Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 January 1885 — Putting Up a Coal Stove. [ARTICLE]

Putting Up a Coal Stove.

Mr. Bogfloat ma one of those mildtempered, benevolent men who never said a cross word to any one, and would go without his dinner rather than hurt tiie feelings of a dog. Me had been married only two years, and in that time he had never said a cross word to his wife, and she always thought him as near an angel as mortal man could get and live on earth in these days of political campaigns, prize fights and ether crime. He never took lunch down town, never talked anything except business with the girls at the telephone exchance, and belonged to neither lodge nor elnb; in short, he had always been a model husband, and all of Mrs. Bogfioat's lady acquaintances envied her, which made her bosom swell with womanly pride. There came a day, however, that showed Mrs. Bogfleat that with all her husband’s tenderness and taffy he had a temper, and although it took two years for her to find it out, when it was aroused it was no common, every-day temper, but a regular snorter, one that would make a section boss on' a railroad turn green with envy. Mr. Bogfloat had just finished his supper, and was preparing to sit down to enjoy his evening paper, after a hard day’s work, when his wife said: “Hubby, love, would you mind getting the coal stove out of the wood-shed, and putting it up this evening? The hired man is ont with a torch-light procession and I forgot to ask him until he had left.” Mr. Bogfloat was somewhat staggered at his wife’s request; for in all his uneventful career he had never held a wrestling match with a coal stove, and didn’t know just exactly how to begin. Howevex, he consented, and, pulling off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and, after wading through kindling-wood, old peach baskets, broken bedsteads, etc., etc., he at last found the coal stove •half buried behind some blocks of soft coal. He went manfully to work clearing away the coal, and when the task was nearly finished, he was surprised to .find that every little while he was on the point of saying damn. A sort of uncontrollable desire, as it were, to swear seemed to possess him, and the more he worked the greater was his desire to say or do something wicked. The coal stove wasn’t very large, and, after puffing and blowing with an occasional “darn the darned luck,” he managed to shoulder the 'thing, and, with the exception of falling down two steps, with the stove on top of him, succeeded in getting- it into the house with no more serious injuries than a black eye and a couple of loose teeth. Mr. Bogfloat never was pretty, and the black eye and jammed mouth didn’t add to his beauty at all. Mrs. Bogfloat was sitting in the other room sewing some buttons on her better-half’s unmen; tionables, singing softly to herself, “Papa’s pants will soon fit Willie, ” when her dainty shell-like ear was greeted with a sound that froze the blood in her veins. “Where in Chicago are the limbs to jthis stove,” and then followed a noise that sounded as though some one was playing football with a tin pan. Frightened almost to death, Mrs. B. went into the other room, and there in the center of the floor stood Mr. B. with his hair on end, and his shirt ripped open in front, beating the floor with a coal hod. When she caught sight of that old gold eye, bleeding mouth, and coal dust, all blended together so artistically, she collapsed like a rubber balloon, and went off into a dead faint, but soon regained consciousness, and after hunting around for about half an hour, succeeded in finding the legs of the stove. Thinking that everything would go smoothly now, she returned to her sewing once more, and left Mr. B. to fight it out with the stove. She had been seated but a few minutes when again she was horrified to hear wailing and gnashing of teeth, and on going into the other room found her husband trying to fit two lengths of stove-pipe of the same circumference together, and after pounding the thing all out of shape he stood upon the step-ladder, howling and tearing his hair. People passing the house thought that Bogfloat was killing his wife, and called the patrol wagon; but when it. was ascertained what had caused the trouble, the crowd dispersed, and one old grass widower shook his head as much as to say that he had been there. The stove was left for the hired man to fix, and now Mrs. B. is very careful what she asks her husband to do, while he would freeze as stiff as a pickerel rather than go near that blasted mass of cast iron.— Feck's Sun.