“Released from worldly care and strife, Here side and side lie man and wife; And with the couple buried here Expired the name of Barradier.”
An amusing scene occurred this afternoon as I was coming up from the post-office. It was a case of mistaken identity. It seems a somewhat dissipated old Irish woman was deserted some weeks ago by her husband.
Through her domestic troubles and excessive drinking she at times becomes quite crazy,—so much so that her friends have to keep a constant watch over her to prevent her from doing mischief. She is very large and powerful, and when in one of her tantrums is no easy person to manage. It appears that when she has one of these crazy spells, she imagines she recognizes her husband’s Milesian features in almost every face she looks upon.
This afternoon, while the crazy fit was upon her, she escaped from her keepers, and rushed into the street with dilated eyes and dishevelled hair. With sleeves rolled above the elbows and clenched hands, she charged up the street, looking right and left for some person on whom to fasten.
She was indeed ripe for an encounter, and nearly the first person she met was a prominent clergyman returning to his residence from the Mercantile Library, with his newly selected book under his arm. She stood for a moment directly in front of the minister, and riveted her red optics upon his face in an inquiring stare, which soon kindled into one of recognition.
Anticipating trouble, he attempted to pass around her and proceed quietly on his way.
Reaching out her long bare arm, she brought it around like the boom of a sloop, and with one wide sweep knocked his hat spinning to the sidewalk at her feet.
He stooped to pick it up again, and while bent in the act, she seized him by the hair with both hands, and giving a guttural laugh, not unlike the self-satisfied croak of a down east bullfrog, exclaimed:—
“Ah! Barney, ye galavantin’ spalpeen! ye can’t desave me wid yer stove-pipe! So ye’d dezart the wife o’ yer boosome, would ye? ah, ha! come home wid me now, or I’ll be afther takin’ your durty ould scalp along wid me!”
A soft rabbit under the wide paw of a California lion, or a sparrow in the talons of a hawk, is not more utterly helpless than was the poor dominie in her terrible clutch. His position was anything but an enviable one. It actually seemed as if every hair upon his head was gathered and drawn into one mass, over which her muscular fingers held complete control.