American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1875-09-04
Wanted a Change.

business hours are easy, he prefers the
comforts of home in the suburbs to the
excitement and clamor of a downtown
hotel. A mild-looking, meek-faced, soft
voiced young man is Mr.. Olendorf as ever
you wish to see. He rarely complained
harshly of anyone. He would sit on his
trunk when the family had carried his
chair down to the parlor for the conven-
fence of invited guests; and he would
patiently sew on his shirt buttons with a
darning-needle and carpet-thread rather
than intimate to his washer-lady that it
wasn't just the cheese to run fine shirts
through a corn-sheller to wash them
Many a time he crawled into a bed that
looked like the crater of an extinct vol
cano rather than report the hired girl for
neglecting to make it up. And six times
a week he cleaned his grimy lamp-chim-
ney with his fingers, as far as they would
reach, because, he said, in the fullness of
his charitable soul, the girl had so much
to do she hadn't got round to it. And the
seventh night in the week, the lamp being
empty and dry as a whisky bottle on a
hunting expedition, he would undress by
the dim, religious light of a match. He
used to wash with a piece of soap four
inches long and two inches thick, as brown
as varnish and so hard it Clipped the
edges of the washstand when it was care
lessly dropped against them, and often
and often when his eyes were full of soap
and he reached out his imploring hands,
cropping for the short, thin towel that was
seldom there, he had to feel his way to the
bed, abrading his shins against things that
he couldn't see and didn't know the names
of, and dry his face and hair on the sheet
and pillow-slips. But he never muir
INJURED. He used to find bright streaks of
red by the dozen in his pomatum, and go
down to the breakfast table with his own
coal-black locks as dry as good advice,
and marvel at the exceeding glosslness
and sickness of the hired girls bright
auburn Uranium. But he said never a
word. And the drought used to strike his
perfumery bottles once in while and
leave them as empty as a Boston lecturers
head, and he would wind his modest nasal
horn in a handkerchief that smelled like q
wash-tub, and when his landlady's daugh-
tiers sailed scornfully past him, perfumed
for all the world like the ghosts of his
toilet bottles upstairs, he never looked
suspicious, but only smiled apologetically,
as though it was wrong in him to leave
| temptation in their way. And once when
he had an attack OF cholera morbus and
sent out for a quart of brandy and took a
tablespoonful of it, and came back at
night to find the bottle very empty and
the landlady's husband very full, in his
bed, the latter with his boots on, young
Mr.. Olendorf only agreed with the land
lady that it was very singular and that the
old man must be i'll. So you see Mr.. Glen
dorf was inclined to be rather peaceable
and meek, and when he did complain
there must be some reason for it.
Yesterday evening Mrs. McKerrel, his
landlady, approached the young man for
the purpose of securing the weekly dole
which he pays for the comforts of home,
and, bracing himself up by desperate
effort, Mr.. Olendorf, for the first time in
his life, complained.
"It's the hash, Mrs. McKerrel," he said
| plaintively. :" It's too monstonous. It's
good hash. can't say that it isn't good.
1t is more nutritious than chopped straw,
and a prize-candy package doesn't equal
hash for breakfast But when you give us
baked hash for dinner, and put boned hash
on for supper, and give usplain hash again
for breakfast and serve stuffed hash again
for dinner, it isn't square deal. be
| lieve you impose on us. / never heard OF
stuffed hash before I came here, and
the only difference between it and the COM
mon kind is that it is thinner. The last
stuffed hash you gave us you made us
eat with steel forks, and it was rs thin as
soup, and how is a strong man going to
make out dinner when he has only TWEEN
ty-five minutes in which to eat soup with
a three-tined fork? And l don't think
| you do the fair thing by us on what you
call 'boned hash, It's hardly right,
Mrs. McKerrel, to make hash of sar-
dimes and herrings and then call ii
boned.' It's just like eating shoe-b brush.
Now, there ought to be, once in while, a
change. Not too often, you know; l
don't expect you to keep French restau-
rant for seven dollars week, but just often
enough to keep the bill of fare from grow
ing tiresome. Say once every seven years.
For instance, you have 'boned hash to-
morrow for dinner, which, it being Sun
day, you will. Well then, you might
have boned hash every day until 1882,
and then give us roast or a carspring
chicken. And so with stuffed hash
Mayonnaise,' Lady Washington hash
and hash a la mortar with lots of hair
in it, and the other hashes on your bill of
fare. By serving them up once every sew
en- years you have enough kinds to run
clear into a centennial. -
The landlady, looking aghast, made an
effort to speak, but young Mr.. Olendorf
motioning her to silence, went ON.
"And if you would speak to Mrs. Null
land tell her that, while am not proud, l
do not consider the hickory shirts which
the estimable Mr.. MuldOon wears while
he is developing the railroad resources OF
the United States exactly the things to
wear to church; and even if l had no
other scruples against attending public
worship in section hands shirt, torn all
the way across the shoulders and fastened
at the neck and cuffs with horn buttons,
MIR. Muldoon's are five sizes too large for
me, and l would rather she would send
up my own. And if you can bride her to
put the starch in my collars instead of my
handkerchiefs, l feel that it will improve
the appearance of my neck and spare the
feelings of a lacerated and tender nose.
No man, Mrs. McKerrel, can wipe his
nose on a sheet of tin and do the matter
justice"
Mrs. McKerrel placed her hands on her
hips and stood up, but Mr.. OlendOrf begged
her to be patient just a moment, while he
went on:
"And do you think if 1 made chalk
mark on them that your domestic could
learn the difference between my hair,
brush and my shoe-brush And if I made
duced to look up something else to black
the stoves with instead of my shoe brush J
1t is dreadfully Notifying, Mrs. McKer-
rel, to black your shoes over night and
get clear in church the next morning be-
fore discovering that your feet are glisten
ing in all the glory of 'Plumbago's New
Silver-Gray Lustre,' and everybody is
laughing at you. And then, Mrs McKer
rel, don't know how my things get so full
of snaff. l never use snuff, and l don't
want to complain, but"
Here the eXasperated matron could re.
strain herself no longer. Hastily thrust