Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1890 — He Wanted a Wife. [ARTICLE]

He Wanted a Wife.

While Kate Cummings sat on her father’s mowing machine, at the farm up in Winnebago County, Wisconsin, cutting the late clover for seed, she won the heart of Rufus Sloan, a farmhand. Rufus had a pitchfork and was tossing the hay where the sun had cured it sufficient to demand a turning. He knew all about that, and could save clover for feed or seed equal to any man in the county, but he didn’t know as much as a child about winning a woman!s heart. Every time Kate came around, driving the team steadily and pushing the sickle a little farther into the standing grain, Rufus would throw kisses to her and bestow other little attentions upon her. She did not like that, and said so. Rufus asked her to stop the horses, as he had something to tell her. She complied, and then he said he wanted a wife and offered her the pioposition. She refused him with scorn, and he jabbed her with the pitchfork. Kate screamed and the horses started. Rufus, in the hurry of avenging unrequited love, got on the wrong side of the moweri and bounded like a deer when he heard the rattlety-clip of the sicklebar right behind him. Kate saw her advantage and she chased him around the field, screaming that she would mow him down and cut his legs off with the machine. She had a fair field and no favor, and if there had not been an occasional stump in the way she would have undoubtedly done as she threatened. After Rufus had raced aiound in front of that mowing machine for about half an hour he managed to reach a fence and escape. He was arrested and tried for assault, and Kate brought her wounds, left, by the tines of the pitchfork, and had the pleasure of seeing the young man sent to jail.