Middletown transcript., 1881-01-07
Corr cspondence of the Transcript.
f- FIoIr v,

Only a Woman's Column.
Showing again, for q change I! and
the snow piled up in some places so that
little folks cannot see across the streets.
It's well enough for people who do not
have to go out in it, or those who own
sleighs, but for those who have to 60 on
five toed runners, it is little too much
of a good thing. Some say ''it's good
for the wheat, and clover &C. but if
you don't own any wheat fields you are
not much interested in what is good for
them. But then again, they say, you
have ttI,-BBy fsIr - but it seems to me
snow storms don't lower the price of
flour. At least, [ gave just as much
this morningjfor flour as l did before
Christmas, and it's showing so now
that nearly all the tracks are filled up.
But then women don't understand these
things, and cannot argue without get
ting mad, so we will change the subject
towel say, bonnets ah then her
head is level. No man has the audacity
to question her authority ("oficially,"
as ''Pinafore' has it, Last week
brought some of us to our senses in re-
gard to head covering, and those bitter
cold days saw Chestnut and Eighth SITS.
plentifulIy sprinkled with ladies, whose
heads were adorned with hoods Of vel
vet, plush, zephyr and cashmere trim
med with fur, OF any way the owners
taste dictated. This certainly was a
new departure, but then the weather
was a new departure too. Won't the
youngsters Of to-day, in years to come,
when they wear a snowy crown Of hair,
or a bald head, tell of a winter, when
the thermometer was forty degrees be-
low zero, and the snow was SO deep that
children were lost in the streets in it;
that a fellows coffee froZe on the stove,
and it red hot ? You know you must
make all allowancefor time and age you
know some folks can tell yarn over
and over, until they believe it them
selves, and the children Of to-day are
but the foundation of just such old
folks as are around now, full of old
time remembrances and which nobody
believes. Your 'TRANsCRIPT" says
that ''NIiddletown was injured consid-
erably by the smallpox rumors." How
that story gained all the time, until it
reached Wilmington reporters ears,
land ye gods such ears y He told it
over and over on his journey down and
up until, in his vivid imagination,
Middletown was one vast smallpox
hospital. This scared the country folks,
who, in all probability, came to Phila-
delphia to buy Christmas things, eat
beside and behind some one who had it
in their family jammed in the street
cars, with t&e same chance, rubbed up
against doctor or undertaken just out
of it /; bought their presents from con-
valescents, and came home so glad they
did not go to Middletown. Now l do
not mean to say we have much of it
here, for we have not, but all cities
north have it in a small degree in win
ter, and what little we have, is decreas-
ing all the time. Our stores are just
as full of purchasers, our street cars
are just as jammed as ever, and Broad
st. is alive with sleighs Of all kind.
Twice week 1 pass the smallpox
hospital, (where there are sixty odd
cases y every day pass a house near
us, where there has been three deaths
and three recovering patients. In the
city it may be next door to you, and
you not know it. But poor Middletown!
with it, one case must be avoided.
Hundreds of country folks sleep in
freezing bedrooms, get pneumonia, ty-
phoid fever, rheumatism, and other
nasty diseases, and die !; but they are
used to these familiar complaints, and
don't mind dying with them, kind Of
old acquaintance, as it were, but just |
let old smallpox or diphtheria put in
an appearance, then the hair begins to
rise, ''like the quills on the fretful por-
cupine" mentioned by Hamlet's old |
dad. But reporters must live and thrive,
tho it does injure and demoralize a |
community, and they do live and keep
on living, and very rarely die. They get
intoIa whit-leather state, or cast iron
state ag they can push in, and ask
the most impertinent questions, and
the one who was guilty of blush
would be instantly turned out Of the
press club. That is the reason women
make poor reporters. They cannot wait
at side Of hotel bedroom door for an
~ two for some great Sena-