Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1883 — SOMEBODY'S MOTHER-IN-LAW. [ARTICLE]

SOMEBODY'S MOTHER-IN-LAW.

TpiSTaTtoSTwas" htre^h^befare the correctional tribunal charged with assault and battery. Hie account d the affair, given in au seriousness, ia worth reproducing. “Yoa see, this is how it came about. I had had an old lady in my carriage, driving her about lor some four hounL and said Ito myself, ‘ I'm in lor a good tip’ for she wore jewelry and diamonds and all that. Well, and so at the oorner of rue Aboukir the old lady was getting out when—vlan! up comes an omnibus, knocks her down and kills my fare dead as a herring. I tell you, it’ll make you lftiiffh,* 1 The Court—“lt is rather ludicrous, p6rliftp6« M Jarvey—“ Not yet,, but it will be by-and-by. Well, and so I jumped down ; a crowd gathered and I gathered with it, and says Ito myself, * i hie is all very well, but who’s going to pay me for four hours?’ At that minute a gentleman comes running up (it’ll make you laugh) and looks at the oorpse and cries : ‘ Great heavens, it’s my mother-in-law !’ and says I to myself, ‘That makes my four hours all safe,’ and so I told the gentleman that it was I who had been driving the old lady. All right; we put her into the carnage and took her home, and I helped him to carry her upstairs, and then I hung round the rbom, for says Ito myself, ‘The son-in-law’ll settle with me, and as he ooncs in for the property he won’t be apt to beat me down.’ Well; and so be began to say, ‘ How on earth am I going to break this to my wife when she comes in?’ and then I withdrew into the ante-roem, not wishing to intrude the subjeot of the fare on him at that moment Just then in comes the servant-girl screaming, * She’s coming I’—(it’ll make you laugh)—and quid I to myself, * This isall very well, but if they’d pay me I’dt just as soon go*-’ Still I thought thetime I waited would be charged for.. And so then she comes in, his wife does,, and when she sees the long faces she screams out, ‘What’s the matter?' What’s the matter? Oh, it’s mat' Where is she?’ Her husband says, ‘ She’s on the sofa in the sitting-room P and she runs in, and he follows her, and I follow him, and she—it’ll make you laugh I—she flops right down alongside of the dead woman, and shrieks, 'Why, it isn’t ma at all!’ If you had only seen her husband’s face—he didn't come into the property—and mine—l was ont my four hours. Naturally, because, as it wasn’t his mother-in-law, he didn’t ows me anything.” The Court— “WelL if he didn't owe you anything, why did you insist that he should pay you?" Jarvey—“Well, you see, I wanted him to pay me for the time after he put his fake mother-in-law in my carnage, and for the time I been waiting at his house. Thereupon he gets mad and asks me who had told me to wait? Thereupon I tell him that I hud been unwilling to ask him for my fan in his hour of bereavement; Thereupon he abuses me, and offers -me thirty sous. Thereupon I ask him what he Is giving me— besides, we charge mere for a corpse than for a living pamenger. Thereupon he says, ‘ What do I want of that body here? Take it to- the police station and I’ll give yon tarty sous.’ Thereupon I woukhtft and so—” The Court instructed .the ptiaomer that he should have .cited the eemptainant before thejuge de paix, and not to have struck him, and senh him to jail for three days*