The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1884-07-29
THE WAsHERMOMAN.

A Tale of Woe That Must STRIFE a
Responsive Chord in Many an Aci,ing
Heart.
The following tale of woe was over
heard by the writer few days ago in "A
smoking car, and affected him to sympa-
thetic tears:
~ tell you what old boy" said young
fellow to a friend whom he evidently
had not seen for some time, 'the parson
and had II pretty hard time of il last
winter, but we had the satisfaction of
suffering together. We roomed together;
were both 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 phenomenon deserves
a little word all to herself. She had more
WiIes than the heather Chinee. For in
stance, 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 handlSerchiefs
and she would gradually call them in
till neither the parsOn nor | had one to
our names, and would be reduced to the
extremity of stealing napkins mt what
ever clearinghouse we happened to be
eating at the time. Then the handker-
chiefs would all come back and the
shirts would take a vacation. 1t would
so on this way till one of us would be
wearing the only shirt in the crowd,
while the other would be doing the best
| he could with a pair of cuffs, collar
and a big Hat necktie that we got to call
ing "the split" because ii was between
I,
shirts came back so that one Of us could
wear clean one part of the
time, the undershirts would begin
to grow beautifully less, i'm the same
mysterious way, TIL we'd have to wear
the sole survivor she'd always left us
one Of a kind-on alternate DAYS and
freeze to death between whites, till the
embargo would be taken off and we
could he warm again. We would have
demonstrated with her, but for financial
| reasons, we felt 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 her
tastes were literary, and she used to
| leave us lots of notes, asking for money
/ to help her defray the expenses of the
| funeral of some of her relatives, who
| dropped off with alarming rapidity that
! winter When her grandmother died
| for the fourth time, the parson got hold
/ of note beginning: "Deth is hard when
| you amt got no munnyw
Holy smoker said he. Its threat.
She's got hold of our condition, and is
going to clean out the crowd. She's
right; death will be hard under those
circumstances, but life is good deal
harder
"She was really a strictly honest
woman and all thp clothes came borl,
some time, or if thew dat some other
mans clothes did. Indeed, She carried
honesty to the point whore it ceased To
be a virtue, and if she didn't get your
shirt she'd get some kind of a garment
for you if il took her six weeks to do il.
But it was little depressing to have a
shirt return from six weeks vacation
! with the button-hOle cut over about an
inch, showing that it had been worn bv
some fellow with a neck like u bull.
When it came to finding his clothes
marked with another mans initials the
person sometimes swore.
at was evident that she tried hard tc
bring back the right clothes, and perhaps
she would have done better if some oil
our things had been marked. One day
the parson came home with a handker
chief tied around his eve. He'd got
something i'm il while calling on a friend
and at the house they'd tied it up in {
ragged handkerchief, telling him il
wasn't worth returning. Well, sir
would you believe it, that woman re,
WONDERED his having put that ragged
handkerchief in the wash, and on the
strength of il she sent him every tori
one she got hold of, and never sent back
a whole one during the rest of the win
ter Boston Globe.