Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1883 — The Old Gum Shoe. [ARTICLE]

The Old Gum Shoe.

Do you remember the old-fashioned rubber shoe?* Ah, that was the shoe worth having. It was none of your flimsy, trim, shiny abominations of the present degenerate day. It was a great, clumsy, ill-looking moccasin, that had neither form nor symmetry, but it would wear out a dozen of our ordinary modern shoes. What an art was it to put the thing on! Turning it half inside out, you put your toe into its interior, and then with a tug and a jerk you pulled the heel in place, and you were inside a shoe that qlung to you tighter than a brother. And what fun was it at school to dimple in the toe, place a spit ball in the hollow, and then, with fingers inside, to send the ball with catapultic power smack into the face- of the studious scholar on the opposite side of the room! Alas! there is no fun in the modern rubber shoe, and but veiy little wear. Joy and utility have given place to mere beauty of outline and prosaic comfort. —Boston Transcript There are 622 different farm gates for use of farmers, and the farmerknows it as well as any one else. The great advantage in his profession is in always having time enough to let down the fence. The Albany, N. Y., Argus observes: Judge McGowan, this city, was oared of rbeamstisgi by 81. ftoobi OU,

Mb. Jonathan Bowkbs, of Blanches ter, 0., writes: “I am 72 years of age. Ikeep Guysott’s Yellow Dock and Sarsaparilla always in the house A dose now and then makes me feel Hke a boy. It gives me a good appetite and keeps me from having dyspepsia.”