Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 255, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1913 — 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 aea you with a crate about every other day.” “I keep pigs,” replied the regular cuataaaer. “I find it hard work sometimes to tempt their appetites, but they generally likf a. .little fresh fruit.- The raspberries that I tried them on yesterday seemed to please them, so I thought Td take ’em some more. Raspberries are fattening, too, and give the pork a nioe flavor. You take a bog that’s been fed on raspberries ” “Oh, out it out,” said the cigarstand maw. “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. Tine business.” “I don’t believe it pays to put up fruit.” Bald 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! Bay, all these berries coet me is 10 cents a box, buying them down on the street. It doesn’t take me mere 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, bust 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 flve-dollar bill.” “Well,” said the cigar stand .man, “If you figure 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 customer, “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 da the table for dlnnSr instead of putting in aa hour or so cooking a meal. Think cf having all kinds of jams amt jellies and preserves down cellar all the year around. No benzoate of soda and globose 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 ypu want a pie there’s the filling right on hand—or It would be en band if we kept “Bat It up about as fast aa you make it, eh?** “Give it away a little faster than we make It,’’ corrected the regular customer. “That’s the g*eat trouble. You see, my wL.e is of a liberal disposltlon, 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 your wife. If it's a relation that comes she’ll get s half dosen Jars out. Just as like as not. If the milkman mikes, some remark aborjt tbs Jelly looking good enough to eat when he pokes his head la the kltahea he gets a jar as well. If anybody gets sick it’s a jar for them.” "What do yeu do It for, then?" asked the man. “A woman has- pot (to amuse herself some way,” said the regular customer. "Putting up preserves is about as harmleasrand cheap as say.*’ - flrtnagr Mews-