Year: 1879




One of our learned professors who
make business of overthrowing or Sc
riously curtailing the proportions of ira
ditional celebrities tackled old Blue
beard not long ago, expecting to prove
that he was myth like William Tell
and lots of other fellows, but he didn't
succeed. He discovered, however, that
Bluebeard's last wife, Fatima, was
very different sort of a woman from
what has long been supposed. Instead
of being timld creature, frightened to
death every time the man in azure side
whiskers looked at her, ready TO faint at
the sound Of his voice, she was In real
ity q regular "rip-snorter" and led
Bluebeard a terrible life from the day
they were married. She had heard all
about his numerous wives disappearing,
and she gave him to understand on the
way from the parsons to the castle that.
he couldn't come any of his games over
her. She wouldn't have it. She said
if she disappeared it wouldn't cost him
cent.


1t is not generally known, but Blue
boards last wife was the original
woman's rights woman. She it was
who started the movement. She was
the first woman to lecture on woman's
rights, and she stumped the country in
favor of female suffrage before Susan B.
Anthony was ever heard of. Bluebeard
used to growl about it, and swear until
every thing was blue, blue as his beard,
but it didn't do any good; he couldn't
control that woman anyhow. She at
tended all the conventions, and brought
strong minded women and weak-mind-
ed men who admired them home with
her in defiance of old Bluebeard, and
they kept up the clatter on their favorite
subject until he sometimes even wished
that he were dead. He used to disap-
pear at such times and no one knew
where he went, but it afterwards trans
pired that he secretly repaired to the
"bloody Closet" where his former
wives were hung up to dry, seeking in
their tranquil society that repose which
was denied him while Fatima was
around. Married to a virago, the old
loves came back again, as it were.


1t was all stuff about Bluebeard pre-
tending to Fatima that he had got to
leave home for few weeks on an ex-
cursion to Mexico, or something like
that, giving her the keys of the house
with an injunction not to open the mys-
terious closet on pain of death. The
truth was, she took the keys away from
the old man herself, choking him until
he was glad to give them up. Then
she dragged him along by the coat col
lar until she came to the fatal closet,
when she opened the door, and, flinging
him among his murdered wives, locked
him in for week at tine. He tack
led the wrong woman when he got hold
of that last wife of his; she had loved
before. Fatima was Chicago woman,
and had been married and divorced
half dozen times herself, and what she
didn't know about managing husband
wasn't worth knowing.


Whenever the old rascal's native
meanness showed itself, into the closet
he went, and he spent more than half
his time there. His wife used to jeer at
him through the keyhole, and ask b m
if he had selected a nail yet for her to
hang onp Her sister, who came to visit
her, popularity represented as sitting in
tower watching for the arrival of their
big brothers, while Bluebeard was in
the hall below whetting his scimeter on
the banisters, preparatory to chopping
off his wife's head, never kept watch for
any body, being as able to take care OF
herself as Mrs. Bluebeard was; and
whenever the big brothers did happen
to call at the castle they generally had
to interfere to prevent their sisters from
killing the old man. They made it so
hot for him that he was finally compelled
to vamose the ranch. 1t is not known
what became of him, but it is supposed
that he went to Utah.


1t affords us pleasure to know that
Bluebeard didn't have it his own way
all the time, and that in Fatima he met
considerable more than his match
Cincinnati Saturday Night.