Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1914 — LOOKING DOWNWARD [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LOOKING DOWNWARD

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BY LEE MACQUODDY

THE GENESIS OF THE HOBBLE. Captain MacManus, master airigar tor, leaned idly on the pneumatic starboard rail of the great New York receiving float of the Five Continents & Australia Aerial line and gazed down at Manhattan Island, 5,000 feet below, as it was in the year 1962. Down on the caissons of the F. C. & A. ground terminal a tigy electrical depot-tender, all glass and wire, was taking aboard her quota of passengers, hound for the float to catch the 10:11 Express for Paris. The Express, > a monster 900-footer, that flashed her red hull across the Atlantic on the 10,000-foot level at the rate of 160 miles an hour, lay in her clips on the float, impatient to be released and tear herself away from contact with things near-mundane. Tiny 300-foot express packets from Washington, Chicago, Pittsburg and other near-by points were swarming to the float, discharging their passengers and mails for the big Express, taking their release signals and scurrying back whence they came. It was a scenfl that the captain had seen year after year, yet he never tired of witnessing the silent swiftness with which the thing was managed. A tiny bell buzzed near him and No. 10 Starboard Clip swiftly opened its great steel arms and awaited the coming of the boat that had signaled it. Down below the tender rose up from the terminal caissons, spiraled upward In long curves, and one minute later No. 10 Clip received it in its arms. Out of the tender came rushing Four boys in the white and green uniforms of the apprentices of the line. “Kids bound for the training grounds in the Himalaya’s,” grunted Captain MacManus. The boys Instantly made a respectful rush toward him, “What luck!” cried one. “We’ve got Just fifteen minutes to catch the

Paris Express, and we want to get the Great Mystery unraveled before we sail.” "Yes, Captain MacManus,” said another. “Please, sir, tell ub what this is,” apd he thrust into the old man’s hands one of those antiquated card; board affairs which, in the long pass days of their usage, were designated as “cabinet photographs.” . “I found it in an old trunk I was going through,’ 2 gasped the apprentice in awe. “I was afraid to touch it at first. I didn’t know what it might be. Then I put on my germ proof and current proof glove and picked it up. it didn’t hurt me. So I brought it here. I know you could tell us what it is if anybody conld.” Old MacManus twirled his binoculars. * “Right you are, kids, in coming to me, ' said he. “If anybody can tell you anything about ancient relics I’m the man. Why, I can remember' back to the days when women, couldn’t vote.” » While the apprentices were recovering from thiß awe-inspiring assertion of antiquity, the captain was holding the object of the commotion* off at arm’s length and studying it care- — -—— “My lads," said he at last, “It’s'a photograph.”

"So we guessed,” said one of the boys. “We read about them in history books. But what it it of?” The captain studied longer. The figure on the photograph was different from anything ever seen or dreamed of in the year 1962. Apparently it represented some creature bearing a faint resemblance to the women of the day. The physiognomy was dainty and appealing to the eye, but it was almost surrounded by a great mass of material resembling hair. To the waist the figure bore some resemblance to the women of 1962. But here the resemblance ceased. From the waist down the figure was shaped like an elongated V, with the small end at the bottom, where the feet should been. It looked something like a woman who had been caught and tied so she couldn’t move. 11l “That,” said Captain MacManus, “is an old-time photograph of a woman in a hobble gown.” “What! Hat, ha, ha! Good joke, captain,” laughed the apprentices. “Fancy—a woman! But tell us what it really is, captain, please.” “I have told you,” said the captain. “It’s a woman in a hobble skirt of the age of 1912 or thereabouts.” “A woman!” the boys drew forward and gazed at the picture in amazement. “A woman—in a what did you say, captain?” “A hobble skirt,” said the old man. “You don’t know what that is, do you, kids? Never heard of such a thing? Can’t imagine such a thing, eh? But that’s what this relic of the past represents, and you can look in any ancient history and see that. I’m right.” “What do you think the woman had done, captain?” asked the apprentice. “What had she done?” “Yes. To make them bind her up in that fashion What was she being punished for," “Or maybe she was doing penance of some kind,” suggested another.

“My boys,” said Captain MacManus, “she was not doing penance, ahd she was not being punished.” “You don’t mean to say that she was wearing that thing of her own free will ?” “No; she was doing it because she had to; it was the style.” “Go on, captain,” said the boys, “we like to hear about thbse queer old-fashioned days.” “Well, Style was the absolute Boss of all women in those days, my lads. It was before they’d acquired the equal right with men to help worry about how the world should be run, and there they went along in the old, instinctive ways of their mothers — that have all been 'done away with now —and their instincts ruled them, and the Boss of the biggest instinct of all was Style.” “What was the biggest instinctr asked the group. “The desire to look pretty and make other women look plain.” “And what was this Style thing that you mention, captain ” , “Style was. a mysterious power that changed every year or so, pud when it changed women had to change with it One year Style would be for plump women, and all the women would be -plump. Next year it would be for thinness, and all the women would be

thin. Sometimes it said: *No hlpe,’ and the women promptly didn't have any hips; then it would say. ‘Let there be hips,’ and hips there were, lads, till you couldn’t rest. Now, you young fellows, who live in -this agewhen women, having finally won their bard-fought battle to get a finger in the world’s work, have got plenty of other things to worry about besides looking pretty and therefore don’t care so much for style, you fellows can tell just about what women will loolr'Tike one year after another. It was different in the old days; you had to be ready for anything then. “I remember one sad, sad case that came about through this, and it happened in this same age, about 1912, that this ancient lady in hobble skirt belonged to. There was a brave young explorer who’d gone down to take the temperature of the south pole. He had a beautiful young wife that he had to leave behind in a'little old-fashioned hotel named the Knickerbocker that used to stand at the coi« ner of Forty-second and Broadway, because this was before they had electric heat' and all modern inconveniences, including Turkish baths, at tbepole. ‘l’ll be waiting for you,’ says she. ‘Hurry back.’ ‘So long,’ says he; and away he went' and was gone for five long years. “You see, when he went away women were plump, and had hips and shoulders, and wore long skirts, with room enough in them to walk. When he came back it was the year of these hobble skirts and the women were altogether different. The young explorer goes into his apartments in the little hotel and something that looks like this picture leaped up to welcome him, and he steps back and hollers: ‘Gimme nay gun. There’s a strange animal like a seal in the room.’ And it was only his wife. The sad part of it was that he had to pay the dressmaker next day.” “But why did the women let Style boss them so?” asked an apprentice. “Would it punish them if they wouldn’t get thin or plump as it ordered them?”

“Would it! Indeed it would, my lad; it would let them Bee other women who were in style!” “But how did they ever happen to hit onto anything like this hobble BkirtC captain?” “Well, you see, ’twas in the days when the ladies, were fighting for equal rights with man. The men wouldn’t let them wear the trousers as yet, so the dear women did the next best thing. They couldn’t get the whole trousers, but they could get one leg. They took and made it into a skirt as you see in the picture.” The young airmen gazed at' the strange picture in amazement. “Why in the world did they think such things made them pretty, captain?” asked one. “Fancy one of our women today wearing (anything that would interfere with their stride!’,’ "The women of today are free,” said Captain MacManus. “They have thrown off the thrall of instinct. And yet,” he mused smilingly, “and yet, those old days were good days, after all. Douse my signal rays! I don’t know but what they were as good as the present era, so far as the women are concerned. Yes, lads, in those days I was once tempted to enter that ©ld-fashidned and discarded state of matrimony.” “What was the matter, captain?” asked one of the boys. “Wouldn’t the girl have you?” “Run along,” growled the old mai% “Get aboard the Express. You’re lik» all the boys nowadays; you’re too keen on ancient history.” (Copyright, hy W. G. Chapman.)

"And yet," he mused smilingly, “and yet, those old days were good days, after all."