Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 200, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 August 1919 — CHRONICLES. [ARTICLE]

CHRONICLES.

Now, it came to pass in the land of America, even the United States, In the reign of Woodrow whose surname was Wilson, there came a severe drought throughout the land and it rained not for the space of many moons and the growing grain was parched round about Rosebud, even unto Aix and Gifford. The wheat was shriveled, the oats was light on the stem, and the corn blades turned red thereof, throughought the whole land of Nubbinridge. The potatoes waxed smaller in the heat of the sun, and the vines withered away and perished while the potato bugs waxed stronger as the heat prevailed. The brooks and ditches were dried up by the burning rays of the sun, and the cattle were lowing' in the fields for water; the pastures turned crisp and dry, and the cows nipped at the jimson weeds, which grew round about, and pushing through the old barbed .wire fences did eat of the rolled corn blades with such eagerness and destructiveness thereof, that the inhabitants of the said land of Nubbinridge were wont to place barbed wire necklaces and great wooden yokes upon them tc keep them in the barren pastures. Some of the inhabitants lot the land prayed, others complained, while others toiled on in silence, resigned to their fate, leaving all to nature and the ruler of the universe.

The grain venders waxed suspicious, strictly sifted the husbandman’s wheat through a, seven-fold serve, besides testing it with avoirdupois weights and measures to ascertain the amount they should pay below the government offer thereof: Notwithstanding all this drought, there were a few good reports from the Knimanites, the Jordanits, the Barkleyites and a few other tribearid sub-tribes in the land of Jasper, where the husbandman was worthy of his hire and his grain' waxc, strong in the measure. But after many weeks of famine and drought the windows of heaven were opened and the floods came and watered the earth and the vegetation .therein revived and took new root in the moisture of the ground and all the dwellers round about Rosebud- took heart and were made happy in the old promise of Bible times that, . ‘‘While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease.” JOHN E. ALTER.