As soon as you have found your
place in the book, and taken a fresh departure, the bonnet man sais,
'Please, Sir, a seat for a lady,' and you have to get up and give it
to his wife's lady's-maid. His wife ain't a lady, but having a
lady's-maid shows she intends to set up for one when she gets to home.
To be a lady, she must lay in a lot of airs, and to brush her own hair
and garter her own stockins is vulgar; if it was known in First
Avenue, Spruce Street, in Bonnetville, it would ruin her as a woman of
fashion for ever.
1 Calaboose is a Southern name for jail.
"Now bonnet man wouldn't ask you to get up and give your place to his
wife's hired help, only he knows you are a Yankee, and we Yankees, I
must say, are regularly fooled with women and preachers; just as much
as that walking advertisement of a milliner is with her lady's-maid.
All over America in rail carriages, stage coaches, river steamers, and
public places, of all sorts, every critter that wears a white choker,
and looks like a minister, has the best seat given him. He expects it,
as a matter of course, and as every female is a lady, every woman has
a right to ask you to quit, without notice, for her accommodation. Now
it's all very well and very proper to be respectful to preachers; and
to be polite and courteous to women, and more especially those that
are unprotected; but there is a limit, tother side of which lies
absurdity.
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