Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 184, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1911 — HE WAS NOT THANKFUL [ARTICLE]

HE WAS NOT THANKFUL

My neighbor Cooley suffered a good deal last winter from rheumatism la his breast, and his wife was badly frightened about It for fear it should end in consumption. Cooley could not be Induced to try any remedy tar the trouble, and Mrs. Cooley was nearly worried to death about It. At last she determined to try strategy. Bbe made a dry mustard plantar and one night while he was asleep she sewed It upon the Inside of his undershirt, so that it would Just cover the rheumatic place. Cooley dressed himself in the morning, wholly unsuspicious of the presence of the plaster, and went downstairs. At the breakfast table, while he was talking to his wife, he suddenly stopped, looked cross-eyed, and a spasm bf pain passed over his face. Then he took up the thread of the conversation agaifi and want on. He was in the midst of an explanation of the political situation, when all at once be cessed again, grew red in the face and exclaimed: “I wonder what in the No. it can’t be anything wrong.” Mrs. Cooley asked what was the matter, and Cooley said: “O, it's that Infernal old rheumatism again; come back awful. But I never felt It exactly the same way before. Kinder stings me." Mrs. Cooley said sbe was sorry. Thsn Mr. Cooley began again, and was Just showing her how the ravages of the grasshoppers in the west, and the potato-bug in the east, would affect the election by making the people discontented, and so likely to strike at the party in power, when he suddenly dropped the subject, and Jumping up, eaid: “Thunder and lightning! what’s that? Ouch! O. Moses! I feel’s if I had a shoveful of hot coals inside my undershirt.” , “Must be that rheumatism, getting worse,” said Mrs. Cooley sympathetically. “0, gracious, no! It’s something worse than rheumatism. Feels like burning Into my skin. Ouch! Ow-wow-wow! It’s awful! • I can’t stand it another minute. I believe it’s cholera, or something, and I’m going to die!” “Do try to be calm, Mr. Cooley/*^ “Calm!" How can a man be calm with a volcano boiling over under hie shirt. Go ’way from here. Get out of the way, quick, while I go upstairs and undress. Murder-r-r-rs but it hurts! Let me get out. quick!” Then he rushed up to the bedroom and stripped off his clothes. His cheat was the color of a boiled lobster; but he couldn’t for the life of him tell what was the matter. Then his eye rested upon something white on his shirt. He picked up the garment and examined it. Ten minutes later he came slowly downstairs with a dry mustard plaster in his hand, while thunder clothed his brow. Going up to Mrs. Cooley, he shook the plaster under her nose, sad said in a auppressed voice: “Did you put that thing in my clothes?” “I did it for the best, John,” she said. “I thought—” “Oh. nsver mind what you thought. You’ve taken the bark clean off of my bosom, so I’m as raw ss a sirloin steak, and I’ll probably never be well again as long as I live. That lets you out. You play no more tricks like that on ms. Now, mind Than ha slammed the door and went out. Mrs. Cooley doesn’t know to this day exactly what effect the grasshoppers are going to have on the election. —N. W. Weekly.