Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 164, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1920 — SETTLED QUESTION OF HAIR [ARTICLE]

SETTLED QUESTION OF HAIR

After Experience With Kerosene, Captain Hopkins Had Not Any Further Worry About IL Baldness is a condition the threat of which will frequently stir men of even the most dormant vanity. Hair tonics have netted fortunes for their inventors and there are countless remedies of the old housewife, sdme of which, such as the application of kerosene, make the writer, at least, feel that the disease might be preferable to the cure. The sea captain John D. Whldden tells of in his “Ocean Life in the Old Sailing Ship Days,” certainly discovered to his sorrow one of the possible results of such a “cure.” Captain Hopkins was giving a dinner to some of the other ship captains and their wives who were in the harbor of Bahia at the same time with him. As the cabin of the captain’s brig was small, the table was laid under awnings on top of the cabin. The guests arrived and dispersed about under the awnings to enjoy themselves until dinner was served. Captain Hopkins, who was a general favorite, after a few minutes went below, “pre-sumably--to put a few finishing touches to his appearance.” The captain, who was “a small man, with a quaint, seamed, whiskerless face,” was troubled about his thinning hair and, after trying all sorts of tonics, some one had told him that “kerosene, oil, well rubbed in, would cause a healthy growth when everything else had failed.” Captain Hopkins tried it and came to have great faith in it, going around with his head glistening, and an odor distilling from him like a Pennsylvania biT derrick.” Down in his cabin, now, he proceeded to give a fresh application of the kerosene. Suddenly the people ‘on deck were startled by a yell, “and the next instant the head of old Hopkins appeared above the companionway, blazing like a giant candle. The ladies screamed, while one or two captains caught up buckets and, dipping up salt water over the brig’s side, deluged the captain’s head, extinguishing him in a moment, but leaving him as bald as an egg, although beyond a few blisters he was not seriously hurt.” Captain Hopkins, it turned out had lighted a lamp and somehow brought the match in contact with his head.