The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1884-10-30

Few married women who live in the
country ten or twenty miles from tho
city in which their husbands have bust
ness ever take the railroad train to the
city which they mean to take. 1t
makes no difference whether they live
five minutes walk from the depot or
twenty, the time they arrive at the
depot averages as nearly as possible
three minutes after the train has left.
Of course they are on time for the next
train which will leave in half an hour.
Why woman is always late in taking
a train is inexplicable. A ticket agent
who lived with his family right over
the depot once observed that his wife
never took the train she expected to
take. When her train arrived she gen.
orally had one boot on and was looking
out of the window, with one eye on the
train and the other eye looking for her
second boot. A married man, when he
first goes to reside in the country, gen
orally misses from six to a dozen trains
in the first few months by waiting in
the morning for his wife to take the
train with him to the city. After this
he pays no more attention when his
wife says she will go in the train with
him than on her informing him when
the church strawberry festival is to
come off. He knows the strawberry
festival is bound to come off, some
time, and he knows his wife will 60 to
the city. but she will not go on the train
with him, or on the one she expects to
90 on.
If you reside ten minutes walk from
the depot your wife, after keeping you
waiting at the house until five minutes
before the train leaves, will inform you
she is ready; and when you tell her it
is impossible to catch that train and
you must take the next one, she will
inform you that she has walked to the
depot in five minutes Il dozen times.
You know you can not do it. About
ten minutes before the next train leaves
you set out with your wife for the de-
pot, Before you have gone thirty
yards she returns to the house for her
pocket book, and to tell Jane not to let
the baby fall down the back stoop, and
that she will be back on the 4:30 train.
Your wife, having used up about two
minutes of the ten in running back, al
though she can walk to the depot in
five minutes, asks, when you are half
way to the depot, if you want to walk
the clothes of he's back, and at the same
time informs you she never felt so hot
in her life, and that you have plenty of
time and your watch must be wrong;
and that the train is always late, and
when you reply that it is always on
time she wants to know how about two
years ago last January, when you had
to wait an hour for that train. She re-
fers 10 the day of the big snow storm,
when all the trains were late, and tries
to play it off on you in June, with the
thermometer at eighty-five in thu shade
The lady who resides in the country
goes through the same operation in re-
turning from the city. She expects to
return on the 4:30 train-this is her
husbands usual train-and misses it
upon herown calculation by one minute
"a woman always misses train by
one minute-but when she looks at the
railroad clock she finds that it is the
) O'Clock train she has missed instead
VI lhO t"pOJ anu W INT lullIOdu CLOCK
she has missed that train by five min
utes. She is on hand for the $50 train,
however. The twenty-five minutes she
has to remain in the depot she spends
in talking with any of her lady friends
she happens to meet who have done
just as she did, and informs them she
don't believe the railroad clock is right.
and it must he too fast, for when she
was in Mays waiting for her change
it was only 4 o'clock, and she only
stopped twice coming down from there.
She then produces her watch to show
that the railroad clock is ten minutes
too fast; then she walks up to the ticket
receiver and inquiries whether he doesn't
think the railroad clock is too fast; he
guesses not; then she informs the ticket
taker she is certain it is, and shows her
watch, and he says MAY be-" When
she finally arrives at home she explains
to the whole family how she missed the
$50 train, and Il stranger would sup
pose it was the first train she had ever
missed in her life.-N. y Commercial
4drerttSer.