Kingsbury County independent. (DeSmet, Kingsbury County, S.D.) 1894-1929, 1906-06-15
Why "MASHERS" EXIST
From the Washington star.

man on Broadway, AS she ran she kept
her rolled umbrella appraised. Her purpose
was to catch the elderly man and chastise
him with the umbrella. That purpose was
obvious to everybody. 1t was particularly
obvious to the elderly man-so obvious
that he sprinted good and hard to avoid
such a disaster. Despite his age, he was
the better runner, making allowance, too,
for the fact that the young woman was
hampered by her skirts and by her very
high heels in the spr.nting business. After
being chased for a block or so the elderly
man numbered into an office building,
jumped into an elevator that was fortu-
nately waiting on the ground floor, and
went up to one of the upper floors to wait
for the thing 10 blow over.
The gaudy young woman, foiled in her
effort to belabor an elderly man with her
close-rolled umbrella, gathered a crowd
around the entrance to the office building
by excitedly declaim.ng that the elderly
man was a masher, and that he had made
goo-goo eyes at her a couple of blocks be-
low on Broadway; wherefore she had In
tended to club him with her umbrella had
she been able to catch i'm.
Now, that elderly nan hadn't tried to
goo-goo that girl at all. He is one of the
solidest and most decent mar in all New
York-a banker OF the most un.mpeach-
able reputation in everything that apper-
tains to a high-grade man. He is the faith
er of a large family Of grown daughters,
has no pleasure in life except in his own
home,, is just as far removed morally from
the gay old dog class as he is geograph-
ically removed from Spitzbergen, and
would just about as soon lie down and let
a subway car run over him as even dream
of flirting with a young woman, or an old
woman, or any other kind of a woman on
the street or anywhere else. In addition
to a sort of cherubic, rosy face, which
gives him the constant appearance of
smiling, this thoroughly decent elderly
banker has a nervous affection of the eyes,
which at times causes them to roam about
until he gets a certain focus, and when
that focus is reached makes IL impossible
for him TO remove his gaze until the mo-
mentary paralysis of his orbs has passed.
If he got that focus fixed on the eye of a
yellow dog ne couldn't remove 1t until he'd
passed on. And that's how 1t happened.
The young woman with the punitieve UNI
brella just got the wrong idea, that's all.
She had a sort Of a chip on her shoulder,
and was just waiting for something to
happen that would enable her to use her
umbrella upon some british and Boetian
male person.
These imaginative women. who dream
that most of the %peripatetic males they
meet on the street are trying to slip them
the goo-goo lamp are becoming mighty
frequent and numerous these days., any
how. You can hardly pick up a paper
without reading about some women club
bling some man on the allegation which she
excitedly puts forth after it is all over
that he has attempted to mash her. l
have gone TO the bottom of a lot Of these
cases, and have actually seen plenty of
them. I've found that the women are MS
taken in about three cases out of five.
There are some specimens Of that grisly
species, the masher, of course, proving
about the streets of all cities; but there
are not one-tenth as many Washers as
some of these imaginative women try to
make themselves believe there are.
There's one fact connected with this
masher-and-mashed business that stands
out In the light in plain view Of all rea-
sonable persons, namely, that not one
male person out Of a million, including the
actual masher, will take the chance of ac-
costing a woman, or even giving her the
happy eye unless she gives him the office
as the things called. Even the masher
doesn't pick out the woman on the street
who behaves, and, as for the ~non-masher,
he'd just as soon take a chance on trying
to attract the attention of a girl or woman
who is going on about her business as he
would Of knocking a crossing cops helmet
off his head. Flirty men don't try TO en-
gage in the asinine business of flirting
with women who manage their eyes cir
cumspectly.
"A woman who conducts herself with
propriety on the street-on any street in
any American city-will get by all right,
ninety-nine times out of a hundred, with
out ever being bothered by any male brute.
masher or otherwise. But when a girl or
woman n!rts along, giving out sort of half
smiles and saucy eyes and thus laying her
self liable to the imputation tina she
wouldn't resent a little word or so spoken
under the breath Of the passing man whose
attention she thus attracts, it's up to her
to take the consequences without COM
plant.
Not long ago in Cincinnati they arrest
ed and punished a notoriety-lov.ng young
woman who had 'umbrella'd' about half a
dozen male pedestrians for trying 10 mash
her. as she told the police. 1t was found
that this young female person deliberately
flTted with men for the purpose of having
them fall to her charms, and then, when
they addressed her, turned upon them and
tried to whang the daylights out Of them
with her rain-shieid. This thing was more
than suspected by the police, and they
verified IL by putting their best-loking de-
tectlve on the shopping beat generally
taken by the young woman with the rec
ord for umbrella cases. He met up with
the girl In due time, and she gave him
the cunnin' eye and the CHEEKY smile, and,
when he walked over to her and made
some trifing remark upon how much
weather there seemed to prevail, she up
and tried 10 get her umbrella into action.
She found the umbrella cody wrenched
out Of her hands in something less than a
twfnkling, however, and about four min
utes later she found herself taking a ride
in one Of those hurry-up vehicles. When
the police put her through a few of the
little degrees she broke down and owned
up that she'd got by with her little stunt
all those times purely out Of a love for no.
toriety.
Il know fat women OF fifty, and lean.
hatchet-faced spinsters of equal years. |
who are complaining all the time that they
just simply can't do downtown without a |
whole slew and slather Of coarse, brutal
male persons-generally ~strapp.ng. hand
some young men, the rude creatures,-
trying to firt with them on the streets.
They remark ~petulantly that In their opin- |
ion it's a sin and a shame that men on
the streets can't let 'us girls alone. And
they never see that they're Just Jokes.
Even when they catch the men who over |
hear these remark exchanging giances or
w;nking at each other, they don't ge, next
They go right on spinning their web abou,
how the louis OF well dressed men-smen
that look as IL they ought to be GENTLE
men'-try TO ogle them on the streets. and
all that.
There isn't any punishment too severe
for the actual, simon-pure masher, but