Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1892 — Josephine Introduced Handkerchiefs. [ARTICLE]

Josephine Introduced Handkerchiefs.

It was pot until the reign of the Empress Josephine in France that the pocket handkerchief was tolerated at all as an article of public use. No lady would have dared to use one in the presence of others. Even the name was carefully avoided in polite conversation. An actor who would have ventured to use one on the stage would have been hissed off the boards. It was only in the beginning of the present century that Mile. Duchesnois, a famous actress, dared to appear with a handkerchief in her hand. Having to speak of it in the course of the play she could only summon courage to refer to it as “a light tissue.” A translation of one of Shakspeare’s plays by Alfred de Vigny was acted, and the word was used for the first time upon the stage and provoked a storm of indignant hisses from all parts of the house. The Empress Josephine, although really a beautiful woman, had very bad teeth, and to conceal them she was in the habit of carrying small handerehiefs trimmed with costly laces, which she raised gracefully to her lips to conceal her teeth. The ladies of the court followed her example, and handkerchiefs rapidly became an important part of the feminine toilet.

Thk report that a lineman had received an electric charge of 3,450 volts and kept it several minutes, escaping without more serious injury than a burn and a bruise, was of much scientific interest so long as its integrity was unquestioned. For one thing it started a theory that Kemmler and the other murderers who thought they were being electrocuted were really being scared to death. But the lineman’s experience proves to have been with less than 500 volts, so his escape loses the character of a miracle, and Kemmler’s death cannot be ascribed to any intensity of mental distress.