Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 254, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 October 1913 — The Basement Philosopher [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Basement Philosopher

By KENNETT HARRIS

(CoeyrUht 190. by W. G. Cfewun) The blank, serious and unresponsive stare with which the janitor rdf eeived his Scandinavian assistant’s intelligence, disconcerted that usually stolid individual quite perceptibly and the chuckle that he began died gutturally in his throat. The janitor continued to stare and the grin faded from the assistant's face. “Well, and what of it?” demanded the autocrat, sternly. " 'Pooty fierce,’ is It?” he mimicked. “I-should say it was ‘pooty fierce.’ It’s a pity a person can’t have a little prtvate conversation with his own wife in his own kitchen without" a thing like you interesting yourself in his remarks. What blame business was it of yours? What was you do\ng there Tying your shoe lace, was you? Yes, you was! Tying it with one band and the other behind your ear bo’s you wouldn’t lose nothing, and then instead of keeping it to yourself like a gentleman, you come" blabbing to me. Nels, you give me a-pain. “Say, suppose they was smashing dlßhes,” continued the janitor, severely. “Haven’t they got a right to smash em’ if they felt like it? Was them dishes yours or theirs? But what gets me is that you can’t keep your mouth shut. It’s folks like you makes trouble and wrecks homes and blasts reputations wherever you go shooting, off your mouths about people and knocking ’em. How would yoq like it, yourself? What would you think of me if I done that way? Maybe you think I’ve got poor eyesight and can’t see nothing for myself. Well, I ain’t. “What kind of a skate would I be If I got to telling around some of the things that’s going on here? Where do you think Mrs. Jipper’s mother lives that she’s gone to vißit for the

summer, for instance? Clinton, Iowa? Guess again. How about Reno? You don't believe that. Well, let me tell you there was a letter in her handwriting with a Reno postmark in the mail box last Tuesday, and another one. document size and the address typewritten, same postmark, that I’ll bet the cigars come from her lawyer, and when Jlppers got 'em, he opened hers right there in the vestibule, and when he had read it, he swore and crumpled it up and shoved it in his pocket, then went right past me as if I hadn't been there, chewing on his moustache. He didn’t come home that night either. Well, it ain’t no business of mine, as I told my wife, but you can bet there’s one apartment in this building that’s going to be tablet this summer. “I don’t blame her,” declared the Janitor. “I kept pretty, close tab on that mail box of theirs when she was* over to White Lake with the kid last year, and there was some letters to him in dinky square /envelopes with sealing wax on them that I was kind of curious Shout, and after Bhe got back, and up to the time she went to visit with her mother, in Clinton, lowa —not, she had trouble with her eyes all the time. They was generally red and swelled up, but one time, one of ’em was black and swelled up. He’s a lalapaloosa, that Jlppers guy. Ferguson wanted to go over and beat his head in when I told him about it "What do you think would happen if I got to tattling? Suppose I got to buzzing over the back fence what the Gallops kept that trained* nurße for. Old Lady Gollop’s subject to heart trouble or something, ain’t she? You bet she is—something. If I had the kind of trouble she’s got, I know what kind of a nursing I’d get from my wife. SheM serve notice on every saloon in the neighborhood inside of two hours. Yes, I got hep to that before the nurse came. Them tonic prescriptions the old lady got from the druggist on the avenue about every other day, used to tone her up a plenty. She got reckless once and left about three lingers in the bottle she put out, and I wouldn’t have considered I was taking any particular risk if I’d drunk it Most generally though, there wasn’t much left in them bottles but the cork and the smell. Mrs. Anglin, in 17, said she suspected it on account of the flushed look Mrs. Gollop had all the time. She’s a wise dame, Mrs. Anglin is, but she’s kind of careless with her bottles, herself. Peroxide, they are, mostly. But that's her look out It’s her own hair, too, if yon come to that, hut It won’t be long If she don’t let up Using that dope. “Bure there’s plenty going on here.

If you're inclined to be nosey. Nels, my friend,” said the janitor. “If f wasn’t naturally dose-mouthed, I could surprise you. Them Brudnlcks, for instance. Oreat front they put up, don’t they? You’d think they had money to throw to the birds, wouldn’t you? Well, they have, and what the birds don’t get, they burn; but they’re shy when it comes to digging up what they owe Strunck’s market, and from what I’ve found out by putting two and two together out of their waste paper basket, it won’t do Strunck much good to sue. All he’s get’s his judgment, and you can’t buy a shelf full of canned goods with a court house full of judgments. That’s what I told him. It ain’t my business, of course, but Strunck treats me .pretty white and I don’t want to see him throw good money after bad. If I was as slack-jawed as you, I might make trouble for that oldest girl of Topper’s, too. Not but what the boy’s all right and she’s all right, but he ain’t the one that old man Topper has got picked out for her. I know that from what I heard when I was cleaning the windows on the,floor below. “Certainly, if a man wanted to talk, there’s enough happening here all the time to talk about,” said the janitor. “I could run a society Journal with less than I pick up every day, but I ain’t inquisitive and I ain’t gabby, and I won’t have nobody working for me what is. You understand that, don’t you, Nels, my friend? That’s all right then. “Hold on a minute, Nels’,” called the (Janitor, as his assistant turned to go. “Did I understand you to say that they was throwing dishes or just that some dishes got smashed? Who began the racket anyway. Was it him or her?”

THE JANITOR CONTINUED TO STARE AND THE GRIN FADED FROM THE ASSISTANT’S FACE.