Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 293, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 December 1914 — A Jolly Good Grandma [ARTICLE]

A Jolly Good Grandma

Grandma Jamison tent a bit like the old-fashioned grandmothers you read about In books, who sit in a corner all day, In oap and neckerchief, always knitting, knitting. > Grandma Jamison played games with her grandchildren. She had games called, “Hot Butter Blue Beans, please come to supper/* “Poor Puss wants a Corner,” "Holst the Gates and Let King George and All Go By** and “Mammy, mammy, Ttptty-toe, 1 don’t care whether I work or not.** She always joined In the line that crept under the gates, some one had hold of her dress skirt, while she had hold of some one else’s dress skirt She made just the liveliest nicest “Mammy, tlpity-toe” you ever saw, and when she played “Poor Puss wants a corner” she could always sucoeed In getting one, while some little one would be left out. Then Grandma Jamison was a good, strong grandmother In spite of her 60 years. She did not think she was too old to work some, and she always had the knack of doing something that other people did not like to do. **Bhe could fry the best doughnuts and crullers and make the best cookies and pumpkin pies in the world,** her grandchildren said. If grandma cpuld have had her own way she would not have permitted her daughter to keep a hired girl, for she always insisted that hired help made more work than they did and she, at her age, oould work all around the best of them. Grandma Jamison's grandchildren never found a button off, or a hole In a stocking. Grandma’s eagle eyes and useful fingers always attended to that. No puckered up things with safety pins for her. ■» * Now, all grandmas I ever knew are self-sacrificing. They will go without, at any time, for the sake of their grandchildren, and, Grandma Jamison is no exception. At one time It was found she had not a pair of whole shoes to her feet, and that her stockings and underclothing was one mass of dams. Now she had been given money to buy such articles, but, Instead of using It on herself, slipped it in the bank, saying: “The children would need it more sometime.” One day Grandma Jamison was taken very 111 and lay upstairs in bed for weeks. Then everything seemed to go to sixes and sevens and there seemed to be no more peace no comfort in the house. A lady attempting to comfort the daughter, sakl: “One cannot grieve so much at an old person’s death. They are generally a burden and a care.” “A burden and a care,” repeated the daughter, hotly; “it waß us a burden and a care to her. I can see It all now. She has been keeping us together In comfort for years and I never saw it before." Grandma Jamison got well that time, and lives yet, nearly 80 years of age, and though her eyes are dim, her spirit Is undaunted still. She now lives with a granddaughter, still the same loving creature she always was. Blessed Is the one who has a grandmother.