Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 162, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1915 — Mistaken Ideas [ARTICLE]

Mistaken Ideas

“I don’t know whether I will sit with you fellows or not,” said Dubbs to the group in the smoker. “The minister Is dining at our house tonight, and I will not be in the proper mood if I asosciate with you fellows.” “There’s where you are wrong,” said Smudger, shifting his cigar to the other corner of his mouth. “The minister won’t want any hifalutln’ talk from you. He gets all of that he requires, and besides he can furnish it for himself. Go right ahead and be your usual breezy and open-faced self, and the minister will pass the time much more pleasantly. “Don’t make the mistake that Billings made. Billings got word that some of his wife’s relatives were coming from the country and he said to his son: ‘My boy, you and I must change our mode of life. These country bumpkins are in the habit of going to bed at nine o’clock and they won’t know a thing but crops and chickens and cows. We’ll have to bone up on the poultry journals so you can talk to the girl aout milking and feeding chickens, and I’ll have to talk to ths old man about the weevil and how to cure It? “That’s where he was wrong. He didn’t know much about farmers. He didn’t realize that they had a phone In that farmhouse connected with the city, that they had two mails a day, and that the girl was a civic reformer. “The consequence was that the girl who wanted to talk civics and how to cure the evils of the city and who was cognizant of every crooked deal that had been put over by the administration for the last two years, thought the boy a regular boor; and the old man, who knew the battingeverage of every player in the league, thought the city man the worst mossback he had ever seen. “So, If you don’t want to get off on the wrong foot, refrain from springing solemn talk on the minister. He’d see through you right away." ' “I rise to report,” said the young man of the party, “that the aforementioned remarks are correct. The girl of the present day, town or country, will not listen to tennis talk, style or poetry or the dulcet guitar. She Is interested in clubs and reforms. The slums are the thing. “If you start anything about balls or bridge she will look at you as If you were Old Man Methuselah." “I am convinced," said Dubbs, settling himself In the smoker with hb cronies. “I will steep myself in lowbrow talk for the sake of being agreeable to the minister."