The Bustle That Ambushed a Gentleman

A sad occurrence took place on Main Street last Tuesday afternoon. A young lady with her arms full of bundles emerged from McConnell, Chambers Co.'s store, when one of the packages fell to the sidewalk without her noticing it. Just behind her was a young man of this town—and a Pullman young man who is not polite is not anything—and he quickly stepped forward to pick it up for her. Now, a bundle done up in a piece of paper with a dry-goods store advertisement on it is apparently as harmless as a grandmother's spanking. Just as he stooped to pick it up, the twist began to come out of the ends, and in another instant, a bright red thing—a sort of a cross between a balloon and a devil-fish—flew into the air. A No. 10, thirty-six inch, double-jointed, duplex, red-headed bustle-attachment waltzed around and gyrated and opened and shut and boxed his ears and clawed his face, and then fell on the sidewalk as flat and thin as a restaurant pie. The young man looked as if he wished the tail of the new comet would sweep him from this fair country; the young lady came back with a face that resembled a beautiful sunset on a fifty-cent chromo; and she picked up the wire contrivance, and then she went toward the east and he went toward the west, and the sun ducked its head behind a cloud to hide a snicker, and three or four men looked on and laughed, and doubled themselves up in a manner that would have made a mess of green apples hang their heads in shame. The young man still thinks it was a new-fangled infernal machine.