Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 269, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 November 1918 — Letter to a Country Mouse From Her City Cousin [ARTICLE]

Letter to a Country Mouse From Her City Cousin

Dear Mouse:—Well, here I nm right in the midst of things and feeling exactly like a molecule. Lonesome? Weil, I should say so. Why is it tpat cky crowds mnke one feel so unnecessary? When you stroll out into the country, surrounded with the cbffckens, pigs, sheep, goats and cows an pigeons and thousands and thousands of tiny folks that go to make up the crowded country life, you feel that man is indeed lord of creation. But when you stroll out in the city and meet these same folk, just because they have .put on human shape, you feel quite small and inferior* and abashed. For they are arf here, Mouse, dear, every single .one —even to Greed/and Grun.ty, my prize Berkshires. I lunched at the next table to them today. The only marked difference was that there was no pen around them and Greedy wore beautiful diamonds. Grrtnty made Just as much fuss about his food. You would have thought Washington put on the sugar restrictions with no other purpose than to annoy him, and as he guzzled and grunted and grumbled, his fat jowls, red and shaking, as he tried to stuff, and complain to high heaven at the same time about how terrible the food situation really was, I was tempted to yell “Sewey” and drive him and Greedy back to their pen. I don’t believe he knows or cares to know that if he and his fat companion had not been exceptions, America could never have shipped 86,000,000 pounds of beef products during the one month of March to our hungry allies over yonder. It means nothing to them that before we entered the war we exported tb the allies 50,000,000 pounds of pork a month. When we entered the war this had increased to 125,000,000 pounds, and in March of this year the amount of pork exported to the allies amounted to 308,000,000 pounds, which is more than six times the normal and 50 per cent greater than any other month during the last seven years. This is what “porkless days” have done. So it’s back to the pen with Greedy and Grunty! * The old Domlnecker rooster had two pullets to lunch at the table Just next to mine, and he was shaking his red wattles, flapping his wings, scratching straw and allowing off generally. He was sixty, and a grandfather, if he was a day, and the girls could not have been over twenty-two and pretty as . pictures. »One was a stenographer and the other a bookkeeper in the ® a ™ e big office building where Daddy Domineeker heads a loan business, and believe me, food conservation meant nothing in their young lives, so long as daddy paid the bill. They ate straight through the menu card. I don’t see how they do it and beep their shape, for that they were easy to look.at goes without saying. They were built along leghorn lines, and in spite of their years had gained much knowledge of barn-yard tactics. /1 Jiad to admire their system. Two good-looking young aviators were just across from them, «o one of them would engross Dominecker’s attention while the other flirted with the soldiers. Then they would change about, and their team work was «o perfect that poor»old rooster paid the check, which-would have bought two five-dollar War Savings stamps and gone a long way on the third, and chuckled as he paid it; then strutted off to get his hat and coat, leaving them to smile “good-by” at the soldiers—and make a date to meet them in the moonlight, I hope, for youth should call to youth. Mouse, what is It that blinds a man of sixty and a woman of forty to the fact that when they act kittenish they never fool anybody but themselves, and the world laughs at them and not with them?

If the po* ole rooster hadn’t crowed so loud He might’er, passed for young In the barn-yard crowd, But, he drapped his wings and stepped so high ' Hat the pullets all laugh as he passes by. 1 And he ain’t by hisself in dat. . • No, honey, he ain’t by hisself in dat Mouse, I have a nice Juicy bit of scandal that I would write you, but I know how careless you are about leaving your letters about, and this Is entirely too risque to be read by modest brother John or Mollie of the tender years so I will postpone it. In the meantime, know that in the midst of all the exciting sounds and sights—the heady experience of nibbling this strong city’s cheese —I think of you and love you. So, dear, out of the peace and great spaces in which you are moving, send a quieting homey letter to ME*