Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1870-04-17
THE WOMAN WHO LINGERS
= Graphic Description OF Every Day
Experience.

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 converse
ton with her friends. The car stops, and
the conductor waits. She glances around
at him, steps down from the curbstOne
| and branches off into fresh lot of talk.
The conductor looks mad. He requests
her to hurry up. She rushes at the car,
seizcs 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 flagstOnes
then and there. She has more last words
than the Indian chief who refused to die
and go to the happy hunting grounds until
he had said the Ten Commandments and
the Constitution of the United States, in
Guiding the Fifteenth Amendment back
wards three times in his native tongue.
She holds on to the rail grimly, plants her
foot upon the step, and yells out, ''Give
my love to Maria Tell Arabella she owes
me a call! Don't forget to bring William
Henry and the children up to tea on
Tuesday night And tell Aunt Sarah I'd
have that bombazine dyed black and trim
med with bugles!"
The conductor looks like man who
would commit unjustifiable homicide upon
slight prOvocation. In wrath he pulls the
bell; the woman mounts the steps, smiles
at her friends, waves her parasol at them,
and when she has sailed about 1C0 yards
up the street, she calls out, TO ''be sure to
tell Arabella, and don't let George suck
the paint off his mouth Organ!" When
she is seated, the conductor waits awhile,
and then asks for her fare She feels in
her pocket. Good graciousl she hopes
she has not lost her purse! She dives INTO
her satchGl; it ish't there. Perhaps the
ticket is in her gloves; she removes it
slowly; but it cannot be found She
tries the pocket again, and finds the purse
there after all. Conductor looks as indig-
nantly melancholy as an aristOcratic I'M
dertakcr at funeral at which there are
only four carriages and a yellow pine
coffin. The woman unfOlds a bundle of
notes slowly, but as she does not find the
one she wants, she puts them all back and
for a ten-cent note. Conductor gives her
three cents change, goes out on the plat
form, where he tears his hair, kicks a
small pcwsboy off the steps, and tells his
snrrOwful tale TO passenger WHO'S smok-
ing cigar.
Meanwhile the woman has found an &C
quaintance, TO whom she is talking as
briskly 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,
continues her able remarks to her &C
quaintance. Conductor says, "Please
hurry up, madam u and she jumps TO her
feet, shakes hands with her friend, saying,
ooh l forgot to ask after john" John
is well, but the woman thinks it necessary
to offer some extended sanitary sugges-
tions in reference to Johns health, and to
declare that she will be abjectly miserable
unless Mary Jane brings the twins up to
spend the day. More abjurations 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 it, moves all the passengers, overturns
all the hay, at last finds the purse in her
pocket, says ''Good-by; come up to see
me" again to her friend, and gets out.
Conductor rattles volley of imprecations
down the street after her, pulls the slap
savagcly, and transfers twenty-five cents
worth of fares from his business pocket
into his own private exchequer as balm
to soothe his laceratcd feelings.