There is a woman on the West Side who has learned a lesson that will
last her a lifetime. She has been for years wearing these paper bags,
such as the green grocers use, for bustles. The paper is stiff, and
sticks out splendid, and makes the dress look well. Last Sunday morning
while she was dressing, her young son got in the room and blew the paper
bag full of wind and tied a string around the mouth of it, and left it
in a chair. The good lady took it and tied it on and dressed herself for
church. She bribed her husband to go to church with her, though he is a
sort of Bob Ingersoll christian.
As they went down the aisle the minister was reading a hymn about
“Sounding the Loud Hosan-na,” and the lady went into the pew first, and
sat down while her husband was putting his hat on the floor. There was
a report like distant thunder. You have heard how those confounded paper
bags explode when boys blow them up, and crush them between their hands.
Well, it was worse than that, and everybody looked at the innocent
husband, who was standing there a perfect picture of astonishment. He
looked at his wife as much as to say: “Now, this is the last time you
will catch me in church, if you are going to play any of your tricks on
me. You think you can scare me into getting religion?”
The minister stopped reading the hymn and looked over his spectacles
at the new comers as though it would not surprise him if that bad man
should blow the church up. The poor lady blushed and looked around as
much as to say, “I did not know it was loaded,” and she looked the hymn
book through for the hymn, and as the choir rose to sing she offered one
side of the book to her husband, but he looked mad and pious, and stood
at the other end of the pew and looked out of the stained glass window.
After the service they started home together, and as they turned the
first corner he said to his wife, “Well, you played hell on your watch,
didn't you?” She told him there was no such thing as hell in the Bible
now, but that she would make that boy think there had been no revision
of the Bible that left hell out, when she got home. We only get the
story from the husband.
He said he didn't know what it was that made the noise until they got
home, and after a little skirmishing around his wife held up a bursted
paper bag, and asked the boy if he blew that bag up. He said he did,
but he did not know there was anything wrong about it. The boy and his
mother and a press board paid a visit to the back kitchen, and there was
a sound of revelry. Boys will be boys.