Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 June 1891 — Couldn’t Help Herself. [ARTICLE]

Couldn’t Help Herself.

Watts—So she refused you, did she? Dumley—Yes; said she wouldn’t even be a sister to me. That made me mad, and now she’s got to be one to me. Watts—How is that? Dumley—l proposed to her sister and was accepted. He Got His Dollar. A strapping young man sat in the Erie depot, across the Hudson, the other day, waiting for his train. He had twelve scythe-stones in a bundle on his right hand, and a cuckoo clock in a box on his left. As he was looking around the waiting-room he gave a sudden start. Then he started some more. Then he rose up and walked over to a flashily dressed man about forty years old, whom any one w’ould have spotted as a fakir, and asked: “Don’t you travel around with a i?oth-powder ?” “iTo, sir,” was the sharp reply. “Wasn’t you up in Elizabeth last fall ?” “No, sir.” “Yes, you was, and I’ll bet on it. You are the same durned feller, and I know it!” “Sir! What does this demanded the other. “It means that I was in Elizabeth last fall and bought a box of your tooth powder. You changed a five-dol-lar bill, and darn my hide if you hornswaggle me out of a dollar!” “Sir!” “No use, old fellow! I knowed yo the minit I got eyes on ye. Same big diamond pin—same red neck-tie—same nose, humped up in the middle like a circus camel! I want that dollar ?” “This is outrageous! I’ll call a policeman!” shouted the fakir. “Call and be durned to ye, but I’ll lick ye first! You either come down with that dollar or I’ll wallop ye till ye can’t holler ?” “Look here!” replied the other in much milder tones, “you are mistaken. It was my cousin who was-in Elizabeth. He is dead now.” “Then I’ll take it out of you!” “He is dead, as I remarked, and rather than have any blot resting on his fair escutcheon I will pay you the dollar.” “That’s all right! I don’t know anything about ’scutcheons, but I’ve got to have that dollar or pull hair! I’ve bin lookin’ for that hump-backed nose all over the face of the earth. And I’ve laid awake nights thinkin’ how I’d make ye holler like an Injun if ever I got my paws on ye!” He was given the dollar, and the fakir disappeared at once, and the young man explained to those about him: “I’m almost sorry he gave up so soon. I |was just achin’ clean down to my toes to lick him all over a forty-acre lot!”— New York World. Some one has calculated the world’s present stock of champagnes at 110,256,000 bottles. That which fewest persons can do, the greatest number try to do. Walking the plank is not the same as making a board walk.