Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1909 — GANDERBONE'S FORECAST [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GANDERBONE'S FORECAST

FOR SEPTEMBER. (Copyrighted 1909 by C. H. Reith.) Whenever that Great prodigal Prosperity Concludes that home Has some attractions Over husks And choosing Nevermore to roam, And turns his face Toward the place Where first he saw The light of day, And where the lamp Has faithfully Been burning since He went away— Whenever, as we Said before, His trousers are The worse for dogs, And he would eat His breakfast food With better company Than hogs, And finally Makes up his mind That having had His little fling, He wants to see The old homestead, And mother, And that sort of thing— Whenever he feels Equal to The humble pie And kindly chaff, By thunder, We will wager him He never saw A fatter calf Or one to Better purpose fed Than we’ve got Out behind the shed.

The old Romans tried to make September the seventh month, as Its name indicates, but this brought Labor day around at a season when capital was at the seashore and could not be impressed by the parade, and it was subsequently made the ninth month. Domitian the tyrant was among those who complained of the misnomer, and he gave it his own royal name of Germanicus; but as soon as he was in Africa the reigning Emperor, Bigbillius, reversed the policy and restored to month the only name in the calendar remaining to us as it was in the beginning. The curtain will rise cautiously, discovering a schoolliouse in the foreground and a small boy in openseat pants concealed in the tall grass at the left. Mr. Taft will be pounding his ear under a bush on the right, and Mr. Pinchot and Mr. Ballinger will alternately chase each other across the stage at the rear. In the remote background a group of football players will be putting of football players will be putting on fall hair, and farmers will be passing to town with their crops along the extreme right side of the stage and returning in automobiles on the left. After the preliminary pantomime, in which the teacher will dash out of the schoolhouse and catch the boy, Mr. Taft lays his other ear on the an- | vil, and several aeroplanes pass over, the consumer will come out and sing, “Listen to a Pencil on My Ribs.”

And then the big show will begin, and summertime will scoot, the quail will do a trial trill upon his magic flute, the calf will hoist his tail aloft and jump from hill to hill, the dread mosquito will confess and fall upon his bill, the birds will call the moving van, to warmer climates bound, and the first acorn will fall and raise a welt upon the ground. It is a very pleasant thing To think upon the Fall And what a comfort probably It will be to us all. To think upon the cider press, The pumpkins turning gold, The squirrel picking hazel nuts. The chigger catching cold, A new supply of oxygen Replenishing the air, And nature touching up the scene With color here and there.

A man who cannot fall upon his lyre and give it steam enough to make a symphony with Autumn for his theme, and cannot take his hands away and play it with his nose, or even stand upon his head and pick it with his toes -until the din of falling nuts Is pattering around, and the hunter’s moon is in the sky, and all the hills are browned, and yonder in the filmy depth his frenzied eye can trace a gang of migrants tooling by against the arch of space—a man whose soul cannot respond to that insistent call is going where they do not have an autumntime at all. However, and be it as it may, the bullfrog’s sad adieus will rumble briefly ere he tilts and burrows in the ooze, the railroads will return the folks they found too spry to smash, the poor cockroach will lay his head - beneath the window sash, the drys will put the blower on and march against the dragon, and a few more sections of the map will board the water wagon.

The supreme test for railroad bridges will begin on the 16th, when President Taft will set out upon his 13,000-mile trip to Mexico, the Pa-

ciflc Slope, and intermediate poihts. This date in history will also be the 52d anniversary of the President’s birth, but he will not open anything very loud, and there will bp no bear hunters present. In the course of his travels Mr. Taft Will test the stability and tensile strength of 67,432 bridges and 612,002 trestles, and the rotundity of more than 10,000 roundhouses.

Mars will be the other exhibit of the month. This planet, which ia supposed to be inhabited by people like Mr. Rockefeller and others who have something on the rest of us, Is now only 34,000,000 miles distant, and may be easily distinguished by its angry redness and its habit of winking and blinking like a Pittsburg first-nighter. There have been several suggestions for attracting the attention of Mars while passing, the best of which is that everybody upon our own earth say Booh! at the same time; but Mr. Harriman says that if anybody in this country says Booh! again just at this time prosperity never will come back; so we, at least, are not participating, no matter if the rest of the world does do it.

The September moon, which is said to be the only one under which anyone ever committed bigamy, will be full on the 29th, and the signs of the zodiac for the month will be Virgo until the 22d, and thereafter Libra. People born under the influence of Virgo are persistent and can get a lower berth after the man says there are none left, but Libra people are well balanced, and can sleep in an upper. V On the 22d the sun will cross the equator for a touchdown, aqjl the increased tariff on clothing will kick the autumn equinox. This will give the ball to the wolf on our frontyard line. And then October will return With gossamery sky, And in the soft autumnal hush The pumpkin vine will pie.