AMERICAN LADIES.
Well, you ought to pity us, for we have no such escape-valves for our awkwardness as you have—no dickeys to pull up—no vests to pull down—no breast pockets, side pockets, flap pockets to explore—no cigars between our teeth—no switch canes in our hands—no beavers to twitch, when we meet an acquaintance. Don’t you yourselves oblige us to reef in our rigging, and hold it down tight with our little paws over our belts, under penalty of being dragged half a mile by one of your buttons, when you tear past us like so many comets?
Is it any joke to us to stand vis-a-vis, with a strange man, before a crowd of grinning spectators, while you are disentangling the “Gordian knot,” instead of whipping out your penknife and sacrificing your offending button, as you ought to do?
Is it any joke to see papa scowl, when we ask him for the “needful,” to restore the lace or fringe you tore off our shawl or mantilla?
Do you suppose we can stop to walk gracefully, when our minds have to be in a prepared state to have our pretty little toes crushed, or our bonnets knocked off, or our skirts torn from our belts, or ourselves and our gaiter hoots jostled into a mud-puddle?
Do you ever “keep to the right, as the law directs?” Don’t you always go with your heads hindside before, and then fetch up against us as if we were made of cast-iron? Don’t you put your great lazy hands in your pockets, and tramp along with a cane half a mile long sticking out from under your arm-pits, to the imminent danger of our optics? “Trussed turkeys,” indeed! No wonder, when we are run a-fowl of every other minute.