Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1877 — He Fired a Gun. [ARTICLE]

He Fired a Gun.

Old Mr. Blanchard, who lives out on West Hill, took down his son’s doublebarreled gun yesterday morning and went out into the. back yard. “I have not,” he said, “ fired off a gun for thirtyseven years;” and then he pointed the gun at the barn and fired. It does not definitely appear from the evidence which made the most noise—the hired man, who immediately emerged from the barn, carrying himself along with both hands, or old Mr. Blanchard, lying on his back between the ash-barrel and the fence, trying to hold his jaw to its place, or the stranger on the other side of the fence, with a brick in each hand, his hat caved in. and a black eye all over his cheek, calling out to know what “ hoof-bound, blear-eyed, four-legged,

turkey-trodden, shambling, cock-eyed, clodhopping idiot hit me with that gun ?” Mr. Blanchard has since been heard to remark that he didn’t want to fire a gun for thirty-seven years more.—Burlington Hawk-Eye.