Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1878 — Home Decoration. [ARTICLE]

Home Decoration.

Just as quick as farmer Jones painted his barbed-wire fence blue, plain blue, farmer Smith’s wife swore she wasn’t going to be out-done, and the fence around the Smith farm soon blossomed out red, picked with white. Mrs. Jones wasn’t going to have any of the Smith family put on airs over her, and their blue fence was soon trimmed with gold-leaf stripes. Smith trumped over by putting a gilt ball on every barb; and Jones, when last heard from, was painting weather vanes, gilt horses, peacocks, and lightning-rod tips all over his fence, and swearing he’d beat the Smith family if he had to put a cupula and a bay window at every post, and hang a chromo every two feet along the line. We should all pay mere attention to the decoration of our homes. —Keokuk Constitution.

Among the mechanical toys of the Paris Exposition are dolls that swim, dive, and tread water, after the approved human style.