A SHOCKING BAD HAT.

Evening Star, Issue 3598, 3 September 1874, Page 3

A SHOCKING BAD HAT.

{From the Danbury News.) We learn from newspaper slips and private letters of a rather ridiculous occurrence in Norfolk, Ohio, The hero is a prominent and much-respected deacon—Deacon C., we understand. The other Sunday he started for church with an old hat on his head, it was an easy hat and the old gentleman enfoyed it. It appears thex’e ax’e pegs to hang bats on in the church there. He thus disposed of his head gear on reaching the church, and took his seat with the congregation. When the service was over he lingered as is customary and proper for deacons to do. He finally reached the porch, and stopped for his hat, and any respectable citizen can imagine the horror he expex-ienceed on beholding bnt one hat left, and that a most delapidated and scandalous-look-ing article. He could feel his blood boil within him as he looked at it and thought of tixe mutton-head who owned it, and walked off with his glossy beaver instead. He said out aloud that the owner of that hat was a mutton-head, and gx’ound his deaconish heel into the floor, und felt much x*elieved by so doing. Then he tied a handkerchief about his head because the old hat was much to large for him, and he could not wear it, even if flesh apd spirit had not revolted against the spectacle. He told the sexton that that ;hat must have been built in a dry dock, and the only thing that 1 troubled him in the matter was how a Map with a head of that si2e got into thb c&ui'ch apyWay. Th£n hb Blsdkb'd

majestically homeward, with the red haudkerchief wound about his head, and the detestable hat held at arms’ length ahead of him, and altogether forming a spectacle that fastened the attention of every beholder. Arriving home, he extended the obnoxious article towards his wife, and waiting an instant for her to take in the awful enormity of the offence, he explosively shouted, “ Look at that villainous rag !” The lady looked at it and was astonished. “ I don’t wonder you are sick,” he howled morosely ; “ it makes me sick to think of the bull head who owns such a smoke-stack palming it off* on me, and taking my new beaver for himself in mistake ! (he ground this out with withering sarcasm.) A pretty mistake I must say when his miserable rag is big enough to cover a cart, and filthy enough to make a crow sick.” “ But that’s your everyday hat,” asserted his wife,instill greater astonishment. “My hat!” gasped the amazed deacon, [staring ait her with his eyes half way out of their sockets, and then laughing hysterically, and shivering from head to foot. “ Certainly it is ” persisted his wife, (t and here is your best hat,” taking that article from its accustomed place, and holding it out to him. Without a word the miserable man sank into a chair, and after staring blandly at his wife for a moment, slowly said : “ The ways of Providence are past finding out; rub my head, Matildy.”