Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 December 1883 — Mr. Jones Has an Off Day. [ARTICLE]

Mr. Jones Has an Off Day.

Mr. .Tones, although he is of a very sanguine temperament, has days when the world is all hollow and his doll stuffed with sawdust. One of these occurred .to him recently when he put on his winter overcoat for the first time and started out to catch the next car. He caught the car; also caught his foot in the door, and was shut up by the driver, who, when he saw his mistake, released him so suddenly that he was shot into the lap of an old lady, who had only breath enough left to scream: “Mercy sakes alive, man! Take me money, but spare me life!” Jones apologized, and then smiled at one or two whom he knew, but there seenred a coldness and constraint on the part of the passengers, and a determination to avoid him. The ladies buried their noses in their handkerchiefs, and the gentlemen threw open the car windows and glared at Jones as if they intended to throw him out, while the old lady aforesaid was heard to mutter something that sounded like “pestilence. ” “Board of Health ought to be informed of this, ” said a red-faced man, angrily; “it’s a criminal offense, that’s what it is, for a fumigated patient to leave the hospital and go about in public!” Two ladies said they felt ill and left the car. Then the red-faced man addressed J ones. “Can you reconcile it with your conscience,” he asked, severely, “to go about like a walking nuisance among your fellow men ? Have you no regard for the health of the community ?” and he covered his face with a polka dot spread. “Good heavens! what do you mean ?” demanded the alarmed Jones. “I mean, sir, to protest against your presence in this public place, carrying an odor of camphor and other disinfectants, which show that you are an escaped fever patient. It is absoltftely outrageous, sir!” , “Ha-ha-ha!” laughed Jones, hysterically. “He-he-he! —fever patient—escaped! Ho-ho! Because I forgot to take some lumps of gum camphor out of the pockets of my coat —disinfectants —ha-ha-a*a!” The disgusted passenger deft the car and Mr. Jones put his feet up on the cushions and laughed softly to think what a joke he had to tell Maria when he got home. But who knows what a day will bring forth! Jones was going down to the postoffice a few hours later, and as he walked airily down Griswold street, thinkidg of the -rise in dried apples, he twirled a natty cane he carried and sang with a voice up to concert pitch a line from one of his favorite war songs: “Let me like a soldier fa-a-all!” Some ladies were passing, and they looked at him with that admiration he always excites in the female breast, and he raised himself on tip-toes, swelled out like the impresario of an opera troupe, and in a voice several octaves higher, warbled: “Le-het me like a so-ho-ldier fa-all.” Then he stubbed his toe on a stepladder, on which a small boy was washing windows, and it climbed all over him, and the soap and water extinguished all his martial valor, and when the hook and ladder company rescued him he only uttered one word, which seemed to be a Welsh combination of m’s and n’s. Mrs. Jones was sitting at the parlor window knitting a pair of plaid silk earmuffs for a Christmas present to Jeptha when the ambulance drove qp with his remains; she counted fourteen “thread under, thread over” —then she went to the door and identified him. “And you promised me you wouldn’t touch a drop of anything to-day, ” she said, in a four-volume voice, as she looked up and down the street. “Take him round to the coal-shed, driver, and leave him there till he sobers off. ” Poor J ones! — Detroit Free Press.