Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 129, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1917 — EACH HAS ONE PECULIARITY [ARTICLE]

EACH HAS ONE PECULIARITY

That of Mrs. Bi 11 tops. Remarks Her Spouse, Is Belief That She Can Go Out in Rain and Not Get Wet “It is my observation,” said Mr. Bill-, tops, "that we all of us have, consciously or unconsciously, some one peculiarity in which our friends must indulge us. “Now take Mrs. Bllltops; the gentlest, the most forbearing, the most serenely patient person on the face of the earth. You wouldn’t think that Mrs. Bllltops had any strange notion In which she must be humored. But she has Just one, the same .being thgt it is possible to carry an umbrella over her In such a manner as to shelter her completely. In this notion I humor her as far as I can, but I know that whenever we go anywhere In the rain I am in for trouble. ■> “I hold the umbrella way over on her side, always protecting her hat as far as possible, and calmly letting the rain drip down on my own hat and shoulder, but no matter how I carry -it I simply cannot carry it to suit her. I always carry it wrong in some way, not far enough over or too high or too low. “ ‘Can’t you see that It’s crushing my feather?’ Mrs. Bllltops says to me in a tone low but of great concentration, at which I raise the umbrella a little, and then a moment later: “ ‘Don’t you see that the rain is blowing in on my hat?’ she says, and then I hold it a little lower again, and I keep right on all the time doing the best I know how, though the simple fact is that no man living could shelter any woman completely under an umbrella unless he had one as big as the dome of the capitol at Washington. “It is a time of trial when I go out with Mrs. Bllltops with an umbrella, Its culmination coming after we get home, when she shakes her coat and her skirts and says: ‘I am just soaking !’ But it is soon over after that. “You might think that these occasions would be a dread to me, but the fact is quite to the contrary; for it is by these little human lapses on Mrs. Billtop’s part that I am made to realize more fully and gratefully the blessing of her all but perennial serenity.”