My name is Albert Fling. I am an active, business, married man,
that is, wedded to Mrs. Fling, and married to business. I had the
misfortune, some time since, to break a leg; and before it was
mended Madame Fling, hoping to soothe my hours of convalescence,
caused to be made for me a dressing-gown, which, on due
reflection, I believe was modeled after the latest style of
strait-jacket. This belief is confirmed by the fact that when I
put it on, I am at once confined to the house, 'get mad,' and am
soberly convinced that if any of my friends were to see me
walking in the street, clad in this apparel, they would instantly
entertain ideas of my insanity.
In the hours of torture endured while wearing it, I have appealed
to my dear wife to truly tell me where she first conceived the
thought that there was a grain of comfort to be found in bearing
it on my back? She has candidly answered that she first read about
it in divers English novels and sundry American novels, the latter
invariably a rehash of the first. In both of these varieties of
the same species of books, the hero is represented as being very
comfortable the instant he dons this garment, puts his feet in
slippers, picks up a paper and--goes to sleep.
A friend of mine who has discovered that Shakspeare knew all about
steam-engines, electric telegraphs, cotton-gins, the present
rebellion, and gas-lights, assures me that dressing-gowns are
distinctly alluded to in _The Tempest_:
'TRINCULO: O King Stephano! look, what a wardrobe here is for
thee!
CALIBAN: Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash.
Having thus proved its age, let us next prove that it is in its
dotage, and is as much out of place in this nineteenth century as
a monkey in a bed of tulips.
We find in the Egyptian temples paintings of priests dressed in
these gowns: proof that they are antiquely heathenish. And as we
always associate a man who wears one with Mr. Mantilini, this
proves that they are foolish. _Ergo_, as they are old and foolish,
they are in their dotage.
I have three several times, while wearing this gown, been mistaken
for Madame Fling by people coming to the house. The first time I
was shaving in my chamber: in bounced Miss X----, who believed, as
it was rather late, that I had gone down-town. She threw up her
hands, exclaiming:
'Good gracious, Fanny! do you shave?'
N.B.--Fanny is my wife's first name.
The second time I had brought the woodsaw and horse up from the
cellar, and was exercising myself sawing up my winter's wood, in
the summer-kitchen, according to Doctor Howl's advice, when the
Irishman from the grocery entered, bearing a bundle. My back was
to him, and only seeing the gay and flowery gown, he exclaimed, in
an awfully audible whisper to the cook:
'Shure yer mistriss has the power in her arms, jist!'
Think of my wife, my gentle Fanny, having it shouted around the
neighborhood that her brute of a husband made her saw all their
winter's wood--yes! and split it, and pile it too, and make all
the fires, and so on and cetera, and oh! I _am_ glad my husband
isn't such a monster!'