Jasper County Democrat, Volume 17, Number 68, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 December 1914 — GANDERBONES FORECAST. [ARTICLE]

GANDERBONES FORECAST.

December. Yes. Luella. It has happened— N ot wlthstandi ng Counter views. All the troops Of occupation Have deserted Vera Cruz. People said We wouldn’t do it When it came To making tracks, But we’re very Busy, dearie. Showing Mexico Oar backs. What was thought Or our intentions Was not flattering At best. When had any Land relinquished Anything it Had possessed? People winked About it, dearie, Just as we do When the Japs Say they will Return to China What the Germans Took - perhaps. In the course Of tooling people We have also Fooled our own; Lots of us. My dear Luella, Were but waiting To be shown. Wilson politics. My dearie, Are in some Respects so new That it isn’t Always easy To believe That they are true.

December was the tenth month of •he old Roman calendar, and gets its name from the Latin decern (ten). When Augustus Caesar became emperor the empire was still suffering from the militarism of his uncle. Julius. There was absolutely no provision for the refinement and en couragement of family life. Every t tan was a soldier, and every woman a Red Cross worker. The home was a military training school in which all the members of the family sought to discover how they could serve. Augustus adopted the usual expedient of medieval rulers by revising the calendar. The holidays were at that time falling in our t resent month of October, when .all good Romans were at the front. By delaying them two months, when it was too Cold 'to fight. Augustus found that he couitf catch everybody at home. He, accordingly, inserted the months of July and August in the calendar, and made December the twelfth month. The effect was all that he could have desired. Christmas became a great holiday, families were reunited, everybody was running about doing something for the poor, and the first thing Augustus knew Rome had become sentimental. He was ridiculed by the war party, but the women and many of the men supported him, and he was triumphantly sustained. The only painful incident connected with the affair was the emperor's break with Mark Antony. Mark refused to hang his stocking up. He said it was an effeminate thing to do, and unworthy of a Roman soldier. His celebrated oration protesting against .the imperial order that everybody should hang up his or her stocking is one of the most eloquent things in literature, Mark fled to Egypt, where they didn’t wear any stockings. However, Augustus by this time had his dander up, and. ordered the Egyptians into stockings. Cleopatra, whose beauty had been much remarked, regarded the order as an attempt to suppress art, and joined

with Mark in revolt. They were defeated by Augustus at the battle, of Aetium, where both were slain, it may be said to the credit of Antony that he fell in his• stocking feet. He was a great man, but he outlived his time and became a reactionary. The festive calf shall sniff the air And blithely beat it to the shed, And plumbers dashing everywhere Shall fill the populace with dread. The quarterback shall shed his mane And reinstate his Sunday voice, The business experts shall explain Why everybody should rejoice, The farmer in bls limousine Shall softly flash upon the view, And sigh to think what might have been If cotton had been boosted, too. The ways of war are very hard. A shot is fired across the seas, and lo! the times are evil starred - in parts as far away as these. Because a king desires to add another province to his dag, the price of kerosene is bad or artichokes begin to drag. The soldier firing from a church may miss the enemy a mile, and still knock someone from his perch as dimly distant as the Nile. The mortar shooting 8.0 blocks may only break a turkey’s leg, and yet the target practice knocks the stuffing out of Winnippeg. A Zeppelin may drop a bomb where no one has a thing to tear, and still precipate a calm in breakfast bacon over here. Or peace or war, we all must pay when kings and kaisers go to fight. We cannot simply steal away, as one could fancy that we might. We have to see it, as it were, and take our share of what’s'ally, or how sincerely we demur or how protestingIv we cry. Let half the world begin to Krupp, and all the world must Krupp as well: we all must shoot each other up in some grim fashion tor a spell. We may not hear the cannon roar, nor mark the aeroplane in flight; we may not tremble for the door, nor quake with terror in the night: we may not see the fatal sign of sky made luminous with flame, but we are on the firing line as true bystanders, all the same.

At any rate, the holidays Shall come for little girls and boys. And Santa Claus, in some amaze, Shall drive to Nurenburg for toys. He’ll find conditions very strange, With soldiers peering from the gate. And passing over out of range, He'll take the hint and pull his freight. Poor Santa Claus! He cannot know How some good things are. running down. Nor would he be discreet to go Too near that celebrated town. Despite his old and merry face, His whiskers floating in the sky May lead the gunners in the place To take him for a Russian spy. The moon will be full on Dec. 2, and congress will convene on the 7th. The spectacle of Uncle Joe Cannon returning to congress will draw a crowd. The band will play “The Cat Came Back," and there will also bn dirges for some of the democrats who didn't come back. The, winter solstice will come on the 21st. If nothing definite comes of the war in Europe before that, this will settle it one way or the other. Then January comes with dank And intermittent chills, And Uncle Sam’s new kind of bank Shall help us pay our bills.