The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1884-08-13
The wAsHERWoMAN.
A Tale Of Woe That Must Strike n Respon-
sive Chord in Many an Aching Heart.
. TRoston Globe.l HH

sive Chord in Many an Aching Heart.
Boston Globe.l
The following tale OF woe was over
heard by the writer few days ago in
smokipg.car, and affected him to sympa-
thetic tears: a.
~ tell you what, old boy" said young
fellow to friend whom he evidently had
not seen for some time, "the parson and
had pretty hard time Of 1t last winter,
but we,had the satisfaction of suffering to-
gether. We roomed together; were botP
trusted all the time; both reduced to the
lowest denomination mentioned in the
matter Of clothes; both owed money to the
landlady, and were afflicted with the same
washerwoman. That last-named phe-
nonienon deserves a little word all to her.
self. She had more wiles than the heathen
Chinee. For instance, she had peculiar
faculty of absorbing certain articles OF
clothing and retaining them from four to
six weeks. when they would appear again
as good as new.
"First it would be the handkerchiefs,
and she would gradually call them in till
neither the parson nor l had one to our
names and would be reduced to the ex-
tremity of stealing napkins at whatever
clearinghouse We happened to be eating
at the time. Then the handkerchiefs would
all come back and the shirts would take a
vacation. 1t would go on this way till one
of us would be wearing the only shirt in
the crowd, while the other would do the
best he could with pair Of cuffs, collar
and a big fat necktie that we got to call
ing the split because it was between us,
as the gamblers say. When the shirts
came back so that one Of us could wear a
clean one part of the time, the undershirts
would begin to grow beautifully less in the
same mysterious way, till we'd have to
wear the sole survivor'-she always left
us one of kind-on alternate days and
freeze to death between whiles, till
the embargo would be taken OIL
and we could be warm again. We would
have demonstrated with her, but, for flnan'
cial reasons, we felt a certain delicacy
about it, and, in fact, generally crawled
out of the back window when we heard her
coming. She was not a scholar, but hei
tastes were literary, and she used to leave
us lots of notes, asking for money to helT
her defray the expenses Of the funeral o
some of her rel atives, who dropped of
with alarming rapidity that winter. WheI
her grandmother died for the fourth tint
the parson got hold OF note beginning;
'Deth is hard when you amt got no mum
nyp
"'Holy smokep said he. "Its threat
She's got hold Of our condition, and is go
ing to clean out the crowd. She's right
death will be hard under those circum
stances, but life is good deal harder
"She was really a strictly honest woman
and all the clothes came back SOM
time, or IL they didn't some other man.
clothes did. Indeed, she carried honest!
to the point where it ceased to be virtue
and IL she didn't get your shirt she'd ge
some kind of q garment for you II II tool
six weeks to do It. But II was a little de
pressing to have a shirt return from a ST.
weeks vacation with the button hole Gu
over about an inch, showing that 1t ha
been worn by some fellow with a neck lik
bull. When 1t came to finding hi
clothes marked with another mans initia
the parson sometimes swore.
at was evident that she tried hard
bring back the right clothes, and perhap
she'd have done better II some Of ou
things had been marked. One day the par
son came home with handkerchief tie
round his oye. He'd got something in
while calling on friend, and at the hous
they'd tied II up in ragged handkerchie
telling him It wasn't worth returning
Well, sir, would you believe It, that woma
remembered his having put that ragge
handkerchief in the wash, and ON th
strength of II she sent him every torn on
she got hold nf. and never sent back
whole one during tue rest Of the winter