Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1910 — SMART OLD MAN. [ARTICLE]

SMART OLD MAN.

Turned Butter Buck Into Ap»lea by Stirring; It Juat Rluht. “Speaking of natural born fools,” observed the man in the mackintosh, “reminds me”—— “la this going to be a bit of personal experience?” Interrupted the man who had his feet on the table. “Reminds me of old Lickladder, who used”to drive the stage between Ripley and Mount Sterling, away back in the ’so’s. Somebody once told him that when you make apple butter you can make it back into apples again if it isn’t good, provided you go at it right.” “I seem to have heard that story before,” said the man who was smoking the rank cigar. ’ “Yes, but you never heard of old Lickladder. The peculiar thing about him is that he believed it. He lived by himself in a little old log cabin down on the banks of Crooked Creek. Did all his own cooking. I happened in on him once when he was ’> old were you then?” queried the man with the white spot in his mustache. “Doesn’t make, any difference how old I was then or how old I am now. I’m talking about old Lickladder. I dropped in once, as I was saying, and found him stirring something in a big brass kettle. I asked him what he was doing. He said he had made a lot of apple butter, but It didn’t suit him, and he was making it back into apples.” “Yes, that’s the same story,” said the man with the green goggles. “My grandfather used to tell me he read it in the Prairie Telegraph when he was a boy.” “Your grandfather never read anything in the Prairie Telegraph about old Lickladder. Permit me to'mention the fact again, gentlemen, that this chapter of history refers principally to him. I said: “ ‘You gullible old fool, haven’t you sense enough to know you can’t do that?’ “He stopped stirring, and he says to me: ‘“Look here, I don’t want you to talk that away to mg. You’re disturbin’ the count.’ “ ‘What count?’ I said. “Then he took the kettle off the fire for a minute or two, and he says: “ ‘You reckon I don’t know what I’m doin’, but I do. When you make apple butter the right way is to stir it from right to left all the time an’ count the number of times you stir till you git it all done. You mustn’t make any mistake about it, either. When it’s dons you stop stirrin’ and take it off the fire. Then you taste it. If you don’t use it, put it back on the fire, stir it from left to right jist the exac’ number of times you stirred it from right to left, and it’s apples again.’ “ ‘And you believe that?’ I said. “ ‘That’s right,’ he said.” "People didn’t say ‘That’s right’ In those days,” objected the man with the frazzled trousers. I “Old Lickladder did. He put that kettle back on the fire and began stirring and counting again. I sat down and watched him. He kept it up for three-quarters of an hour, and you may believe me or not, gentlemen, but with my own eyes 1 saw that apple butter turn back into apples again, all nicely quartered, and they were swimming around In two gallons of sweet cider he had put in that brass kettle tof boll ’em In.” j The man in the mackintosh ceased talking. | Profound silence reigned in the group for the next five minutes.—New 1 York Evening Sun.