Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 222, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1913 — Jasper Buys Half of a Skyscraper for $39 [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Jasper Buys Half of a Skyscraper for $39

CINCINNATI, O. —Jasper Johnson of Slate Creek, Tenn., brought a load of peaches to town the other day.. The Saturday afternoon trade netted him just ssl for the fruit He bought his wife a new calico gown and the kids some shoes and decided to spend Sunday in the city. He knows better now. With the air of a man who is determined to see all that is to be seen and to understand It well, be stood on the opposite side of the street and gazed at the 34-story skyscraper of an insurance company. While Jasper was thinking how it stood all over the court house down home, a neatly dressed stranger slipped up quietly beside him and began to laud the new building. "Gee," he ruminated, “it’s tough to own half of that swell building and have to sell it tor a song just because I have to go to Philadelphia and will have to hike it if I don’t get some money somewhere." It was a downhearted tale of a boated financier that Jasper heard.

The Slate Creek peach grower did a rapid-fire calculation and then timorously offered to take the stranger’s share of the building off his hands tor $39 —the total of his roll. The stranger hesitated to take advantage of his new-found friend, not that the building was not worth a thousand times as much, he said, but he didn’t like to impose on good nature. Jasper told him not to worry about that end of the bargain. Then the neatly dressed one reluctantly made put a “deed’’ for one-halt ot the skyscraper, handed It to Jasper, took the money and made hlmeell scarce.