  IF you want to see a woman act more like a goose than she need, watch her when she enters a place of public performance, where the seats are at the mercy of first-comers. Notice her profound survey of the situation, as she stands, preceding her John, who is supposed to know nothing about such things, poised on one foot, while she measures distances, drafts, and acoustics with the eye of a connoisseur. Now she decides! At last she swoops down on the seat in all the house which she prefers. John follows, with the shawl and family umbrella. He faintly suggests the possible obstruction of a pillar between the seat she has chosen and the speaker, but he follows. Directly she is seated, and the shawl and umbrella located without inconvenience to themselves, or infringement of the comfort of their neighbors, when she coolly remarks, "John, 'tis true, that pillar is right between me and the speaker." John's ears redden; but he is in public, so he don't say, "Didn't I tell you so?" but rises with shawl and umbrella, the former catching by the fringe on every seat as he passes, and the latter slipping to the floor while he tries to disentangle the shawl. Meantime my lady is on her triumphal march for that "best seat." Now she alights! It wont do. There's a tall man in front of her; she is always fated to sit behind a tall man. She tries another; there's the phantom pillar again. Yet another; that's the end seat, and every horrid man that comes along will be treading on her dress and knocking her bonnet over her eyes all the evening. Meantime John gets redder in the face; he can't even ease himself with a customary growl. Ah! now she has got the seat at last, and stands beckoning to John to follow. Her friend Miss Frizzle is beside her, and she is happy. There is only one seat, to be sure, but "John can find one somewhere else, or perhaps he would like to take a walk outside and call for her when lecture is over—only he must be sure to be back in time." So down she sits, while John wanders off for a possible stray seat. Now she draws off the glove that hides her one diamond ring, and settles the bracelet on the wrist of that hand. Then she tumbles up her front hair, lest it might have got smooth coming. Then she picks out the bows of the natty little ribbon under her dimpled chin. It was that chin that victimized John! Then she draws from her pocket her scented pocket-handkerchief and gives it a little incense-waft into the air, magnetizing a young man in front, who turns round to find the owner of that delicious gale from Araby the blest. Then she takes out her opera-glass and peeps about, not so much that her sight is defective, but that her diamond-ring and gold bracelets gleam prettily in the operation. John, meantime, has found a seat in Now the lecturer rises. "Pooh! he's an ugly man. Well, they need't look at him; and perhaps he'll be funny—who knows?" He isn't funny. He is talking about Plato and Epictetus; who the goodness are they? But there's an end to all things, and so there is to the lecture. Now, John is wanted, and, to tell the truth, for the first time thought of! Ah, there he is! but how sulky, and how ugly he looks with his coat-collar turned up! He might have some regard to appearances when he goes with her. People will think she has such a horrid taste in husbands. "Why don't you talk?" says the little woman, when they get outside. "It was too bad you couldn't sit by me, John; I missed you so! but, you see, there was but one seat."—"Not just in that locality, I suppose," muttered John. But the street-lamp just then shone on that cunning little dimpled chin, and its owner said, coaxingly, "O-o-h, now, John! don't be cross with its little wife!" and it's my private opinion he wasn't. Would you have been, sir? |
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