ping off, and if she was not notified, and
allowed to fix it, she would soon be in a terrible fix on the street.

It was a week ago Monday that a lady from Oshkosh was at Watertown on a
visit, and she wore a black silk dress with a red strip on the bottom. As
she walked across the bridge Mr. Calvin Cheeney, a gentleman whose heart
is in the right place, saw what he supposed would soon be a terrible
accident, which would tend to embarrass the lady, so he stepped up to her
in the politest manner possible, took off his hat and said:

"Excuse me, madame, but I think your wearing apparel is becoming
disarranged. You might step right into Clark's, here, and fix it," and he
pointed to the bottom of her dress.

She gave him a look which froze his blood, and shaking her dress out she
went on. He said it was the last time he would ever try to help a woman in
distress.

She sailed along down to a grocery store and stopped to look at some
grapes, when the practiced eye of Hon. Peter Brook saw that
something was wrong. To think is to act with Peter, and he at once said:

"Miss, your petticoat seems to be dropping off. You can go in the store
and get behind that box of codfish and fix it if you want to."

Now that was a kind thing for Peter to do, and an act that any gentleman
might be proud of, but he was amazed at her when she told him to mind his
own business, and she would attend to her own petticoat, and she marched
off just a trifle mad.

She went into the postoffice to mail a postal card, just as Mr. Moak, the
postmaster, came out of his private office with Hon. L.B. Caswell, the
congressman. Mr. Moak, without the aid of his glasses, saw that there was
liable to be trouble, so he asked Caswell to excuse him a moment, and
turning to the delivery window where she was asking the clerk what time
the mail came in, he said:

"I beg a thousand pardons, madame. It ill becomes a stranger to speak to
one so fair without an introduction, but I believe that I am not violating
the civil service rules laid down by Mr. Hayes for the guidance of
postmasters when I tell you, lady, that something has broke loose and that
the red garment that you fain would hide from the gaze of the world has
asserted itself and appears to the naked eye about two chains and three
links below your dress. I am going abroad, to visit Joe Lindon, the
independent candidate for sheriff, and you can step into the back office
and take a reef in it."

He did no