The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1882-01-14


"Do you notice." the tall, thin pas
senger remarked, piiing his valise and
shawl-strap up ON the seat before him, in
an effort to make it appear that he filed
the entire seat, and there wasn't even
room for two-year-old baby beside him.
''Have YOU noticed the characteristic
change in hats since we left New Eng
land? Now down East in fifty miles YOU
couldn't hardly see one soft felt hat on
the train. The old buffers ran to the
graceful stove-pipe, which is just as
much out of place in a railway car as q
shooting jacket and pink necktie would
be in pulpit, and the young men and
their sisters affected the stiff round hats,
the very young men browning their
lightness with the very fiat hat that is an
index to the wearers character But
there was no SLOUGH hats. Same way in
New York. In Ohio and Indiana the soft
hats began to insert themselves. In
Central Illinois they grew sufficiently
numerous to call for the yeas and nays,
and when we swung across the Missis-
sippi they had decided working ma
iority in both houses. See, the plug
almost wholly disappeared only now
and then some commercial traveller comes
into the car wearing one jauntily, and it
is a burden on his mind every mile Of the
way. Once in a while only do you see
a stiff hat on the train, but the soft hat is
here in all its varieties, from the nobby
| little cocoanut with the rolled brim, to
the broad, picturesque SLOUGH that rests
on the head of the herder and rander.
And between these two, runs all the
gamut of soft hats, and some of them are
fearfully and wonderfully made"
"And the manners change, also, as
you come West" said the new toung
man, critically examining his cigarette
holder and toying with the watcE chain
outside his coat, ''Did you notIe that
when we went to dinner at jefferson City,
everybody ate with their hats ono"
81 noticed that" the sad passenger
said, turning his pensive face away from
the window where he had been con-
templating the cherries Landscape, II
noticed that; noticed that evey one of
us kept his hat on, too, and | also observe
that the gentleman who informed the
conductor and all the passengers within
hearing four times this morning that his
watch kept Boston time, it was so and
so by Boston time, but he didn't know
what. time it was out here. | observed
thatahe not only kept his hat On, but he
helped himself to butter with his own
knife, drank his coffee from the saucer,
and took in his soup with the labored
and audible aspiration of a case Of asthma
toiling up Bunker Hill monument. !"
''There are many people, my son." adj
ded the sad passenger, tenderly, ''who
wear more hats than manners when they
leave home. There is no reason why
people should not be as polite and OBJ
serve the requirements of good breeding
Just as much in Western railway din
ing station, as in the Palmer or fremont
House, but the people who dine at the
railway station are travellers, and are
not, therefore, necessarily Western peo-
ple." .-3 j...
eff dining station manners are wolfish
and boorish,' said the cross passenger,
barricading the end of his seat with a
valise, an umbrella, and pair of forbid
ding feet, sits the fault of the railway
companies. You tell man he has only
|
twenty minutes in which to eat his din
ner, and he is going to devote all the
energies of his soul, hands and jaws to
getting that dinner. He has to use every
minute of time, he is nervous about his
train, he is timed like an animal, and
naturally acts like one. Now, you give
the railway passenger full half hour,
and
"Pshaw," said the woman who talks
bass, ''that's what everybody says, and
vet half the business men in America,
when they are home, gobple their dinner
from soup to dessert in fifteen minutes,
and are out of the house before their
wives have helped the children second
time"
Somehow, every time that woman
speaks she closes the debate and forces
the house to vote.-Burdette, in Hank
Eye.