Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1894 — HERE’S MEANNESS FOR YOU. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HERE’S MEANNESS FOR YOU.

A Wealthy Fanner Act* a* Hl* Own Undertaker to Save Money. Joseph Witcher, a wealthy farmer at Bloomingdale, in the Adirondacks, died the other day, leaving all his money to his brother George, himself worth about $75,000/ Immediately upon his brother’s death George visited a firm of woodworkers and wanted a coffin made. He picked out the lumber himself, the poorest in the yard and badly worm-eaten. The

firm refused to allow their men to make the coffin, and Witcher carried the rotten lumber away to his home, where-he made his brother’s coffin himself. Leather taken from old boots was cut Into strips for the handles. Then, placing the body in this crude affair, he loaded the coffin on his wagon and, with his old nag attached, drove with It to Plattsburg, eighty miles away, through the wildest parts of New York State. His reason for taking the body to Plattsburg was that he had a lot at that place, and, he said, land is too high at Bloomingdale to buy another. If Editor Stead had had any real conception of the corruption In Chicago he would have begun on the City Council. You may never knock the bull’s eye, but that is no good reason why you should not aim at it.