Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 273, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1913 — Wedding Presents [ARTICLE]

Wedding Presents

The girl who likes to talk shook her head solemnly at the friend who wanted to know whether she should buy a cot-glass bowl for a wedding present or send a set of Shakespeare. "Youlre like all the rest,” said the girt. "You haven’t the remotest notion of the crisis looming over you! It’s the test of friendship, this selecting a wedding present. You may have been bosom chums with the, bride from the mud-pie stage, but right now either you cement that friendship or else you make two deadly enemies. "Sometimes,” went on the girl who likes to talk, “it seems as though all the people who have It In for you for somthlng j-jst treasure up their little grudge till you get married, and then with a gurgle of triumph take revenge by sending you a wedding present that they know will set your teeth bn edge and send cold chills down your spina] column every time you look at It. She Is a lucky bride whose new home Is a thousand miles away where her old friends can’t drop In unexpectedly and prowl around to see that she has tneir presents properly displayed In the best light! "Louise moved to California when she . married,” related the girl who likes to talk, "and do you know what that smart girl did? When I visited her she took me and unlocked a closet door, and turned on the light. I focused a questioning eye on her after one glance, and said I didn’t know she was starting a chamber of horrors, and asked what the answer was. "Louise said she and Harry decided they had only one life to live, and even at that they probably would have unavoidable troubles; so there was no use ,ln deliberately acquiring other troubles. ® They took every last wedding present they hated and stored them in the closet, and were slowly giving them away on Christmases and other occasions to people whose character they thought needed chastening. Louise generally puts the prizes she wins at oard parties In (here, too, because either they never match her house or else they are champagne glasses—and they can ’t afford much »f anything but ginger ale. "I know a bride who got only one set of salad forks, so she thankfully overlooked the fact that they were of a design calculated to make one a misanthrope for life. But when a dilatory cousin sent her some perfectly beautiful salad forks, ,and she simultaneously got a wedding invitation herself, she took the hideous forks to a jeweller and requested that he obliterate her initial, and put on that of the bride on whom she was going to Inflict them.

** ‘Oh. yes,’ said the man, languidly, as he examined the forks" '‘we can do it. This will be the third time we’ve changed the initial on these same forks!’ “Now, my mother got some beautiful presents when she was married — years ago I think people had kind hearts and-really loved their friends—still, she, too, had her trials. Among them was a dessert set, which still lingers among the family treasures. It Is a wondrous thing of bright green glass that mother says is cut, but I am positive it was run through a hydraulic press by an apprentice, who afterward went insane. The big dish Is mounted in a silver filigree arrangement, which Is carried on up above it like an Eiffel tower. Perched precariously on this tower is a large silver bird, with a wooden expression and a tall like that of a flying machine. There are a dozen smaller glass dishes, replicas In miniature of the big one, and the effect of the whole collection when brought on the table Is to appall the brightest, most Intrepid spirit, and paralyze any flow of wit that may be there. No human being can do but gaze in wonder at the atrocity, simply overwhelmed by the thought that a mere mundane mind could have imagined and been desperate enough to carry out the design. “Nobody has ever dared to tnnse on th# dark, secret thoughts of the individual who presented that dessert set to mother, and she won’t tell who U was. I’ve always thought it was some girl who was In love with father, and because she didn’t get him, wanted to blight the lives of all who cams near him. Mother has a sweet nature, and believes in bearing her crosses, but I’m different. "Still, that dessert set is bewitched, for I’ve bribed every maid we ever had to smash it accidentally—end they break everything else on the premises, whHe that escapes. I believe if I took a hatchet to that hlg glass dish, it would crumble the hatchet as though It were tissue paper, and re main standing grimly, triumphantly on the pantry shelf, the horror of my life. Sometimes I think it will revenge itself on ipe for my bitter die like —I’m afraid mother will give It to ms. She often says I need a touch of trouble to round out my character. If she does, IV blow ft up with dynamite!’* “It really Is beet to elope,” cammen ted the friend. t ' ’ “That doesn't do a bit of good,** gloomily replied the girl who likes to talk. “They send 'em to yon afterward 1” —Chicago Daily News. Some people are never Fatlsfled imlsas they are spoiling good birds by crossing different brc tz.