Articles
A Mouse in the Car
The other day as a Fourth avenue car came down Madison avenue in the afternoon, filled with well-dressed ladies going on their shopping rounds some one of them raised the report that a mouse was in the car under the seat. Just in a few seconds every woman in that car was up standing on the seat, holding her dress tightly gathered around her ankles with one hand, while with the other she held on to the strap of the car. The conductor came in and looked around to see what was the matter.
An old lady kept frenetically waving an umbrella and saying, "There! There! Catch it! Kill it quick!" The man with the brass buttons on looked up at the old lady to get some more information as to where the cause of the trouble lay.
"You blind fool, you!" she said, pointing her umbrella under the seat; "don't you see it right there in front of you?"
He put his hand in and pulled out a piece of brown kid glove which some boys had sewed up and made to look like a mouse.
"Is this it, madame?" he inquired, holding it up in his hand.
"Well, well," replied the old lady, "I do declare I thought that was a mouse!"
"Indeed, when you spoke," remarked the lady next to her. "I thought it was a rat."
"Yes," ventured the third and younger lady. "I heard of a rat that ran up a woman's limb under her clothes in a horse car!"
At this a couple of umbrellas came down with a bang on the floor and two ladies screamed, "Stop this car, conductor!"
The car was stopped. Several ladies got off, all chattering simultaneously.
Two young ladies stayed in the forward end of the car and kept talking to each other. One said: "Do you know, I was nearly throwing that old gray haired lady across the car, for I was first on the seat and she attempted to slip up in front of me."
"Well," continued the other, "It's a good thing my aunt was not here, for she is troubled with heart disease, and I know she would have just died on that seat as soon as that other woman screamed."
An old Scotch lady came into the car after the racket was over. A neighbor attempted to tell her about it when she vociferated. "What? What? A mouse in the car? The man with the brass buttons on should tak' it awa'."
The conductor said afterwards that he was astonished to see how some ladies that he had to assist in to the car get upon the seat so quickly, the three or four men in the car could not keep from laughing, and several young ladies with flushed faces looked daggers at them. Every make passenger that subsequently came into the car was told about the mouse, and the last men that left the car at the Post office had a grin on his face from ear to ear.
This is a true story.
The Weekly Graphic
New York
Tuesday, April 12, 1887
