Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1909 — GANDERBONES FORECAST [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GANDERBONES FORECAST

FOR AUGUST. (Copyright 1909, by C. H. Reith.) Last year— Sagamore Hill, Fever and thrill, Never a minute When it was so still. Always a liar To put in the club, 1 A rogue or a rascal To raise a hubbub. Last year— Sagamore Hill. This year— Lo, and alas! Beverly, Mass., With Bill on the flat Of his back on the grass Dreaming a dream Of the faraway sky, And how and then stirring To bat at a fly. Last year— Shindy and sass, This year— Beverly, Mass. Last year— Quarrel and grudge, This year— O, fudge!

August was originally the month of Sextilis, but in the time of Augustus there was a movement in the Roman Senate to name it for the reigning Caesar. The resolution was bitterly opposed by the insurgents and Democrats, but Agrippa Aldrichus and Maecenas Cannonus put it through, and Consumus Ultimatus, the leader of the opposition, was made a galley slave The fight was one of the most thrilling in the history of Rome, and it kept the Senate in session so late in the summer that some of the senators almoet missed their Chautauqua engagements.

In the beginning, too, August had but twenty-nine days, and it was pretty generally felt that this was enough; but Julius Caesar added two days, and only the entreaties of the people restrained him from adding two or three more He liked August. It was a glorious season in the Pontine marshes, and the hardiness and manhood which subsequently made him Imperial Caesar he attributed to swimming in green ponds, fighting mad dogs and going around with his big toe bandaged in the good old days when the boys called him “Red.”

The cow will wade the pasture pond With each day boiling hotter, And the luckless calf will have to learn To suckle under water, To stick his head up, wanting breath, To duck it, wanting rations, And otherwise amuse the ducks. Mud-turtles and batrachians.

The farmer will survey the field and pray to have a rainstorm, and the dog will look upon the pool and have another brainstorm, the weary world will make its rounds with sweltering and yawning, the sun will try a brand new lens upon the summer awning.

Mr. Rockefeller will give away money this month on the 2d, 17th and 26th. He will receive it the other twenty-eight days of the month. The moon will be full on the Ist, Mercury will become evening star on the 4th, and the consumer will eat on the Bth and 21st. Lectures will move in the regular outdoor orbit from the Ist to the 20th, and elocutionists will be at large for the first fifteen days. No trusts will be busted this month, but the regular monthly installments will be collected on all fines. Mr. Roosevelt will range into the Albertine Basin, and the Cabifiet will meet under a bush on the President’s lawn Persons trying to tour Europe on S3OO will cable home for more money, summer boarders will come back to town for something to eat, and Mr. Bryan will mount the squared platform in the wilderness and continue to supply the opposition with ideas.

Our Mr. Taft will play at golf, And the sun will burn and tawn him The while a nigger follows up And throws ice water on him

The canning seasqn will return, and the Sugar Trust will manage to make us pay that one or two odd million it was damaged when I ncle Sam inflicted justice upon Its deep-laid plot to bust us. O, would that we could find a trust that would so far indebt us that after we had blistered It there were no way to get us! Or that the mad consumer might lay one trust in its coffin with some Invention where he did not sting himself so often!

But hold! enough of these vain hopes—■ There is no promise there: ■ The average consumer’s head’s A loafing place for hair, ; And not a rendezvous for bright I Ideas; if it were, He’d have a trust himself and lift The other fellow’s fur.

Meanwhile, Mars will advance by easy stages, and the signal corps practice daily for the interplanetary communication we are to have in October. Mars will at that time be distant but 36,000,000 miles, and there is some hope that he may have seen prosperity, which appears to have gone that far, anyway. On the twenty-second the month will pass from the influence of Leo the Lion to that of Virgo, the sixth sign of the zodiac. Persons born under Virgo lack the» audacious brilliancy which makes presidents and great men of those born under Leo, but they are shrewd and soft-step-ping, and got what they wanted in the new tariff bill. Virgo babies are born with only one eye shut. No Virgo person ever had both eyes closed at the same time, or tried to put a letter in a fire-alarm box.

The summer camper will desert the city for the woods, and fill a wagon with his traps, his duffle and his goods. He’ll pitch his tent upon some wild and shady bit of ground, and take a spade and raise a slight embankment all around. The birds will sing him welcome, and the trees will sigh aloft, and the earth will teem with beauty in the gloaming sweet and soft. The stilly night will drop its robe and pin it with a star, and when the morning dawhs they’ll find a torn mosquito bar, a million or so little holes through which he has been bled, and nothing but an empty skin deflated on the bed.

The Chautauqua lecture rates for this month are the most tempting in years, viz.: U. S. Senators, insurgent, $2500; standpat, $250; Democrat voting with Aldrich, $100; Standard Oil, $1000; sugar, $800; steel, $750; woolen stuffs, $600; other industries, S3OO. Standard Oil judges: preferred, $2000; common, S3OO. Congressmen: heard of, $500; unheard of, S2OO. Governors: Democratic who ran ahead of Bryan, $1200; who have defied federal courts, southern variety, $1200; plain, $125. Reformers, civic, $300; prohibition, $75; general, $5. Suffragettes: pretty, $3500; intellectual, $750. Trust busters: U. S., $800; local, $75. Crators, fancy, $125; medium, $75; plain, SSO. Heroes: army, $100; navy, S2OO. Talkers, sßs'. Thinkers, $65. Prophets: $325; prosperity, sls. Windjammers; ordinary,sso; extraordinary, S3OO.

And then September will step up And hammer on the gate, And keeping sweet will not be half The trick it’s been of late.