Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 306, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1918 — Page 2

Miss Todd’s Mistake

By Clement E. Rushton

“Snub-nosed!” A -Freckled!*’ /\ “And homely as sin-!”', “But we must pamper and coddle thia dear ancient lady of ours on account of the shekels.” Miss Tabitha Todd gasped. Her hand fell away. She made a flash for the heartless tell-tale phonograph and shut it oft. , «“Outrageous!” she almost shrieked, y" "Abominable!” she added and went to the mirror and'—surveyed herself. was snub-nosed, and yes, she pras freckled. . As to her homeliness Inhere was no question. Her faded old with tears autf her lips puckthat.” she breathilessness of - Hl ; d time, it had jail come about through her nephew, Willis Rand, and his wife, Clara, whose guest she was, leaving her alone in the house that morning. They had treated Aunt Tabitha like an own mother. So far her week’s visit had attached het more than ever to this happy-spiritau young couple,

who, in the absence of any very material wealth, seemed tq live and thrive on love and kisses. Miss Todd bustled from the room, to reappear ten minutes later ready for the street, suitcase in hand. She proceeded to remove the wretched record from the instrument. She replaced it where she had accidently discovered it, way upon the plate rail. She loved the phonograph, but had tired of those so often played records in the cabinet and had resolved to try this old one to while the time away. “There!” she voiced tartly. “They shall never know how their perfidy caumto be exposed.” -<Then Miss Tabitha Todd scrawled a few lipes on a sheet of paper, left it on the table and flounced from that on Are with indignation and resentment. . It was four hours later when Willis and Clara returned. Willis was first to discover the note. “What in the name of wonder does this mean?” he ejaculated, and both, petrified, read: “Do not ever speak to me, write to me, or even think of me again.” “Why!” gasped Clara. “What,” cried Willis. “Oh, Aunt Tabitha has gone crazy!” He rushed upstairs, to find her belongings gone. Then he hurried to the nearest telegraph office and indited a wire to the home of their missing relative. “Anxious. Clara worried to death. What has happened?” the. telegram ran, but there came no reply. Clara wrote the next day, but the letter, unopened and enclosed in another envelope, came back. Willis called up Aunt Tabitha on the long-dis-tance telephone, but as sdOn as his voice was recognized the irate old maid hung up the receiver! "It’s no use,” Willis told Clara final-’ ly. “She has taken some perverse kink and won’t be conciliated.” Miss Todd passed a desolate year in her lonely village home. Many a time, a longing thought to see her discarded relatives intruded on her mind, but she banished it resolutely. She took in several cats as pets, superseded them P with canine favorites, then in turn with canary birds and began to develop fads and-eccentricities that aged and soured her.

One day .Miss Todd was compelled to go to the city on business. She sighed drearily as she recalled the warm greetings a certain home had, once held for her. She transacted her business and had to put in the afternoon as best she could, for there was no home train until late afternoon. Finally she paused to read a bill* board in front of a little bijou of a theater. It announced that “the English players” were to give a matinee that afternoon, program “the sterling old standard drama, ‘She Stoops to Conquer,’ preceded by the equally ancient, but famous skit, “The Biter Bit* ” Miss ffodd entered the theater. The curtain rose. She was only indifferently Interested, she fancied, but

her mind aroused mightily as the curtain rolled up and a stage dressing room was the scene. A faded, bedizened queen of tragedy, powdered, roughed and furbelowed, was going on ‘in her part and her obsequious maid and her husband were hypocritically flattering her as to her beauty and ability. But as she left them; behind her back they derided her through gestures and grimaces- Then, the instant the door dosed after the actress, the following colloquy ensued: “Snub-nosed!” “And 1 “Homely as sin!” • "But we must pamper and coddle fthis dear ancient lady of ours on acjcount of the shekels.” Miss Todd came upright with a W.hy! those were the very words of the phonograph. Then—fthen— She breathed and thought fast Enlightenment began to stream into

her mind. She arose from her seat and went out into the lobby. She walked up tp the main usher. ■ “Will you tell me, sir," she began—“the drama they are playing. Is It very old!" _ _ _ "Very old. Miss,” bowed the profuse usher. a- _ j. “As—as old as I am?” .“Over twenty, you mean,” propounded the politic usher. “Yes, indeed, Miss, it was written over two “hundred years ago. It is a great favorite with amateurs, school exhibitions, church entertainments, amateur clubs and all that, but never acted as it is in this country until —” , Hut Miss Todd had vanished. With speed, an excited, distracted creature, she reached the street She hailed the first cab she met. It was old and shaky, but she did not mind that If it had been an express wagon, in her present frame of mind Miss Todd would have engaged it had it then been going her way. Mi«t Todd’s way was the way to the home of the Rands. She was lashing ’herself and pitying them all the way. Her eyes had been opened. She had now recalled that Willie and Clara had belonged to an amateur dramatic club. The colloquy she had caught over the phonograph was, of course, a record of their parts in the play they were to give. . ' Dear, persecuted children! How she had unjustly misjudged them! Could she ever forgive herself? Whcr' she reached the little home’ once so dear to her, now so longed for by her repentent spirit, she found a moving van in front of it and two men carrying out a piece of furniture. “What’s this?” she snapped out. “Seized for debt,” vouchsafed one of the movers.

“Seized —debt!”. # almost shrieked Miss Todd. “What—how do you mean?” “Just what I say. Mr. Rand went surety for a friend, who left him in the lurch. Lawyer brought suit, judgment. Rand and hfs wife are at his office now, giving notes for deficiency, for furniture doesn’t cover full amount.” * “Where’s this hideous persecutor of my dear darlings?” quavered Miss -Todd and after informing the man that the money would be paid at once to move nothing from the house, the energetic lady started for the office of the lawyer. Money covered the sordid features of the occasion, tears, confession, reconciliation, smiles, kisses the pathetic element of the case. Back in the old home Miss Todd continued to dwell upon the circumstances. “And I am snubnosed,” she insisted. “Grecian-classic,” declared Willis. ‘'And freckled.” “So is Clara, since she had to do her own washing. True sign of a fair complexion. “And homely as sin.” y ' “What! you, the belle of the village when you were a girl! Tell that to the marines and some of the twenty odd yOung- fellows whose hearts you broke by refusing to marry them.” And all this put Miss Tabitha Todd in fine humor. “Well, there’s the shekels, now,” she pursued finally. “I’m going to divide them between you loyal two, provided you give me a home here for the rest of my days.”

POISONOUS BITE OF FISHES

Attacks of the Octopus and Other Rovers of the Sea Are Explained by Pleron. It used to be supposed that cuttlefishes suffocated crabs with their suckers and then tore them open with their beaks. But the method is more subtle, says Knowledge. In 1895 Krause showed that the secretion of the posterior salivary glands of the octopus was very toxic; and it was supposed that the octopus gave a poisonous bite. But Pieron has recently shown that the octopus at least does not bite the crab until after death. The paralyzing secretion is probably wafted into the crab with the respiratory current. Similarly, in regard to bivalves it was thought that the cuttlefish forced the valves asunder by fixing suckers to each valve and then pulling in opposite directions. But Pieron has shown with cockles, mussels, scallops, and the like that the toxic juice first paralyzes the adductor muscles. In the case of the cockle the octopus breaks, some of the teeth on the posterior margin of the shell, so that the salivary juice may get'in more readily. After paralysis has set in force is employed, but it does not require much. The secretion from the stomach of the starfish has apparently the same paralyzing action on bivalves.

Art Never Grows Old.

A great work of art is never oldfashioned ; because it expresses in final form some truth about human nature, .and human nature never changes —in comparison with its primal elements, the mountains are ephemeral. A drama dealing with the impalpable hqman soul is more likely to stay true than a treatise on georngy, writes William Lyon Phelps in the Bookman. This is the notable advantage that works of art have over the works of science, the advantage of being and remaining true. No matter how important the contribution- of scientific books, they are alloyed with inevitable and after the death of J their authors must be constantly revised by lesser men, improved by smaller minds; whereas the masterpieces Of poetry, drama and fiction cannot be revised, because they are always true. The latest edition of a work of science is the most valuable; and in liters* ’-ture, the earliest.

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

Here is a skating set that will add one more fascination to that wholesome and fashionable sport. Japan had a hand in its making, for it is decorated with hand-painted ornaments that are • specimens of the beautiful handicraft of that hand-crafty people, and with applique of light green satin bordered with silver threads. If this was not woven in Japan its design certainly originated there. The cap and scarf are made of satin in a very soft rose color, to begin with. At tile ends of the scarf and In front of the cap there are emplacements of brocade as shown in the picture. On the scarf ends the brocade is sewed along the edges to the scarf with long stitches of heavy, gray angora yarn. Then the entire surface of the scarf is covered with parallel rows of these long stitches. They veil the rose color with a mist of gray, because of the fuzziness of the yarn, and the effect Is beautiful. The scarf is about two yards long and in the neighborhood of seven inches wide, wrapped about the neck so that the novel hand-painted ornament comes'ln front. It is made of several small ■ oblongs of celluloid ’apparently, in graduated sizes, and one posed over the other. They are very much like the rose-colored satin in shade, and the uppermost oblong has a meaningful and < weird looking picture painted on it in several colors. It might be a landscape—upside down —or a scrap of sky and clouds. What-

Handsome Coat for General Wear

A combination of' smooth-faced tan or sand-colored .cloth with fine Hudson seal, removes some of the difficulties which lie in the path of the designers of coats. When the task is to achieve a handsome coat for general wear the designer knows to start with that no color is a better choice than tan, and no fur looks better with it than seal, they belong to one another. Having this' assurance as to pleasing color, the creator of new coats must show his ability, by original of cutting and deft use of new style features, in lines and in details of finishing. Whoevef planned the coat pictured here betrays i\masterful hand in these particulars. Xjie coatis plain and fun, with fashionable straight lines. Its fullness Is cleverly managed by the insertion of three plaits at each side, back of the pockets. Thly are hardly to be noticed, being overshadowed by very large double pockets —an . arrangement of a big square seal over a target square of doth. There is a high. square collar of the fur, and another)of fashion’s favorite vagaries appears in the halfbelt that extends across the front of the coat. It widens at the center, departing from the straight and narrow path of the usual belt, and fastens at the left with buttonhole and bone butjtgn of generous size. s

Anticipating Winter Sports

ever it is, the smiling Japanese shopkeeper assures our honorable stupidity that it is good luck to wear such an ornament. When it is to be found on a skating set like that shown here, there is no doubt that he speaks the truth. The cap fastens with a chin strap that extends from side to side, made of the satin and angora. It is sewed to the inside of the cap on one side and fastens with a strap fastener on the other. The satin is caught up at the front of the cap revealing the green brocade, and held to place by two of those lucky ornaments. Both strap and cap are lined with the soft rosecolored satin.

Chenille Appliqued on Scarfs.

Among the new scarfs ushered in by the cold weather are some models of Italian silk, self striped. They are cut long and about ten inches wide, and made of a double thickness of silk. One scarf of bright green is embroidered at the ends in a conventional design Is self-colored silk floss that stands out. Green silk-fringe finishes the edge. ,

Dance Slippers With Bows.

A few of the fancy old-fashioned slippers of satin which tie with big perky bows were noted at a recent dance, although the footwear as a whole stuck to the conventional pumps of gold and.silver brocade.

Plain coat sleeves rely upon their cuffs fpr the stamp of originality. These are merely straps whose ways are devious, but never asunder. They are placed side by side: the career of each ended by an inexorable bone button and a buttonhole that holds them fast. These are the mannerisms of an exceptionally clever performer, and they are also the delight of a cultivated taste in apparel.

Joined Forces.

A' woman, who had been given a quantity of square dollies three and’ four inches square, put them to good service by joining them together with wide lace and using them on her buffet; she objected to using them separately and was highly pleased with the scarf that resulted from joined forces. *, Squares of tan linen embroidered In colors can be joined effectively to form table runners.} Of course, the lace should match /the color of the linen. If you should fall to find tan to match, dip white or cream lace in tea. Try a little piece Of lace first so you can tell if the tea Is of the proper strength. . ♦ /

HAPPENINGS in the CITIES

Gilded Youths of Gotham Stage/ “Rfoughhouse” NEW YORK.—Of course there must be tricks in every, trade, but It isn’t every day that they are unmasked as vigorously and with the acclamation which greeted the unveiling of a haberdashery plot at One Hundred am*-JJ

the fairest lily of the field. From lightly crushed fedora down a panel of ■ expensive, looking vest expanse to the tip of resplendent Russian leather shoes the two youths were immaculate. ’ From a sartorial ‘Standpoint’the two lads were most emphatically there. None J)ut a cross-eyed old maid could have passed the "two without sighs for a. cozy corner, dim light and Romeo-ano-the-balcony small talk. And none but the mildest mannered of their own sex could have passed them without hoping inwardly and almost outwardly that some motorman would get careless. ■ and bump them into the nearest hospital. That’s the kind of lads these were. ’ Consequently, when suddenly they met, engaged each other in spirited conversation and then fell to with short jabs and counter-uppercuts and right hooks, there was little hurrying to classes in lab. 3 or philosophy 4. While the dust flew with it went brilliant neckscarfs, canes of gilt knobs, pieces of . silk shirts and gore. But finally, unfortunately, a policeman from the West One Hundred and Twenty-fifth street station arrived and pried the two apart, still gnashing collar buttons and gold teeth at each other. And he proceeded at once to delve 'into the origin of the riot. And this, is the explanation he got: The two were representatives of clothing concerns near Columbia who have been made stalling horses for the trade of the students. Their job consists of lolling around, impersonating clothing posters, anfl, whenever a student appears interested, telling him where similar garbage er that is, garb—can be obtained.“ YesteTday the rivals met and learned for the first time they were rivabj, One called the other a chorus mgn. That was toofar. The reader and Morningside- Heights now know what followed.

Temper and Temperament Cause Domestic Mixup KANSAS ClTY.—“Abrams and Johns,” principals In a comedy playlet, “When Hubby Realizes,” greeted Judge Fred W. Coon in a North side court. Judge Coon smiled appreciatively. “It’s nice of you to bring your sketch

down here,” he said. “A friend told me it was a good act, and I was going to see it at the theater tonight. Go ahead, if you’re ready.” “We’re not ready, and we won’t be, and we didn’t bring the sketch here, and it isn’t going to be at any theater any more,” said W. R. Abrams, husband of Miss Johq£. “Absolutely,” said Miss Johns. A patrolman explained: “She had him arrested after the performance last night for peace disturbance.”

"He lms too much temperament,” Miss Johns said. “He me, and my arms are black and blue, and my nerves wrecked from his brutal treatment.” “She has too much temper,” said Abrams. “I didn’t beat her. The marks on her arms are where I held her when she was trying to hit me with two soda pop bottles. She bit me and pulled my hair.” Judge Coon asked them how long they had been married. “Two years,” Abrams said, “and we’ve been ‘teaming’ together in vaudeville eight years.” “You look like nice people',” the court admonished, “and I’ve heard you have a fine act. Better make up and go on with it. There aren’t any too many good vaudeville sketches.” “No!” in unison. “We’ve canceled!” « “Well, I’m going to continue this case,” Judge Coon said. “Both of you come back Friday and tell me you’ve made up.” They went away in different directions.

Soldier’s Bravery Rewarded by Rehabilitation WILKE S-BARRR, PA. —Several years ago Thomas Butklewlcz, Jr., was a highly respected lavVyer in Luzerne county. He fell. Misappropriating funds of some clients he was disbarred by the bar association. His troubles

September 24 he was cited for bravery, the official report saying: “In March, 1917, in a dangerous section, during an attack, he assisted in extricating a great number of wounded on roads exposed to.heavy enemy shell fire under extremely dangerous conditions; also, upon the occupation of a section recently conquered, he organized the carrying of the wounded under a heavy bombardment of high explosive shells, with great mastery of command and firmness which imparted to the men always the same confidence.” News of his brave actions under fire reached his former friends and associates. A movement was set on foot, to honor him. Yesterday he was reinstated to the bar on the petition of scores of lawyers. The American sanitary section has been mustered out of service. Butklewlcz has been offered a commission as first lieutenant in, the American army. • r-- 4

Misfortune Due to Efforts to Help His Friends M PLYMOUTH, MASS—Benjamin C. Reed, sixty-eight years- old, 1 former tax collector and treasurer of'Whitman, and widely known as "Honest Ben, began a two-year term In the house of correction after pleading guilty to the

larceny of town funds amounting to 525,000. Reed made a remarkable statement to the court in pleading to the charge. "I may have done wrong. I realize It now and am willing to take my- punishment,” he said. “I did the best I could. Not one cent of the $25,000 in my defalcation has been appropriated to my own use, but rather to meet outstanding taxes which threatened to expose my own peculiar style of bookkeeping.” The bld man re-

lated that at the time of manipulating his accounts business was dull in ' Whitman and many of his friends were unable to pay their taxes on time. “I knew that If I pressed many of them who owed taxes,” he went on, “It foeant the losa of hundreds of homes and the wiping out of small bank accounts. I collected money and applied it to the accounts of those who could not pay year after year and the two offices I held made it possible for me to transfer from one account to the other. Part of my salary also was used for this purpose.” District Attorney Katzman admitted there was no evidence that Reed used Hie monev In any other way than he stated. He had. been in affics • Ince 1903. . f • • , I • " i

Sixteenth street and; Broadway. - section of the’.city’s at present to be decorated Columbia students, and ItSiyas in about these that the skirmish and ended. / ' ' . Those of the population of irtgßfde ‘Heights who were to be in at the death were first introduced to the carnage when two youths met at the subway exit at that point. To avoid extravagant'language, each vonth was garbed as beautifully as

multiplied. His young wife, a bride of a year, died. An infant son followed her to the grave. Broken in heart and spirit, Butkier wicz turned to the war. He enlisted in the Seventy-first New York regiment and went to the Mexican border. When the regimeht was mustered out he enlisted in the American Red Cross for service in France. Then he became a private in the American sanitary section. He was promoted to commander of his section.