Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 176, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 July 1911 — Amusing Her [ARTICLE]

Amusing Her

"What do you do with all that fruit you’re carrying home?" inquired the proprietor of the cigar stand. “I see you with a. crate about every other day.". "I keep pigs," replied the regular customer. "I find it hard work sometimes to tempt their appetites, but they generally like a little fresh fruit. The raspberries that I tried them on yesterday seemed to please them, so I thought I’d take ’em some more. Raspberries are fattening, too, and give the pork a nice flavor. You take a hog that’s been fed on raspberries -- " "Oh, cut it out," said the cigarstand man. "But, honest, how large a family have you got?" "Myself and the madam," replied the regular customer. "She's preserving. When it comes to putting up fruit that’s where the lady shines." "She puts up the fruit and you put up the money," suggested the cigar stand man. "That’s the idea,” said the regular customer. "I furnish the fruit and the glass jars and the rubber bands and the sugar and pay the gas bills and she does all the rest. It’s division of labor. Fine business.” "I don’t believe it pays to put up fruit," said the cigar stand man. “We find it cheaper to buy what preserves we ned. Just about as good, too." "You must be crazy,” said the regular customer. "Cheaper! Say, aU these berries cost me is 10 cents a box, buying them down on the street. It doesn’t take me more than hour or so to go there and get ’em either and the walking’s good exercise. There’s a little outlay for jars, of course, but if you can manage to keep them they'll do to use again. The sugar’s a trifle. I can buy quite a sack of it for a five-dollar bill." "Well," said the cigar stand man, "if you flgure that up and your time and your wife's time, how do you stand then?" "My wife’s time really doesn’t count," said the regular "When she’s busy preserving, which is most of the summer and fall, she can always make a little time by just throwing a snack of some sort on the" table for dinner Instead of putting in an hour or so cooking a meal. Think of having all kinds of jams and jellies and preserves down cellar all the year around. No benzoate of soda and glucose dope, but the pure article made from the real fruit that you’ve selected yourself. Plums, cheries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, grapes, peaches —all kinds. Any time that you want a pie there’s the filling right on hand —or it would be on hand if we kept it.” "Eat it up about as fast as you make it, eh?” "Give it away little faster than we make It,” corrected the regular customer. "That’s the great trouble. You see, my wife is of a liberal disposition, and she’s proud of the jellies she makes, so we don't get so much of a show at it ourselves. If you came to the house, for Instance, you’d get some raspberry preserves for supper. You’d naturally say that it was the best that you ever tasted when the lady told you that she’d make it herself. Then she gets all swelled up over It and Insists on your taking home a Jar to >our wife. If it’s a relation that comes she’ll get a half dosen jars out, just as like as not. If the milkman makes some remark about the jelly looking good enough to eat when he pokes his head in the kitchen he gets a jar as well. If anybody gets sick it’s a jar for them." "What do you do It for, then?" asked the cigar-stand man. ‘ "A woman has got to amuse herself some way,” said the regular customer. "Putting up preserves is about as harmless and cheap as any." —Chicago Dally News.