Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 288, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1910 — Whittling Sticks. [ARTICLE]

Whittling Sticks.

The things that one finds in the shops of the great cities are very strange. A writer in the New York Sun recently cited an instance which he vouches for as true, but which reads more like a figment of the imagination than anything else. “On the counter of a stationery store, beside the lead pencil box,” he wrote, “X saw a bunch of six-inch lengths of plain wood, labeled, ‘Whittling sticks.’ “ ‘What’s that?’ I asked. “The stationer replied that the wood was just what the sign said it was, sticks to whittle on. To whittle is natural for a boy,’ said the stationer. Tt keeps him out of a lot of worse mischief, but city streets afford mighty poor pickings in the way of Whittling wood. A boy might nose around here all day and not find a sliver of wood fit to whittle on. A friend from the country sends me a bunch of sticks every week and I sell them three sticks for a cent.’ ' "Sells them three for a cent! And that’s New York! No more picayune business like that for me. Next week I light out for a country where a boy can whittle down a whole tree and nobody stops him.”