Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1875 — A Hack Adventure. [ARTICLE]

A Hack Adventure.

One evening last week there was a wedding in this city, at which quite a number of the elite of San Francisco were present. The affair passed off most pleasantly; the fair bride and the manly groom received the congratulations of their friends; their happiness was feasted in bumpers of champagne, and it was late ere any offered to depart from the pleasant scene. One lady was there whose good husband had been forced to remain at his office to prepare business of moment for the morrow, and upon an intimate friend he imposed the pleasant duty of waiting on Madam to her home. The friend most gladly accepted the task. He had known the lady Tong, and knew her to be as charming a companion as she was a devoted wife and mother. Even the fact that he was a lawyer and used to deep plunges in the opaque waters of probate proceedings had not left him devoid of all human sympathy; neither had it quite extinguished "those qualities of politeness for which he was noted in earlier days. As the night grew long Madame expressed a desire to depart, and her cavalier rushed forth and about the clustered carriages until he found the special Jehu with whom he had made a specific contract. With her nubia twined about her head and her cloak snugly drawn about her, that the fog might not penetrate, Madam tripped from the house to the hack and entered the vehicle, followed by her escort, who shut the door and cried out “ All right!” Then the hack moved slowly off. Now it requires about twenty minutes’ sharp driving to reach Madam’s residence from where the wedding took place, and when this time had more than expired she interrupted the conversation by saying: “It is time we reached the house, is it not?” »'“I think so,” replied the lawyer; “perhaps the man has mistaken the street. Ho! driver!” There was no answer, so the lawyer poked his head out of the window and yelled, “Ho! driver!” again. “ Blessed if I don’t believe the man’s drunk!” he exclaimed, pulling in his head and addressing his companion. “ Perhaps he is only asleep,” responded Madam, with true womanly charity. “Well, if he isn’t tight the horses are,” the lawyer replied; “just see how the carriage goes from one side of the street to the other!” “My goodness!” exclaimed Madam, gazing out through the fog, “this isn’t our neighborhood! Where are we?” “ Blessed if I know,” answered the attorney, with deep caution. “Say, youl Bill! John! Bob! George! Henry! Augustus! Driver! Wake up, confound you!” But there came no reply. Then the lawyer let down the narrow sash at the front of the carriage and peered upward to the driver’s seat It was vacant! “ Blanknation! there’s nobody on the box!” he roared. The two stared at each other for a moment, the horses meantime keeping up their monotonous trot. “ Well!” sighed he. She sighed without saying “ well.” “ Blessed if there is buif one thing to do,” he exclaimed, and in a jiffy, to her horror, she saw her cavalier squirming upward through the narrow window. “ Oh! supposing he should stick there!” she said to herself, with a hopeless groan; but he didn’t stick —he was not constructed on the principle of Daniel Lambert—and after a fearful struggle succeeded in reaching the driver’s place and obtaining possession of the reins. He stopped the horses, and then followed a consultation, he talking from the box and she from within, the result of which was that he turned the horses and drove back over the route they had come. The fog was dense and bitterly cold, and the impromptu drive'r was arrayed in lavender kids and a suit of light broadcloth, the coat being of. a style known as clawhammer. He had driven .about ten minutes when Madam felt that the hack had come to a standstill. The next moment the door opened and she beheld| her guide, philosopher and friend, his teeth fairly chattering with cold.

“ I-i-i-a there an-n-n-nything I can wr-r-r-r-ap myself i-i-i-i-n?” he asked; “it’s a lit-t-t-tle coolish outside.” She uncoiled the nubia from her head and wrapped it about his neck and chin, “Thanks,” he murmured from under the layers of split-zephyr, and again ■ resumed the position of a hack-driver without a license. It lacked twenty minutes of two o’clock a. m. when he discovered the residence of his charge and pulled up the horses at the door. She led him into the house. His face was generally blue, but a flaring red knob shone forth where his nose commonly had place; his eyes dripped water, his hair was damp with fog, and he shivered with the cold from head to foot. She made him sit by the fire, kind woman that she is, and mads him a hot Scotch toddy, which seemed to dash into every portion of his frame and cheer his blood with its tingling warmth; and when he had been half thawed and half dried she brought he declared that he must drive that hack back into town) a pile of great coats and shawls and wraps, in which she so enveloped him that when he bade her goodby it was with difficulty he could climb on the hack, so swathed and bundled was he. It did not take long for him to drive those horses into the town and leave the hack at a livery stable “ to be called for,” and up to this day the sleepy hostler who opened the stable-door has not ceased to wonder who was the gentleman in lavender kids that drove a hack into the stable at half-past two o’clock in the morning.It was just after the hack had driven away from the house of Madam that her husband, worn out with the task of the evening, came home. To him, as he sipped his tumbler of grog, she told the whole story, and when she had finished she said: “ It was such a narrow escape! Just think! We might have been upset and killed!” “ Indeed you might,” he replied, his face solemn at the possibility. “Andoh, Ned,” she continued; “I’m so glad you didn’t go to the wedding.” “ Are you, dear, and why?” * “ Because, love, you never, never could have crawled up through that little hack window!” And she patted his broad back and filled another glass of grog for Mm.— San Francisco CM.