The Russellville Democrat., 1889-01-24
A MIGHTY IMPLEMENT.
The Marvellous Things Women Can
 with Hair-Pin.

l The Marvellous Things Women Can do with Hair-Pin-
 "What want when l am cast away on desert island, said Andramache, as she took hair-pin out of her head, and bending it into hook fished her ring out of the drain pipe with it, is whole package of hair-pinsl If ever woman writes Robinson Crusoe story, She will have a heroine instead of a hero, and she will give her hair-pins 1 to build her litttllSS ez.s.6ge with and to make w::iS=e mattresses and bustles, and broilers, and what not with, and she will execute feats of ingenuity that will leave the Schonberg Gotta family out of sight. Of course, in the order of nature" Andranache went on, strengthening out the small but adaptable implement in her hand, and returning it to her French l twist; ''of course she ought to have the back of hair-brush to drive and bend her pins with, but if that would be making her too much at home on the desert island, dare say she could learn to make a stone do. You think I'm exaggerating the virtues of the little busy hair-pin, don't youp That's your ignorance. If you'd wear 'em awhile you'd learn to button your boots and gloves with them, and make hooks of them to hang your bric-a-bric 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 matter of course. No, l didn't say take them out of your hair to pick nuts with, you hateful, mean thing. Of course, you go and get new ones, virgin hair-pins, out of the pack ages for that, and they are the best nut-pickers going, too. But these are not half what you can do with them. It is at a boarding-school we first find out their true value. That is one of the best results of the modern system of education as far as is seen.
 "You see that curious little spoon made out of a shell up there in that little cabinetp You thought it was some sort of South Sea Island curiosity. or came from Madagascar, or the Pueblo Indians, or something like that, didn't you? We'll, it isn't. It was produced by just the unassisted genius and labor of an everyday American boarding school girl. She wanted to give a secret midnight spread in her rooms, and she couldn't get hold of spoons to cat her jam with, so she just turned to and fitted 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 hair-pin, and we gave the teachers the biggest kind of burglar scare. What they were most -'raid of was that the girl who picked 1Sfey lock would leave the school be- cause s1s- was so dreadfully fright ened to stay where such sstet. t1!ll hhlll pened. The last feat I sa awo6&t9 )e ny1 sex perform with hair-pin'@ @asWqnkB Bss' heroic deed. My sister-in-law last week found that her three-year- old son and heir had climbed out of the third-story window and was prancing around on the edge of the back roof; her heart was in her mouth; she did not dare to call or go to him, for fear that would startle him and make him tum- ble; he was squatting by the tin gutter, carefully examining its contents. What did she do? Why, she had hair-pins, didn't she9 She wasn't a hopeless, helpless resourceless man; with seven teen pockets and not pin of any kind on his whole person. She just chose the biggest, sharpest-pointed hair-pin she had, bent it into hook, wired it into broom-handle with the help of another, and in less time than you can think hooked that young man by the belt from behind and hauled him in. You don't half believe it? Why, what else would she have done, pray, Master Impertinenee? You come with me, and I'll prove it to you by showing you both the boy and the broom. "-Phila- delphia Press