Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 68, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 March 1910 — In Fair Preservation. [ARTICLE]

In Fair Preservation.

One winter some years ago, a large whale was killed near one of the Atlantic seaports. Its carcass was taken ashore, loaded on two flat cars, and transported far Inland, to cities where a whale was a curiosity that people would pay to see. It was necessary, cf course, that the exhibitions should be given in unheated halls, and as It was a cold winter, the whale kept in a fairly good state of preservation for a considerable number of weeks before it became imperative to close the amusement season, so far as that particular cetacean was concerned. While it was on exhibition in Chicago a merchant from a little town in Southern Illinois, who happened to be in the city on business, .went to see it. When he returned home he could talk of nothing else. ___ “You may think you’ve seen big fish,” he said, “but unless you’ve come across a whale somewhere, you haven’t.” “How long was it, Jeff?” somebody asked him. “It was mighty close to ninety feet, and about fifteen feet thick. It was the biggest thing I ever saw out of the water that swims in the water.” “Well,” said the village doctor, "you didn't expect to find it a smelt, did you?” “No,” he answered, hesitatingly, “but it did, just a little.”