Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 74, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 December 1911 — MERRY LAY [ARTICLE]

MERRY LAY

Of One-Hoss Shay That Burned in a Poetic Way. . At last that wonderful - onehoss that was built in such a logical way that it ran a hundred years, to a day, as Oliver Wendell Holmes would say, has been outmatched up Hartford way; for the Hartford vehicle, it appears, has lasted all of 200 years—which fact, when everything's said and done, has beaten the Deacon’s cart two to one. And today this chaise, which couldn’t be broke, got caught in a fire and went up in smoke. Which shows how the world has gone ahead, since the day that Oliver Wendell said: “Little of all we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year In fact, there’s nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know ,but a tree and truth. (This a moral that runs at large; Take it; you’re welcome—no extra charge).”

Just who did build the Hartford shay, no one now living up here can say, but it wasn’t the Deacon of Holmes’s lay. ’Twas • known all over the countrywide as William Luby's particular pride, which Governor Trumbull used to ride; and that, as every boy will kpow, was full 200 years ago. And later on, after Congress it carried the figure of Lafayette. It appeared to be built in the self-same wav that the Deacon constructed his one-hoss shay. “So .the Deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak, That couldn’t be split (nor bent, nor brokg ■ That was for spokes and floors ■ and sills; He sent for lancewood to make the thills; The crossbars were ash from the straightest trees; The panels of white wood . that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these, ■ ~ • Throughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot top, dasher from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died, That was the way he ‘put her through,’ ‘There!’ said the" Deacon “e’naow she’ll dpw!” And so she did, and so did the shay that was licked to death by the flames today. For Trumbull appeared’in the records when the date was written as seventeen—ten. William Luby called this a “chaise” qnd wheeled her out on the festal days, just to let all Hartford gaze;.and after the.noise and shouts and fun he would wheel her back to Kensington; ■he wouldn’t have sold it for Lord knows what—remarkable thing in Connecticut. And William Luby, he always thought this chaise was made as chaises ought, and that like the one that the Deacon rode. nPthe self-same way this would soon explode. So no one wanders that Luby’s ire is aroused at the freak of the frightful fire. “End of the wonderful one-hoss shay, Logic is logic—that’s all I say.” —Hartford (Conn.) Cor. Nexy York Tieraid.