Morning journal and courier., 1885-07-11
BURDETTE,S SHIRTS.
An Extract From The Diary Of Re.
 formed Lecturer.

formed Lecturer.
 From the Brooklyn Eagle.l
 do wish the washee washee people of the United States would call national conven- tion of iaunders and laundresses and adopt a uniform style of marking the linen that pass es through their hands. I have suffered much from the diversity of talent displayed in the private marks of Anglo, German, Franco, Hibernian and Chinese American laundries. am man not given to novel, ties. I want variety, but want it to be the same variety. I do not like to go around the country featuring in the guise of the tattooed man of Borneo.
 Now; when I put on my war paint and sarahed forth to seek whom I might gather the lecture committees in, I had my scanty store of linen marked with the real initials of my own honored name, that Mrs. O'Mahony's husband might know whose shirt he was wearing to church, and Mile. Celest might know whose handkerchiefs she stole, and that Wun Lung might be able to swear that the collars he offered for sale were given him by his deceased friend, Ram Jam Bang. But did these simple marks content the wash ladies and laundry gentlemen? Nay, not so. The first laundry gentleman marked every thing had with big black X in indelible ink, save only my-excuse my blushes-hose. Those dainty little fabrics of silk and worst ed, with faint traces of cotton, he labeled by sewing large white patch about midships on the after part of the veal of the same. l left all these marks on, hoping that in con- nection with the regularly ordained initials they would content the next washer gentle man. But he was a Trojan, and he put on a mark like the Greek letters phi psi. This was in Philadelphia. At Pittsburg had a round up of my linen at the Great Western Satin Gloss laundry, where the man with the indelible ink labeled everything XC, big and black, and sewed additional patches on my aheml hose. I next corralled my things at the establishment of Ping Ping, in Colum- bus, O.. who stitched in frecracker joke in red thread. Vel and my herd of linen and manuscript-drifted slowly to the north west, and the wardrobe was watered at a French laundry in Kalamazoo and branded OLA. At Minneapolis it went to the hotel laundry and came back bearing the new le- gend IT with lozenge around it and with red tags on my s-cks. This was growing interesting and when a brand of blue ink came into the plot at Council Bluffs and was cast for XOA, sat up half the night reading my things; I am fond of literature anyhow, andwhen the mental pabulum on my linen was reinforced at Concordia, Kan, by the addi tion of VIZ in black circle to the bill of fare, I began to lock about for publisher. At Kansas City Hang Hi worked in a crazy stitch me, and at Decatur, H., the laun- der had a rubber stamp, the design whereof was a valentine heart enclosing the letters XLX. I do not know the meaning of the symbol unless it refers to my age, which has nothing to do with the age of my wardrobe. This man sewed white tags on the ears of my st-ck-ings 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 the
 ] 14 r NIX inked on everything from collar to crup per- At Beaver Falls, Penn, Chinese gen tleman embroidered on all my things DOT tions of strange, weird alphabet wherever he could find room for it, and at Uhrichville, O., my linen returned to me with note stating that all articles mnst be plainly mark ed before they could be received at the 1aun- dry.
 Now want to know if this is fair? It wasn't my fault that the other laundries had used up all the available space on my raj ment before got to UhrichvilIe. I don't really enjoy this sort of thing. When I wake in the night and see my pallid shirt hanging over a chair back in the moonlight, I am frightened, being a nervous man, thinking that Capt. Costentenus, the tattooed man of the Antipodes, had got into my room. I appeal to the laundrymen to adopt some uni form system. Let each free born American citizen who amasses more than one shirt se- leet his own brand having it duly registered published in the official paper of the county in which he resides, and let it go at that. I don't like to have my friends tell me that for man who dresses as quietly as I do, those figured shirts are in bad taste. Where are the reformers? Here is 8 crying evil that stalks up and down this fair land like the Augean stables, b1ighting the noonday with the midnight cry, and waiting for some strong hand to cut the Gordian knot of it's Iabvrinthine mazes that like a Gorgon horror freezes our blood into stone with the burning breath of it's iron hell. Let the new admin istration see to it.