AN INFERNAL MACHINE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1092, 7 April 1883, Page 3

AN INFERNAL MACHINE.

A rather sad affair took place in Belfast, Maine, the other day. A young lady with her arms full of bundles emerged from a dry goods store, when one of them fell on the sidewalk without Iter noticing it. Just behind her was a young man, and a Belfast young man who is not polite is not anything, and he quickly stepped forward to pick it up. Now a bundle done up in a piece of paper with a dry goods advertisement on it is apparently as harmless as a mother’s spanking, and there itlayas guileless as an angle-worm on a sidewalk after a rain. Just as he stooped to pick it up there was a rustling of the paper, the twist began to come out of the ends, and in another instant a bright red thing, a sort of a cross between a balloon and a devil-fish flew into the air before his eyes, and a number ten, 36-inch-double jointed, duplex elliptic, steel, bowed bustle attachment, dollar-and-a-half, red-headed hoopskirt, waltzed around and gyrated and opened and shut up and fell on the walk as flat and thin as a restaurant pie ; and the young man straightened himself up, looking as if he wished the tail of Comet No. 2 would sweep him from this fair land; and the young lady came back with a face that resembled a sunset on a fifty-cent chromo, and she picked up the wire contrivance, and then she went towards the east and he went towards the west, and the sun ducked his head behind a cloud to avoid a smile, and three or four looked on, laid down and laughed and doubled themselves up in a manner that would have made a mess of green apples hang their heads in shame, —American Paper-