Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 May 1901 — SHE MENDED IT. [ARTICLE]

SHE MENDED IT.

A Relative Who Did Not Appreciate $ Fine Oriental Rug. There is a woman out on the West side who collects rags as other women collect lace or China and she is ready any time to go without a new gown or wear a hat two seasons if by doing so there is a chance that she may add to her collection. The hopefulest thing about her is that she has little money—little money that is for high-priced bits of oriental carpets for if she had and her mania was aa strong as it is now, there would not be an inch of wall or floor or furniture in her whole house not hidden beneath a rug. But as it is, 6he is obliged to make her purchases with discretion and only after long scrimping on personal and household allowances so that the acquirement of a new rug is a distinct event. A little while ago she bought a rare Keelin or some such name as that—wonderful colors skillfully mingled and woven together with the characteristic stitch that leaves an open space between each contrasting band. It was a lovely old thing and the woman hung over it with delight, throwing it over a table and going into raptures over its beauty, reveling in the way the mahogany of the table gleamed through the meshes of the openwork stripe and rejoicing in the soft blues and old reds of the faded fabric. That same day the woman’s aunt arrived from New England, bringing a cold blast of puritanical ideas into her oriental reveries and making ancient rugs sink into insignificance besides body Brussels at $1:25. Whether it was the reaction or whether it was merely a cold taking in the draughty auction room where the dark Syrian had disposed of his wares that was responsible, I don’t know, but at any rate the woman was taken ill and went to bed for a week, leaving the reins of household government in the hands of her relative. From the noise of brooms and dustpans that reached her bedroom, she knew that at least things were being kept clean, but she had no definite reports from below until the day when, still weak, her husband carried her downstairs, the relative making voluble explanations from the landing. The grocer had been changed and a cheaper laundry had been found, and as for the state of the vegetable bins in the cellar there was no word in the language capable of expressing their degradation. “But the worst thing was that old table cover,” the aunt went on, blithely. “At first I thought I’d sell it to the rag man and buy a nice chenille one I saw marked down at a store,! but then I concluded that it would be cheaper to mend it. So I did, and ; it’s as good as new.” The owner of the old table cover i had heard only the first sentence for, j gaining sudden strength, she had rushed to the door of the living room and looked in. There on the table was the precious Keelin—“as good as new,” with everyone of its openwork stripes carefully darned up with bright red Germantown wool.—Milwaukee Sentinel.