Buchanan County bulletin. [volume] (Independence, Iowa) 1869-1891, 1870-06-03
THE WOMAN WHO LINGERS.

She stands on the corner with a squad of
female friends, and smiles at the car driver,
at the same time signaling him with her
parasol. AS soon as he begins to slacken
his pace, she opens out into convc tsation
witt, her friends. The car stops and the
conductor waits. She glances around at
him, steps down from the curb-stone, and
branches of into fresh lot of talk. The
conductor looks mad. He requests her to
hurry up. She rushes at the car. seizes the
iron hand rail to make sure that she has got
that car all safe and certain, and then she
determines that she will have her talk out
or perish on the fagstones then and there.
She has more last words than the Indian
chief who refused to die and 60 to the hap
py hunting grounds until he had said the
ten commandments and the Constitution of
the United States, including the Fifteenth
Amendment, backwards three times in his
native tongue. She holds on to that rail
grimly, plants one foot on the step and yells
out
"Give my love to Maria Tell Arabella
she owes me q call! Don't forget to bring
William Henry and the children up to tea
on Tuesday mig and tell Aunt Sarah I'd
have that bombazne dyed black and trim
med with bugles y
Conductor looks like man who would COM
| nit unjus,ifable homicide upon slight prov
ocation. In wrath he pulls the bell the
woman mounts the steps, smiles at her
friends, waves her parasol at them when
| she has sailed about hundred yards up
the street she calls out
"Be sure to tell Arabella and don't let
George suck the yellow paint off his mouth
organ y
| When she is seated the conductor waits
awhile, and then he asks for her fare, She
feels in her pocket. Good gracious she
hopes she has not lost her PURSE She
dives into her satchel; it isn't there Perhaps
the tickets are under her glove she removes
it slowly; but they cant lie found! She
tries her pocket again, and finds the purse
there after all. Conductor looks as indig-
nantly melanch. ly as an aristocratic under
taker at funeral at which there are only
four carriages and yellow pine coffin. The
woman unfolds a bundle of notes slowly
but as she doesn't find the one she wants,
she puts them all back, and hunts around in
her satchel for FIVE minutes for ten cent
UOle. CoHuuCtoI Sl'eS uci tHIce CeutS
change and goes ont on the platform, where
he tear, his hair, kicks a small newsboy off
the steps, and tells his sorrowful tale to q
passenger who is smoking a cigar.
Meanwhile the woman has found an ac-
quaintance, to whom she is talking as brisk
" as if this was the first chance she had
had since last summer. She wants to get
out at Twentieth street. Conductor stops
the car; but the woman, half rising, con.
tinucs her remarks to her acquaintance.
Conductor says, "Pease hurry up, madam y
and she jumps to her feet, shakes hands
with her friend. saying: "Oh, | forgot to
ask after John John is well but the wo-
thinks it necessary to offer some extended
sanitary suggestions in reference to Johns
health, and to declare that she will be alb.
iectly miserable unless Mary Jane brings
the twins up to spend the day. More objur-
cations on the part Of the degraded outcast
on the back platform. The woman at last
starts for the door, and is about to step off
when she misses her purse. She goes back
into the car to look for il, moves all the
passengers, overturns all the hay, at last
finds the purse in her pocket, says, "Good
bye, come up and see me- again to her
friends. and gets out. Conductor rattles a
volley of imprecations down the street after
her, pulls the strap savagely, and transfers
twenty-five cents worth of fares from his
business pocket into his own private ex.
chequer as a balm to soothe his lacerated
feelings.