Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1896 — A CONGRESSMAN’S COMPLIMENT. [ARTICLE]

A CONGRESSMAN’S COMPLIMENT.

And the Way It was Accepted by the Pretty Mountain Maid. A somewhat gay and gallant member of the House, unusually handsome, even for a member, was telling to a small group of listeners, of which a Star reporter was one, some of his campaign experiences. "On one .trip to the mountains,” be said, after narrating several good ones, "I was riding along a road up a picturesque valley with my campaign companion, when we met a buxom, pinkchecked, good-looking country girl on foot. As I spoke to her after the custom of the country, she stopped us.” “ ‘Have you seed anything of a redheaded, freckle-faced feller down the crick?’ she inquired. “ ‘We have met three or four men in the last hour,’ I replied, ‘and one of them was red-headed. How old was he?’ “ "Bout my age, I reckon.’ “ ‘So young as that?’ I asked with all my courtliness. “ ‘That ain’t so powerful young,’ she said, without the slightest apparent comprehension of my compliment. ‘He’s twenty-one and so’m I.’ “ ‘The man we met with the red-head was twice that old. lie couldn’t have been the one you were looking for, could he?’

“‘I reckon not. The man I’m lookin’ for and me wuz to git married yistiddy, an’ when the time come he wazn’t thar. Pap started up the road fer him with a gun this mornin’ an’ I come this way.’ “This made it interesting and I at once felt it to be my duty to offer my assitance. “ ‘Tell me his name,’ I said, ‘and I’ll make Inquiries along the road.’ “ ‘Sim Johnson, and I’d give a tenacre farm to git holt uv him.’ “Her anger heightened her color, and put such a brightness in her eyes that she was positively handsome, and I just couldn’t help trying another delicate compliment on her. “ ‘You must excuse me,’ I smiled and bowed and. sent forth my softest glances, “but w’ith such a pretty girl as you are after me, I’d like to be Sim Johnson. “This time it was a ten-strike. “ ‘Wall,’ she responded, as she looked me over critically, not to say admiringly, ‘I hain’t no objections.’ “It was the only time I ever laid down before a bluff,” concluded the member, “but that one knocked me flat and I never did know how I got away.” —Washington Star.