Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1879 — About a Barrel. [ARTICLE]

About a Barrel.

Just as the rays of the setting sun were gilding the church-spires and whitewashing the back kitchens of Detroit, the other afternoon, a man and a barrel were discovered at a stairway on Monroe avenue. He was a small man and it was a big barrel, and pedestrians who saw him looking up the stairs and back at the barrel inferred that it was his intention to elevate it to the third story. But how? “I’d rig a tackle and pulley in that third-story window,” said the first man who halted. “That’s your easiest way, and there is no danger of accident.” He leaned against the lamp-post to calculate on the length of a rope and the lifting power required, and along came a second man, who took in the situation at a glance, and said: “Go and get some scantlings fourteen feet long, and lay ’em on the stairs. Then two men can roll that barrel up there as slick as grease.” The little man looked around in a helpless sort of a way, and a third man came blustering up and called out: “ Want to get that barrel up stairs, eh ? Well, now, fasten your pulley at the head of the stairs, and ten men £own here can snake the barrel up in ho time. Where’s your tackle ?” By this time the crowd had increased to twenty, and was pretty evenly divided between a dead lift through one of the front wiqdows and a pulley at the top of the stairs, but the man who suggested the skids had a very loud voice, and was determined to carry his point. Taking off his coat, he said: “I know what I’m talking about, and I say that I can skid that barrel up there alone. You just wait a minute.” He crossed the street to an unfinished building, and returned with a couple of 2x4 scantlings and laid them on the stairs, and the crowd now numbered fifty. “ You want this barrel on the third floor,do you? ”he asked the little man. “ Yes—but—but—” “But what?” “ Why, I was waiting for my wife to get the clothes-horse out of the upper hall. She’s all ready now, and I’ll take it up.” And the little man shouldered the barrel and trotted briskly up stairs between the skids. It was empty. —Detroit Free Press.