Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 93, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1898 — CAUGHT IN THE ACT. [ARTICLE]

CAUGHT IN THE ACT.

Two Ladies Discover How They Had Made Themselves Disagreeable. Two ladies were standing bn the doorstep of a house in Georgetown, where but a moment before they had rung the bell, and were waiting to be admitted. One was talking along very intently, when the taller woman interrupted her. .“Be careful,” she said, “somebody may hear you.” “I’m very particular,” responded the other. .“I looked all around before I said anything and there was nobody in sight.” “That's what I thought once, too, and 1 made a serious mistake. 1 was calling once, just as we now are, and was with a woman who could and did say the meanest things about people I ever heard talk. I’m not given to that kind of thing usually, but I do love a bit of gossip, and sometimes I am led into saying things' I shouldn’t. On this ocr casion the lady we were to call on was not a favorite of mine, and when the other woman said something sarcastic. I chimed right in and said I thought she was the silliest and most extravagant and homeliest and dowdiest and stupidest woman of my entire acquaintance, and that I only called from a sense of duty anyhow. And a few other things, like that, I said. “Well, we were let in after a long wait and the reception we got was the chilliest I ever met with. I couldn't understand it, for we were really on very good terms, as those things go, and we got out as soon as we could. That night I told my husband about it when he catne home, and he wondered at it, too. Next evening he came in smiling, and told me that the next time I had anj’thing to say about my neighbors on their own doorsteps I had better first see if there were any speaking tubes to tell on me. That explained it all in a second. A doctor used to live in that same house and he had a speaking tube at the door, as physicians do. The lady we were calling on had never changed it, and, as I found out afterward, the mean thing, she used to sit close to the other end of that tube and listen to what people might be saying at the -door. “She didn’t make much by listening to me, and she didn’t dare to tell me that she knew what I thought of her, and I didn’t care if she did know, only since that time I have been more careful. There’s a tube up there, see?” and the tall lady pointed to an innocent looking mouthpiece pouting out of the door frame. However, there was no response to their ring, and as they met the lady coming in just as they started away they felt perfectly safe and had a nice call.—Washington Call.