Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1910 — A VIXEN VANQUISHED. [ARTICLE]

A VIXEN VANQUISHED.

Reformation Accoinpllahed by a Load of New Tinware. Shrews and vixens in colonial times, although the ruder law of the day sometimes brought them to the public humiliation of ducking-stool or scold-ing-bridle, went oftenest, then as now, unpunished. One notable shrew of old Newbury, however, wife to the early German Immigrant, Caspar Keezar, —-the Cobbler Keezar of one of Whittier’s poems,—brought about her own punishment and reformation in a curious way. Goodman Keezar was an excellent when he would work; but he was lazy, shiftless, a merry ne’er-do-well, fonder of entertaining his less Imaginative neighbors with the songs, legends and fairy-tales of the far-away fatherland than of attending soberly to their shoes. * < His wife had no patience with such trifling, which rendered him no such good provider as she felt her housewifely abilities deserved, and there were frequent painful scenes ofdomestlc strife In their little house by the Merrimac, not unfrequently emphasized by a flying kettle or a hurtling saucepan from the irate vixen’s hand. One particular furious scene occurred because she found her household utensils running low/ Keezar fled before her wrath, nor did he dare return without a peace-offering. His pockets held the belated payments for several jobs, so he tramped to Boston —forty miles—ahd there expended it ail for tin and pewter ware. 'The next day/ comically panoplied

in his glittering purchases, which he had disposed as best he could about his person, he tramped home again. Just at sunset he approached his own door, the tins clattering with each lagging step, and the fiery of the big red sifiking sun flashing weirdly as he moved. Goodwife Keezar, with some neighbors who were calling, heard tHs noise, and came hastily to the dooiy, but one look was enough,' and they scattered and fled shrieking before what they never doubted to be a blazing demon from the nether world. Only one of them did not fly; Goodwife Keezar herself,-who dropped weeping and entreating before the frightful messenger, sent, she believed, either to rebuke her for her sins or carry her away to punishment. Not until her amazed husband had pushed past her and cast his burden jangling and rattling, to the floor, could she be convinced that he was himself, and not a flend from the pit. Even when her terror passed, it left a salutary remembrance; and the peaceofferings Keezar had brought from Boston never served for weapons or missiles, as their predecessors had done, nor for any uses inconsistent with domestic peace.—Youth’s Companion. *