“Why, to be sure,” said Matt, as he got up out of a rocking chair, on which there were three skirts, a red petticoat, an emancipation corset, and a pair of striped stockings with long suspenders arranged to button on the waist, “of course I will go out, but you need not mind me. I am near sighted.”
Matt went down stairs with the crowd, and when he was gone Mrs. Hayes got her head out from under the clothes and wanted to know what the trouble was, and if they could not fly.
Hayes told her not to be alarmed, as it was only one of those d—d surprise parties. He said there were two hundred hungry people down stairs, with baskets of sandwiches and pickles, and the chances were that they would eat up everything there was in the house, and mash crumbs and cold tongue into the carpet.
Mrs. Hayes got up and sent Rutherford into the linen closet after a clean white skirt, and he returned with a night gown and had to be sent back. While she was taking her hair down out of the curl papers, and putting bandoline over her ears, she gave Mr. Hayes her opinion of surprise parties. She said that little shrimp, Alexander Stephens, would sit on the piano keys, and knock his boot heels against the piano case, and that Dave Davis would fall over the music rack, and sit down in her best rocking chair and break it.
Just then she touched her nose with a curling iron that she had heated in a gas jet, and screamed and woke Mr. Hayes up, and he wanted to know what was the matter. She rolled over in bed, felt of her nose to see if it was there, and told Mr. Hayes she had been dreaming there was a surprise party came to the house.
He said: “My dear, I trust there is no such fate in store for us. You are nervous. Try a little of that crab apple cider, and lay on your face, and see if you can't go to sleep.”
THE DIFFERENCE IN CLOTHES.
There is something about the practice of “practical joking” that is mighty pleasant and enjoyable, if the joke is on somebody else. It was about six years ago that we quit practical joking, and the reason was that the boys played one on us that fairly broke our back. We had always been full of it, and an opportunity to play a joke on a friend was a picnic for us, but this time we had all the tuck taken out and fairly unraveled.
A party consisting of Hogan, Hatch, Root, Wood and Webb had been down from La Crosse to the marshes shooting ducks for a week. We had prepared to break camp and take the train to Brownsville at 2 o'clock, from which we took a little steamer for La Crosse.