Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 157, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1915 — Page 2

SEEING LIFE with JOHN HENRY

OAY! DID you ever stray away from V home of an evening and go to one ** of those parlor riots? Friend wife called it a musicale. but to me it looked more like a session of the Mexican congress in a boiler factory. They pulled it off at Mrs. Luella Frothingham’s. over on the Drive. I like Luella and 1 like her husband. Jack Frothingham. so it's no secret conclave of the Anvil Association when I whisper them wise that the next time they give a musical evening my address is Forest Avenue, corner of Foliage Street, in the woods. The Frothinghams are nice people and old friends and they have more money than some folks have hay. but ♦hat doesn’t give them a license to spoil one of my perfectly good evenings by sprinkling a lot of canned music and fricasseed recitations all over tL The Frothinghams have a skeleton tn their closet. Its name is Uncle Heck and he weighs 237 —not bad for a skeleton. Uncle Heck is a Joe Morgan. His sole ambition in life is to become politely pickled and fall asleep draped over a gold chair in the drawing room when there's high-class company present For that reason the Frothinghams oq state occasions put the skids under Uncle Heck and run him off stage till after the final curtain. On some occasions Uncle Heck breaks through the bars and dashes Into the scene of refinement with merry quip and jest to the confusion of his relatives and the ill-concealed amusement of their guests. Thia was one of those occasions. Early in the evening Jack took Uncle Heck to his room* sat him in front of a quart of vintage tfnd left the old geezer there to slosh around in the surf until sleep claimed him for its own. But before the wine was gone Uncle Heck put on the gloves with Morpheus. got the decision, marched down ■rain* and into the drawing room.

Then Claribel Let Down Her Hair and Proceeded to Give Us a Mad Scene —and it Was.

where he immediately insisted upon being the life of the party. Uncle Heck moved and seconded that he sing the swan song from “Lohengrin," but his idea of a swan was so much like a turkey gobbler that loving friends slipped him the moccasins and elbowed him out of the room. Then he went out in the butler’s pantry hoping to do an Omar Khayyam with the grape, but not finding any he began to recite, "Down in the Lehigh Valley me and my people grew; I was a blacksmith, Cap’n; yes, and a good one, too! Let me sit down a minute, a stone’s got into my shoe —” But it wasn’t a stone, and it didn’t get into his shoe. It was a potato salad and it got into his face when the Irish cook threw it at him for interfering with her work. *Tm discouraged,” murmured Uncle Heck, and presently he was sleeping with magnificent noises on the sofa in the library. There were present at the battle in the drawing room Uncle Peter Grant and Aunt Martha; Hep Hardy and his diamond shirt studs; Bunch Jefferson and his wife, Alice; Bud Hawley and his second wife; Phil Merton and his third wife; Dave Mason and his stationary wife; Stub Wilson and his wife, Jennie, who is Peaches’ sister, and a few others who asked to have their names omitted. . The mad revels were inaugurated by the Pippin brothers, who attempted to drag some grouchy music out of guitars that didn't want to give up. The Pippin brothers part their hair in the middle and always do the march from “The Babes In Toyland’' on their mandolins as an encore. If Victor Herbert ever catches them there’ll be a t couple of shine chordWben the Pippin > brothers took a bow and backed off into a vase of

by George V. Hobart

John Henry Has a Musical

flowers we were all invited to listen to a soprano solo by Miss Imogene Glassface. When Imogene sings she makes faces at herself. When she needs a high note she goes after it like a hen after a ladybug. Imogene sang "Sleep. Sweetly Sleep,*' and then kept us awake with her voice. - Then we had Rufus Kellar Smith, the parlor prestidigitator. Rufus was a bad boy. He cooked an omelet in a silk hat and when he handed the hat back to Hep Hardy two poached eggs fell out and cuddled up in Hep’s hair. Rufus apologised and said he'd do the trick over again if someone would lend him a hat. but nothing doing. We all preferred our eggs boiled. Then we had Claribel Montrose in select recitations. She was all the money. Claribel grabbed “The Wreck of the Hesperus** between her pearly teeth and shook it to death. Then she got a half-Nelson on Poe's "Raven” and put it out of business. Next she tried an imitation of the balcony scene from "Romeo and Juliet.” If Juliet talked like that dame did no wonder she took poison. Then Claribel let down her back hair and started in to give us a mad scene —and it was. Everybody in the room got mad. When peace was finally restored, Mrs. Frothingham Informed us that the rest of the "paid" talent had disappointed her and she’d have to depend on the volunteers. Then she whispered to Miss Gladiola Hungerschnitz, whereupon that young lady giggled her way over to the piano and began to knock its teeth out The way Gladiola went after one of Beethoven's sonatas and slapped its ears was pitiful. Gladiola learned to injure a piano at a conservatory of music. She can take a Hungarian rhapsody and turn it into a goulash in about 32 bars. At the finish of the sonata we all applauded Gladiola just as loudly as

we could, in the hope that she would faint with surprise and stop playing, but no such luck. She tied a couple of chords together and swung that piano like a pair of Indian clubs. First she did "My Old Kentucky Home,” with variations, until everybody who had a home began to weep for fear it might get to be like her Kentucky home. The variations were where she made a mistake and struck the right note. Then Gladiola moved up to the squeaky end of the piano and gave an imitation of a Swiss music box. It sounded to me like a Swiss cheese. Presently Gladiola ran out of raw material and subsided, while we all applauded her with our fingers crossed, and two very thoughtful ladies began to Mik fast to Gladiola so as to take her mind off the piano. Thia excitement was followed by another catastrophe named Minnehaha Jones, who picked up a couple of soprano songs and screeched them at us. Minnehaha is one of those fearless singers who vocalise without a safety valve. She always keeps her eyes closed, so she can’t tell just when her audience gets up and leaves the room. The next treat was a mixed duet on the flute and trombone between Clarence Smith and Lancelot Diffenberger, with a violin obligato on the side by

Hector Tompkins. Never before have I seen music so roughly handled. It looked like a walk-over for Clarence, but in the fifth round he blew a couple of green notes and Lancelot got the decision. ” Then, for a consolation prize. Hector led out in the middle of the room, where he assassinated Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana" so thoroughly

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

that ft win never be able to enter • flfty-cent table d’hote restaurant again. Almost before the audience had time to recover Peaches* sister, Jennie, was coaxed to sing Tosti's “GoodBy!” I’m very fond of sister Jennie, but l*m afraid if Mr. Tost! ever heard her sing his "Good-by" he would say, “The name to you, and here’s your hat" Before Jennie married and moved West I remember she had a very pretty mezzo-concertina voice, but she's been so long away helping Stub Wilson to make Milwaukee famous that nowadays her top notes sound like a cuckoo clock after it's been up all night I suppose it’s wrong for me to pull this about our own flesh and blood, but when a married woman with six fine children, one. of them at Yale, walks sideways up to a piano and begins to squeak, “Good-by. summer! Good-by, summer!” just as if she were railing the dachshund in to dinner. I think it*s time she declined the nomination. Then Bud Hawley, after figuring it all out that there was no chance of his getting arrested, sat down on the piano stool and made a few sad re-

He Immediately Insisted Upon Being the Life of the Party.

marks, which in their original state form the basis of a Scotch ballad called, “Loch Lomond.” Bud’s system of speaking the English language is to say with his voice as much of a word as he can remember and then finish the rest of it with his hands. Imagine what Bud would do to a song with' an oatmeal foundation like "Loch Lomond." When Bud barked out the first few bars, which say "By yon bonnie bank and by yon bonnie brae,” everybody within hearing would have cried with joy the piano had fallen over on him and flattened his equator. And when he reached the plot of the piece, where it says. "You take the high road and I’ll take the low road," Uncle Peter'took a drink, Phil Merton took the same. Stub took an oath and I took a walk. And all the while Bud’s wife sat there, with the glad and winning smile of a swordfish on her face, listening with a heart full of pride while her crime-laden husband chased that help less song all over the parlor, and finally left it unconscious under the sofa At that point Hep Hardy got up and volunteered to tell some funny stories and this gave us all a good excuse to put on our overshoes and say “Good night” to our hostess without offending anybody. Hep Hardy and his funny stories are always used to close the show. “John,” said Peaches after we got home; “I want to give a musical. May IF* “Certainly, old girl,” I answered. “We’ll give one in the nearest movingpicture theater. If we don’t like the show all we have to do is to close our eyes and thank our lucky stars there’s nothing to listen to.” “Oh! aren’t you hateful!” she pouted. Maybp I am, at that

Didn’t Walt to Learn Details.

A gentleman, clad in a plug hat and an air of determination, together with sundry other garments not necessary to enumerate, uprose on a dry goods box at the most prominent corner, in the village and, holding aloft a vile and wriggling serpent, invited, in stentorian tones, all good people within the sound of his voice to gather around him for profit and entertainment. “What d’ye s’pse is cornin’ off?” inquired a citizen, addressing the Old Codger. “D’know!” snarled the veteran. “Prob’ly he’s some infernal officeseeker who is going to promise, if we elect him, to get rid of all the snakes in the county by eating ’em. Anyhow, I’m going home! G’day, Ellsworth!” —Kansas City Star.

Lost the Point.

Jones, who appreciates a joke, but, like many others, cannot repeat one with any degree of success, heard for the first time the joke about the dog being the most musical of animals, “because he wears a brass band round his neck,” and determined to spring it on the first party of friends to which he was invited. The time came, and he electrified his victims With the exclamation, “I say, I’ve a really good one!” He asked, “Why is a deg the most musical of animals?” They gave it up. "Because,” announced Jones, triumphantly, “ho wears, a brass collar round his neck."

Guards' tents in th* garden of the Heliopolis Palace hotel in E«ypt. Over the main entrance of the hotel fly the Union. Jack and the Red Cross flag, as the building is used as the Australian general hospital.

DODGE FOE MONTHS

British Soldiers, Separated From Command, Have Exciting Time. Play Hide and Seek With Germans for Nine Months, Cross Frontier Behind Enemy’s Lines and Escape Into Holland. Rotterdam. —There have just crossed the Belgian frontier behind German lines and come into Holland, six British soldiers. These men were at Mons, in the tragic days of August, and were cut off from their regiment in the great retreat. They crept through the encircling Germans, and, for nine months, have been fugitives in France and Belgium, living in fields and dugouts. They have passed through experiences probably Without parallel, playing, through all these nine months, a game of hide and seek, to have lost which would have meant summary execution. James Carrighan told me the history of the adventures: “It was on August 26 that the Gerbans got round us properly. Our little lot of odd men were collected, and went into one trench. ‘The Germans are surrounding us,’ said the captain. Then we heard the call to *Cease fire.’ ‘Don’t mind that, men,’ said the captain. ‘A German is sounding it.’ "Se we kept plugging away. Three times the Germans sounded the call ‘Cease fire.’ Then the captain stood up to send four men out to the flank. He got a bullet in the heart and was killed Instantly. then took command and gave the word to charge. We went at them once, but had to retire. A second time we charged. — got hit in the hip. “The third time, when we had another go, it was pitch dark. We had to come back again, and I found there were only seven men with me. We were absolutely surrounded. “But we managed to hide in a ditch,

GET READY! SAYS ACTOR

Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson, the English actor, recently sailed for England, after completing a farewell tour of the principal' cities of this country. Just before sailing he said: “My last words to beloved America while I

TROOPS IN EGYPTIAN HOTEL GARDEN

tary training. Teach young men and boys to be soldiers.” where we stayed all night. Next morning we found ourselves in a little paddock, only two fields away from the Germans, in the middle of their lines. So we lay low all day. "Then eight Frenchmen crawled up to us. We managed to keep out of sight until most of the Germans had gone on. We had most of the time in orchards, and lived on pears for ten days. We were then a party of twenty-one, eleven English and ten French. As we were desperate for want of food we decided to make for a village and fight to the last man if we met any Germans. Just before we left the orchards twelve Germans caught two of our French comrades and bayoneted them without giving them any chance to surrender if they had wanted to. "We got to a village, making our way along the railway line and through the forest. Here we all lodged in a barn, and a woman, the best soul we ever met, brought us milk three times a day. “The Germans, who were searching for us, were in a horseshoe shape round the village, and were closing in on us. Private Jamieson, a scout, and a good one, took command. He got us out, nearly under the noses of twelve uhlans. We got into a field, and stayed there for a month, with

TAKES WAR LIGHTLY

Russia Shows Little Evidence of Great Conflict. Determination to* Win and Break German Militarism Is the Spirit of the Czar’s People—No End to His Armies. By SLOAN GORDON. Correspondent of the Chicago News. Petrograd, Russia. —How the great war has drained the human reservoirs of France —how the boulevards of Paris are manless wastes; how the call - to arms has taken male Germans from the farms and the villages and the cities; how rare are men of fighting age upon the streets of Budapest and Vienna, and how, even in London, there .is noted a marked falling off in the number of visible male beings — all these evidences of the effects of international blood letting have been set forth in countless columns in the newspapers of America for months. That the stories are true of those German and Austrian and French and even British centers there can be no reasonable ground for doubt —the numerous authorities attest their accuracy. But it may be set down that this is not true of Petrograd. To all outward appearances in this war capital there is no war. There are evidences here and there of great military activity. There are daily drills upon the public squares and there are Red Cross signs in great profusion. But of men, or, rather, the absence of men—there is no such thing. Great, mysterious, brooding Russia —the unfathomable Russia —goes about her daily ways with a nonchalance that is baffling to the western mind. Her streets are crowded —the streets of Petrograd and of Moscow and even of Warsaw, where the fighting lines are but a few miles distant Tens of thousands, literal hordes of men of all ages jostle and crowd along the famous Nevsky Prospekt from morning until night and far into the night The hotel lobbies are jammed with men and women in furs and

finery. “Is it always like this’’’ exclaimed an American who has spent many years in Petrograd and other parts of Russia, in response to inquiry. “Well, just about I wouldn’t know there was a war going on if it weren’t for the newspapers. “Russia,” he continued, “is going about this war business with an air of confidence that I have never seen before. It is not quite the same confidence that your typical Britisher displays, the sort we always associate with the English and which has been variously classed as bullheadedness, arrogance, egotism and plain nerve. It is none of these with Russia. It is merely a concrete national example

Germans only six fields away. “We dug a sort of trench along the fence, to hide in. The farmer gave us civilian clothes, and we worked for him in the fields for three weeks, under the noses of the Germans. Then we had to clear again. “We divided Into three parties. My little party of eight got into a field, where we made a dugout. We lived in this for a month, stealing out at night to get food from some people in a village close by. While we were there a Frenchman brought us a notice which had been stuck up by the Germans in the villages about. This said they knew where there were Englishmen hiding in the district, and that if we did not give ourselves up we would be shot when we were caught. “We made another trek, and then lived a month in a hut, which we built in a corner of a field. Then a 1 Belgian guided us to a village.” What happened to the fugitives after this must not be disclosed, as it might implicate friends who helped them to escape. Private Jenkins has scratches on his face and torn clothes, as a result of creeping through the barbed wire into Holland. For the first six months the six Intrepid fugitives wore their uniforms' under their civilian clothes. Said Private Carrighan: “We were determined to stick to our khaki.”

of what is really underneath the surface —a Russian individual characteristic. Your Russian is a fatalist in great crises. When it comes to something really big he settles down to an Imperturbable calm, shrugs his shoulders, and takes his medicine." That the general attitude of Russia toward the war has changed since hostilities began is testified to by those who have observed. "In the beginning of the war,” said one of these observers, a Russian merchant with large interests in Petrograd and Warsaw, “we felt that we were fighting only to repulse an enemy—to prevent invasion of our territory. There was little show of bitterness against the Germans. But it is different now. This war has done more to make Russians think and to draw them together than anything that has ever happened in the history of the country. Today there is a fixed determination to fight it out to a finish and to end the probability of future conflict by destroying Prussian militarism. That may sound strange to those who have looked so long upon Russia as a military nation, but it is nevertheless true. A new feeling of patriotism has been born.” “And do you know," he added, much as though it were a matter of course, “that it is impossible for Russia to lose—for the allies to lose this war? Russian resources of men and money are too vast. Why, there are a million young men arriving at military age every year. Russia could lose a million every 12 months, which is inconceivable, and still keep-her armies in the field in undiminished number. Russia can feed her armies, and never feel it All the blockades in the world cannot affect us! We raise our own food, and can and will make our own -supplies of every sort. If necessary. We -have the money, we have the men, and, by heaven, we have the spirit!”

Prisoners May Fish.

Greencastle, Ind. —A fish pond probably soon will be built on the state penal farm, according to the trustees. Deer creek passes through the farm, and the trustees say they will stock the'stream with game fish. The trustees say they want the prisoners on the farm to have some recreation. They are of the opinion that fishing will be about as good as any.

3 Names in 10 Minutes.

Winamac, Ind. —Mrs. Ida Moore obtained a divorce from William Moore in the circuit court here and her maiden name, Ida Maibaur, was restored. Ten minutes later her name was again changed when she was married to* William Beach. It was the fourth marriage for Mrs. Beach and the first for Beach.

Bargain Day at Flushing.

Flushing, N. Y. —Six shaves, two haircuts, two shampoos and three massages for |1 was one of the bargains sold at a "dollar day” celebration here.