Port Royal commercial and Beaufort County Republican. [volume] (Port Royal, S.C.) 1873-1874, 1873-11-27
Making her own Hat.

Mr. Howard Paul, in his entertain
ment, says "that when sudden sharp
fever of economy attacks woman, and
she determines to make a hat or q
bonnet for herself, for brief period
between the formation Of the resolution
and the consummation of the deed her
mind passes through various amusing
stages of agitation. First, she gets
herself up in her most attractive guise,
and proceeds to purchase shape =
as believe the fragile outline or frame
work of the future structure is called
then, taking the bus home, she drinks
in the details of every hat that enters,
and learns them all by heart, and does
mental sums over the cost of the rib
bon, and makes up her mind to have
flowers in hers like those worn by the
woman in the corner, and lace like that
gaudy-lookipg creature in the middle.
The next day she walks down the street,
aud studies all the hats that come along;
and, when a woman passes her with one
on, she twists her neck round to see
how it looks behind, and is Disguised to
see that the woman is also dislocating
her neck to see how she trims her hat.
When she arrives in front of milliner's,
she fingers until she has analyzed all
the hats in the window, and she de-
termines to trim hers nineteen different
ways, and decides not to have flowers
like the woman who sat in the corner.
Then she shoots into the shop, and
asks to see hats with the air of per-
SON who wishes to invest small fortune
in head-gear. She examines every hat
in the establishment, overhauls ten
bushels of flowers, gets about fifteen
shillings' worth of work out of the
saleswoman, and then says she will
'look farther Then she gets home
with her mind fixed on thirty-eight
or nine different styles in which she
wants to trim her hat. After while
she begins to think she ought to have q
feather in it, and she passes two OF
three sleepless nights trying to decide
whether to put one in or not. At last
she resolves she will. Then she lies
awake for two more nights endeayoring
10 o6UcTuluc WuCuuCI ~ oloiA bO kCo Va
blue. She settles on blue. She buys
the trimming, and sews it on in twenty
successive positions, her mind filled
with deepest anxiety as to whether the
feather should go on the right side, the
left side, or on top. She puts it on the
right side ; but just then Mrs. De
Boots passes the window with feather
on the left side of hers, and so she
changes it the next morning. Mrs.
Fitzbrown calls, and her feather is on
the right side, and then another change
is made. At church next day Mrs.
Smith has feathers on both sides. and
Mrs. Johnson has one on the top. Then
more sleepless nights and painful un-
certainty. At last, in utter despair,
she takes the hat to milliner, and pays
thirty shillings to have it trimmed.
When it comes home she pronounces il
hateful, and picks it all to pieces, and
broods over it, and worries and frets
and loses her appetite, and feels life to
be burden for two weeks longer, until
suddenly she has just the right thing,
and becomes once moro serene and
happy, and puts the hat on and goes
out and makes millions of other women
miserable because their hats are not
trimmed exactly like hers. As wife,
woman is a blessing; as a mother,
naught can compare with her; as an
organizer of new hats, she is simply an
object of amusement decomposition.