Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 91, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1910 — POWER OF THE IMAGINATION. [ARTICLE]

POWER OF THE IMAGINATION.

Illustrated to Mr. BiUtopa by His Experience with a Thermometer. “I don’t know when I’ve been so put out by a little thing," said Mr. Billtops, according to the New York Sun, “as I was by the discovery that my thermometer was four degrees wrong; it gave me a real hard little jolt for one thing, and then it made me realize that for two years I had been making myself uncomfortable over nothing. “Out of doors I can stand the cold as well as anybody; but Indoors I like to be warm; 72 is about what suits me in the house. “Two years ago I bought a new thermometer, which I hung up in my room, and I haven’t been warm there in winter since. “Other parts Of the house seemed all right; in the parlor and in the dining room they got it up to 72 apparently without any trouble, but in my room it never seemed to get above 68. I didn’t shiver, but I never could get really warm, and one day I said to Mrs. Billtops: “ ‘Elizabeth, why can’t we get the heat up in my room? Why should my room be the only cold room in the house?’ “Mrs. Billtops comes in and stands around a minute and then she says: “ ‘Why, Ezra, it’s just as warm here as it is anywhere else.’ “‘Nonsense!’ I says to her. ’Look at that thermometer! It’s only 68 here and it’s 72 this minute in the parlor.’ “But Mrs. Billtops insisted that it was as warm in my room as it ,was anywhere else, and she said that probably the trouble was with my thermometer; that my thermoipeter didn’t mark correctly, and I said it did, and I’d show her conclusively that the thermometer was all right. I’d prove to her that 'my room was cold. I’d put my thermometer right alongside the one in the parlor and she’d see it go up in no time to 72. “So we put it out there, but it didn’t budge—that is, upward—but it did go down one degree. Standing side by side with the parlor thermometer marking 72, mine went down to 67; they were 5 degrees apart. “The temperature in the parlor, actually one degree colder than in my own room, had been entirely agreeable to me, while in my room, though it was actually warmer, T had, misled by my thermometer, never been able to get thoroughly and comfortably warmed up. Another illustration of the power of imagination. “Now I’ve got a correct thermometer and I don’t have any more trouble over the heat.”