Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1910 — USEFUL DEPREDATIONS. [ARTICLE]

USEFUL DEPREDATIONS.

Old Mrs. Greenleaf never had any trouble with her neighbors, new or old. "You expect folks to treat you about right, and let ’em know that you expect it, and they’ll act according,”, she often said. "How did you feel when you saw that new boy from the corner house shaking down your pears?” asked a friend, for the sake of hearing Mrs. Greenleaf tell the story, which had already gone the rounds of the village. “Feel!" echoed the old lady. “Why, I felt lively and pleasant. I see most everything from the porch, kind of t)Jd away as I am, and the minute I saw those brown knickerbockers of his crawling from their barn roof to the wall ud into my Bartlett pear-tree, I stepped into the house and picked me out a good big basket, and then I hurried down to the tree before it had stopped shaking. “ ‘You’re a real kind boy,’ I said to him. ‘I presume you’ve noticed I haven’t any spry young folks round here. Now you give it two or three more good shakes, and then come down and fill up this basket for me, for I can’t stoop as well as I used, and I’ll give you a couple of nice Juicy ones to take home to your mother; and when I go over to see her tomorrow, I’ll ask her if she ever tasted anything better.’ “I had to keep at him a little to make him shake hard enough,” added Mrs. Greenleaf, Innocently, “but he did real well in the end, and I gave him some for himself, and told him I should know just where to look next time I wanted anything picked—and then he went home. I don’t anticipate a mite of trouble with that boy.”