Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1888-12-17
A WOMAN ON HAIRPINS.
in Interesting Tale Of Unreekoned Sources OF
Invention in an Undervalued Sex.
New VorIy Granfic

| New York Graphic.
''What I want when I am cast away
on desert island - said Andramache
as she took a hairpin out OF he. head and
| bending it into a hook fished her ring out
of the drain pipe with it, sis whole
package Of hairpins. If ever woman
writes a Robinson Crusoe story, she will
| have heroine instead of a hero, and she
win give her hairpins TO build her little
cottage with and to make wire mattresses
and Lilstles and broilerS and what
| not with and she will execute
leats of ingenuity that will
leave the SchCnberg- Gotta family out OF
sight. OF course, in the order of ma
ture, - Andramache went On, straight
ening out the small but adaptable nipple
ment in her hand and returning it to her
French twist: ''of course she ought to
have the back of q hair brush TO drive
and bend her pins with, but il that would
he making her too much AT home on the
desert island, dare say she could learn
TO make a stone do. You think IN eX-
aggerating the virtues Of the little
busy hairpin, don't you? That ;
your ignorance If you'd wear
'em awhile you'd learn to but
ton your boots and gloves with
them, and pin back your curtains with
them, and make hooks OF them to hang
your bric-a-bac on, and use them to
clean your nails with, and TO mend your
umbrella, and to file your papers on, and
to pick nuts with, all just as q matter of
course. No, didn't say take them out
of your hair to pick nuts with, you hate
ful mean thing. OF course you go and
get new ones, virgin hair pins, out of the
packages for that. and they are the best
nutpickerS gong too. But these are not
half what you can do with them. 1t is al
boarding school we first find out their
true value. That is one OF the best re-
suits of the modern system of education
Us far as is seen.
''You see that curious little spoon
made out of shell no there in that little
cabinet? You thought it was some sort
of 4 South Sea Island curiosity, or came
from Madagascar or the Pueblo Indian,
or something like that, didn t you?
Well, it ism /. Ii was produced by just
the unassisted genius and labor of an
everyday American boarding school
girl. She wanted to give a secret mid
night spread in her rooms and she
coUldn t get hold of spoons to eat the
Jam with, so she just turned to and fitted
II lot of little shells with hairpin handles
and then wound them-the handles
with ribbon, and they were not only
pretty, but useful-a great improvement
on eating jam with nail brush handles,
as we did before that
THAT girl was the belle of the school
until another girl picked the pantry lock
with a hairpin, and we gave the teachers
the biggest kind of Il burglar scare.
What they were most afraid OF was that
the girl who picked the lock would leave
the school because she was so dreadluliy
frightened to stOy where such things hap
pened. The last feat l saw one of my
sex perform with hairpin was Il high,
heroic deed. My sist"r-iu-laW last week
found that her throe-year-old son
and heir had climbed cut OF the
third-stOry window and was prancing
around on the edge of the back roof; hcr
heart was i'll her mouth; she did not dare
to call him or go to him, for fear that
would sturtle him and make him tumble;
he vas squattin" by the tin gutter care
fully examining its contents. What did
she DO? Why, she had hairpins, didn t
she? She WASH I a hopeless, help
less, resourceless man, with seventeen
pockets and not Il pin of any kind
on his whole person. She just chose the
bi@@esI-s harpest- pointed harp she had,
bent ii into a hook, wired it into Il broom
handle with the help OF another, and in
less time than pOu can think hooked that
young man by the belt from behind and
hauled him III. You don t half believe it?
Why, what else could she have done,
pray, Master impertinence? You come
with me and II prove it to you by show
ing you both the boy and the broom. ="