The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1885-10-07
The LAuNpRYMANs VICTIM.
How a Humorist's Hose Were Branded
His Sensitive soul Narrowed.


IR. J. Burdettel
do wish the washee- washee people of
the United States would call national
convention of launders and lsundresses,
and adopt a uniform style of marking
the linen that passes through their hands
l have suffered much from the diversity
of talent displayed in the private marks
of Anglo, German, Franco, Hibernian,
! Chinese, and American laudrieS l am a
man not given TO novelties. l like variety,
but want it to be the same kind of variety.
| l do not like to go round the country lee.
/ turing in the guise of the tattooed man OF
/ Borneo.
/ Now. when put on my war paint and
! sashaed forth to see whom l might gather
! the lecture committees in, l had my
/ scanty store of linen marked with the
real initials of my own honored name
f1I~at Mrs O'Mahoney's husband might
know S1ghose shirt he was wearing tC
church. aired> Mile. Celeste might know
whose handkercniefs she stole, anu ,i ILL.,
Wun Lung might be able to swear that
the collars he offered for sale were given
to him by his deceased friend, Ram Jam
Bang. But did these simple marks con
tent the wash ladies and the laundry gen.
tlemen? Nay, not so. The first laundry
gentleman marked everything l had with
a big black Y in tndelible ink, save only
my-excuse my blushes-hose These
dainty little fabrics of silk and worsted,
with faint traces of cotton, he labeled by
sewing a large white patch about midships
on the after part of the veal of the
same left all these marks on, hoping
that, in connection with the regularly or
dained initials, they would content the
next washer gentleman. But he was
Trojan, and he put on mark something
like the Greek letters phi, psi This was
in Philadelphia
At Pittsburg l had a roundup of my
linen at the Great Western Satin Gloss
laundry, where the man with the indelible
ink labelled everything NO, big and black.
and sewed additional patches on my
ahem hose l next corraled my things
at the establishment of Ping Ping, in
Columbus, Ohio, who stitched in fire
cracker joke in red thread.
Wei and my herd of linen and manu-
script-drifted slowly to the northwest
and the wardrobe watered at a French
laundry in K Kalamazoo, and branded OLA.
At Minneapolis it went to the hotel
laundry and came back bearing the new
legend 1t, with a lozenge around it, and
with red tags on my s-ks This was
growing interesting. and when a brand of
blue ink came into the plot at Council
Bluffs and was cast for NOA, sat up
half the night reading my things.
Il
when the mental pabulum on my linen
was reinforced at COncordia, X an, by the
addition of w in black circle to the bill
of fare, began to look about for pub
Usher.
At Kansas City Hang Hi worked in a
crazy-quilt stitch on me, and at Decatur,
Ill, the launder had a rubber stamp, the
design whereof was valentine heart in
closing the letters XII. do not know
the meaning of the symbol unless it refers
to my age, which certainly has nothing to
do with the age of my wardrobe This
man sewed white tags on the ears of my
Stockings with the same design printed
on them. At Terre Haute, Ind, they sewed
tags on everything, from withers to hook,
and at Valparaiso they stitched XVII on
the entire =, and at Upper Sandusky
I got NYX linked on everything from col
lar to crupper. At Beaver Falls. Pa, a
Chinese gentleman embroidered on all
my things portions of strange, weird
alphabet wherever he could find room for
it, and at Uhrichsville, Ohio, my linen
was returned to me stating that all arti-
cIes must be plainly marked before they
could be received at the laundry.