Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1877-11-09
Man in the Millinery Service.

II there is one sight more calculated
to display masculine awkwardness in all
its pitahle wretchedness and imperfeotion
more than anything else, itissthe specta-
Gle of man carrying home his wfe's
new bonnet pinned up in paper. The
wretched creature takes corner of the
wrapping between his thumb and finger,
just as the heartless milliner hands it to
him and he never lets up on the grip un-
til ne reaches his unhappy home. Usually
he holds it out at arms length, although
occasionally presumptuous being may
be seen who attempts to carry it in the
easy natural manner he has observed his
wife employ. In every case of this kind
the hat is hopeless ruin before he has
walked three blocks. The extended po-
sition is his best hold, and he then
looks like boom-derrick lifting butter
fly. He tries to look unConcerned and
careless, but every woman he meets
brings the hot bushes to his perspiring
face by the peculiar glance she gives
from the dangling bit of millinery to his
face, She sometimes looks in horror at
the horrible maltreatment which she
knows the hat is receiving, but geuer-
ally she gazes at the biped with look
of mingled pity and amused contempt
In either case the iron enters mans
soul. His temples throb, and the beaded
perspiration rolls down his guilty look
ing face, and the harder he tries to look
unconcerned, the more thievish does his
expression become, until the police look
at him and form suspicious that he has
stolen the bonnet. We once knew a
hardened man who actually tried to
whistle in careless manner as he car
ried his wife's hat home. The first
woman he met toned his whistle down
to a miserable quaver, the second one
hushed it toa Yillainous, sort of a tune
less Kissing noise, the third transformed
it into hysterical laughter, and as the
fifth woman bent her prying gaze on
the dangling bundle, and then lifted her
smiling eyes to his, the miserable man
sat down on the curbstone, put his feet
on the bonnet and sobbed like child.
There is no use trying to conceal the hat.
We knew one man who boxed up his
wife's spring hat before he would carry
it home, then wrapped it up in a roll of
carpet and packed it home on his back,
but he met ninety eight women on the
way, and every last woman gasped out
" Merciful sakesl What way to carry
bOnneth And that man felt so bad that
he died in Illinois of the ague, about
seven years after. 1t is very seldom that
a woman will let her husband carry her
bonnet home. When she does it is not
as token Of her confidence in his in.
herent grscefulness, but because she
won't cone down town in her old one,
" ha af n
house on this degrading errand in order
to fill him with a realizing sense of
his inferiorty and general worthless
ness, for il is notable fact that
man will not scold his clerks,
talk politics or contradict his, wife
for. week after he has performed this
humiliating task. 1t makes him feel weak
and small; it makes him deformed, awk-
ward, helpless slave to the bit of flip.
perry dangling from his extended hand
A pin flies out here, and his heart stops
beating; corner Of the tucked-in paper
frees itself and sticks up there, and his
reason totters on its throne; a ribbon
blows out and flutters IN the wind and he
calls in maudlin tones for the doctor and
the police; sometimes in his nervous ex-
citement he drops the hat TO the ground,
and in a. case Of this kind the average
man will 60 into convulsions for week.
This thing of making married men carry
home their wives hats has been the
cause Of more. .domesticinfelicity and un-
happy divorces and suicides than any
other one thing under the azure sky, and
the Iowa Legislatufe ought 70 put a stop
10 II by prOhibitdry enactments There
/ 10 ta mil
in again in a few weeks, and prompt
action is necessary in order to save from
humiliation and modification the noble
animal, man.
TuE silver ouestion-Heads or tails