Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1890 — Shakey Dinkleman Gets an Exercise Machine for the Old Man. [ARTICLE]

Shakey Dinkleman Gets an Exercise Machine for the Old Man.

When Mr. Spelmeyer came over to borrow the stepladder from Mr. Dinkleman, the other morning, the old fellow let him have it without a murmur,! and in reply to Jakey’s look of inquiry : he said: “Shakey, I find oud somedings. One goot durn deserves anoder. Spelmeyer do somedings for me, so I do dot by him, see?” Jakey said that he did. Two hours later the dutiful son came into the store with a little box and laid it down on the counter. “Vot is dot, Shakey?” asked his mother. “Some exercises for de old man,” he replied. He opened it then and explained that it was a galvanic battery—one of the kind on which the power is increased or lessened by turning a crank. “I feel nervous to-day,” yawned the senior Dink as he drew near the counter, and then, as his eye rested on the machine, he asked: “Vot is dot, Shakey?” “Dot is to take avay vot is nervousness called.” “How is dot, eh ?” Jakey explained, and the next instant the old man’s hands were pressed around the handles of the wires leading to the batteries. Jakey gave the handle a slight turn. His father’s face twisted. Jakey turned the handle a little more, and the old man’s hands jumped up and down, while his wife looked at him and laughed. “Dot is enough, Shakey,” he stammered, as- the good son gave him a little more of the power. But Jakey didn’t stop. He just went right on turning that handle, and his father grew red in the face and yelled like a Sioux Indian. “By Shupiter, Shakey, if you don’t stop dot dings I kick dot dam lightning factory to Hoboken. Mine God, I am: burning. Rebecca, save me.” And as Jakey turned off the current and dodged behind a packing box his father sank limp and mad on the floor. “Oh, Shakey, you are von bad boy,“ he groaned. “You most kill your poor ' fader. Vot for you turn dot machine so much?” “You know vot you say dis morning ?* “Vot is dot?” “Von good turn deserves anoder, don’d it?”— New York Mercury. The particles of matter producing shootir g stars may be astonishingly min ute. In are cent investigation Mr. C. C. Hutchins has found that, on the supposition that the rays of the meteor have the same ratio of visible to total energy as those of the standard candle, the mass of a meteor at a distance of fifty miles, having a magnitude equal to Vega and a velocity of twenty-five miles a second, would be about four and one-half grains if it continued two seconds. A lump of the Emmett Co. (Iowa) iron meteorite burned in au electric current gave ten times the light of the candle, hence the mass of a meteor giving the light of a first magnitude star moving with parabolic velocity, and lasting two seconds, is less tluui one-half grain. j