemen to
endure and strive as they best may, and attend
to the fortunes of the two Mrs. Murrays.
Some small headway they were making from
minute to minute; or rather some headway
was being imposed upon them by others. By
dint of good luck and severe tussling, ladies
were constantly escaping from the room and
going off with their natural protectors in a
slender procession, which crept down one
side of the hall toward the reception-saloon,
thus making place for other ladies to reach
the door-way.

Both Mrs. Murray and Josie were still
alive and able to look the way they wanted
to go, and even to scuffle a little. But, nearing
the portal, the conflict became tremendous.
No woman could or would have mercy
on her sister-woman; they fought and
they scolded like the heroes of the “Iliad.”
Presently a tall and sallow female, who combated
in the rank behind our pair, losing her
vitality because of a severe dig in the corset,
screamed lamentably, “I shall faint in a
minute!”

“This lady is swooning!” cried several of
her fellow-martyrs. “Do make way for her
there behind!”

Then a cruel voice—very pitiless, although
nothing more masculine than a contralto—
made this inclement response: “Hand her
over to me if she has a fatal syncope, and I'll
hold an inquest on her.”

Josie Murray, full of the strength and gayety
of healthy youth, looked around with a
giggle to see who this scoffer might be. To
her surprise, she beheld a Bloomer: not, indeed,
the ordinary Bloomer, a limp, diminutive,
ill-favored nondescript, in a flannel or
calico bathing-dress, but a young woman,
who really looked like a man, so nearly did
her garniture resemble masculine apparel.
A tall and strong young person, dressed in
a plaited frock-coat, plaited cloth vest, and
gathered cloth pantaloons, was the figure
which Josie stared at with a mixture of
wonder, amusement, aversion, and contempt.

“Do look at that creature, aunt!” she whispered,
loudly—“do look at her, quick!” she
urged, as if there were danger lest the creature
should fall to bits or otherwise vanish.

But Mrs. Murray, senior, was beyond staring
even at monsters; her very curiosity
was for the time stifled by physical suffering.

She had but one idea in her ancient
head, and that idea was to get once more
alongside of her husband, never to leave him
again in this world.

“I think I can stand it,” she answered,
dimly aware that Josie had spoken to her,
but not capable of grasping what had been
said.

Then a dark, black-eyed, vigorous lady,
who had toiled slowly up to their shoulders,
put her head between them, and laughed:
“That is the woman's rights woman, Squire
Nancy Appleyard.”

“Oh, Mrs. Warden!” exclaimed Josie. “And
Belle, too! Now we will conquer. We must
go in E pluribus unum, as the American eagle
says. Do get behind us and push us.”

“Is it possible that you have your aunt
here?” said Mrs. Warden. “Dear me! how
can she stand this rampage! How brave
you are, Mrs. Murray!” she added, recollecting
the wisdom of saying pleasant things.
“You set us all an example.”

“I am getting on—I am getting on,” murmured
the old lady, without looking up. “Is
my cap on my head?”

“It is all over it,” laughed Josie. “But we
will set that to rights in another room.”

“We must try to get her through at once,”
counseled Mrs. Warden. “Suppose we make
one tremendous push, and go through the
door flying. The men won't be so hard on
us as our own womankind are!”

So Mrs. Rector Murray was heartened up
to the charge, and it was executed without
regard to life or raiment. It was in part
successful; the old lady was shot out of the
waiting-room into the solid core of the male
phalanx; there she was caught by her husband
and brother-in-law, and laboriously
dragged away, as if she were a body of Patroclus.
But Josie and the Wardens could
not follow her, for just then there was a violent
refluence in the human tide; and they
were borne back upon the line of ladies in
the door-way, and, as it were, stranded there.

“You won't see them again for an hour,”
said Mrs. W. “You will have to stick to
us.”

“That will be much pleasanter,” answered
Josie, who had perhaps assisted the convulsion
which had divided her from the Murrays.
“They will want to sit in a corner and
rest, while I want to go about and see the
sights. Besides, you are to find me a beau,
you know. You can spare one out of your
five or six dozen.”

“There is one engaged for you, only you
must share him with us. We are with Congressman
Bradford.”

“Ah, how good of you!” said Josie, thinking
meanwhile how mean it was. She had
hoped to pick up Edgar Bradford in the
crowd, and keep him to herself all the evening.
And here Mrs. Warden had, so to speak,
squatted on him, and pre-empted him.

Meanwhile the shoving and elbowing went
on, and were very occupying to them all. But
at last, to make a long story short, they got
clear of that stormy door-way, and were convoyed
away by Congressman Bradford. There
was nothing remarkable in Josie's greeting
to this young gentleman—nothing to show
that they had once been a good deal in love
with each other. She barely touched her
gloves to his, gazed wistfully into his eyes
for just a single instant, to see if he still
cared for her a little bit, and said, in a rapid,
light way, “So glad to meet you again!”

To make a dead set at Belle's escort would
not do at all; not, indeed, that there could
be any thing immoral or unfair in such an
enterprise; but it would infuriate Belle's
mamma, and that would be inconvenient.

“I am delighted to see you in Washington,”
answered Bradford; and asked where
she was visiting, and promised to call.

Then he gave his arm to Mrs. Warden,
and they all pushed on in search of a resting-place,
there to shake out their ruffled
plumage.

“We are flattened all out of shape,” whispered
Belle, looking in dismay at the irregular
outlines of her crinoline.

“We are as slinky as ghosts,” laughed Josie;
“only we know by our feelings that we
are flesh and blood. I think I must be black
and blue all over.”

“I am prepared, I believe, to enter the
presence,” said Mrs. Warden, after a few of
those swift shakes and artistic slaps whereby
a woman sets her costume to rights in a
crowd.

“One minute,” begged Josie. “Belle and
I need an escort; and here comes one, and
we will divide him.”

Then catching, with a flirt of her fan, the
eye of Mr. Hollowbread, who at that moment
was plunging after them through the crowd,
appearing and disappearing like a porpoise
among surges, she beckoned him to hasten.

University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX. A PRESIDENTIAL SQUEEZE.

9. CHAPTER IX.
A PRESIDENTIAL SQUEEZE.