Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1878 — The Family Hammer. [ARTICLE]

The Family Hammer.

True to life is the following from one of the American humorists, upon that exasperating subject, “The family hummer.” No well-regulated family pretends to be without a hammer. And yet there is nothing that goes to make up the equipment of a domestic establishment that causes one-half as much agony and profanity as a hammer. It is always an old hammer, with a handle that is inclined to sliver, and always bound to slip. The face is always as a full moon and as smooth as glass. When it glides off a nail and mashes a finger, we unhesitatingly deposit it in the back yard, and observe that we will never use it again. But the blood has hardly dried on the rag before we are in searcn of the same hammer again, and ready to make another trial. The result rarely varies, but we never profit by it. The awful weapon goes on knocking off our nails, and mashing whole joints, and slipping off the handle to the confusion of mantel ornaments, and breaking the commandments. Yet we put up with it, and put the handle on again, and lay it away where it won’t get lost, and do up our smarting and mutilated fingers; and, after all, if the outrageous thing should disappear, we kick up a terrible hullaballoo until it is found again. Talk about the tyrannizing influence of a bad habit. It is not to be compared with the family hammer.