Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1918 — JACKSON TOWNSHIP, NEWTON COUNTY [ARTICLE]

JACKSON TOWNSHIP, NEWTON COUNTY

Down with the disloyal hun. Best spring in years for oats. God is in the harness and the allied lines still hold. Mrs. Schuyler Williams is visiting relatives in Indianapolis. Recent showers have improved wheat prospects wonderfully. Eli Yoder —a mighty fine Amishman, by the way—-has moved to Burr, Oak, Mich. The condition of corn in this locality can be described in three words—-bad and worse. In spite of our unusually cold winter, rough feed in this locality is plentiful and comparatively cheap. Mob violence is one way to check the activities of disloyal Germans in, this country, but, unfortunately, it isn't the right way. Quite a few farmers will begin plowing for cprn this week. The ground is in exceptionally good condition for this work. Daniel Schanlaub has bought the David Miller forty acres in northern Jackson township, the purchase price being something like ?4,000. Ferd Warne, formerly a resident of this township, died recently at the home of his daughter in Morocco. He was about sixty years old. This year marks the beginning .of the end of Dutch Bill. We may, and doubtless will, meet with a few set-backs, but that will merely postpone Bill’s finish. The country schools of Jackson township closed last Saturday. The Mt. Ayr school closed two or three weeks ago owing to various juvenile diseases in the school.

Old Newton county has a habit of being right to the front in every worthy cause. Kindly observe our smoke in the matter of Liberty bonds. Red Cross work, etc. Ellis Snow, another Jackson township boy, has departed for the training - camp at Hamilton, New York. Luck be with youi, Ellis, and may you return home safely. We observe that George Hopkins, Republican, and Bela F. Roberts. Democrat, are asking for the office of trustee of Jackson township. Go to it, boys, and may the best man win. Anyway, Hindenburg and .Tirpitz cannot make faces at each other. The former did not get into Paris by April 1, and the latter did not starve England with his submarine warfare.

Don’t get the idea that you are licensed to administer a swift kick to every German you meet. We have lots of good, loyal Germans in this country and they are entitled to decent treatment. Usually the pasture season does not begin until .about the first o e May. but cattle and horses are making a pretty fair stagger at living on grass at the present time and have been for the last two weeks. Joseph Chizum of Morocco has bought the “Kennedy ranch” in the northwest part o.f Jackson township. Mr. Chizum, we are told, intends to thoroughly tile this ranch, the chief requirement in the way of making it valuable land. The little folks or No. 5 school were sadly - disappointed last week. They had prepared for a rousing good time on the last day of the term, when, 10, the teacher was suddenly stricken with measles, and there wasn’t any ‘‘last day.” “The audience howled with suppressed laughter,” writes a southern Illinois editor, in giving an account of a home talent show. And if the show was half as fnnny as the editor’s version of it, the joyousness. of the audience is easily understood. Spring wheat that was put out early is sprouting nicely, with every indication of a good stand. It is to be regretted, however, that a number of farmers, who desired to experiment with spring wheat this;

season, did not receive their seed in time for planting. Speaking of brutal frankness, combined with government A mule I cheek, may we be permitted to sub--1 mit the following from the Weser Zeitung, a paper published in Germany: “Germany lost her last chance to keep the United States out when she fajjed to prevent President Wilson's re-election. I “I like that bible story,’’ said old Andy Girard, “about when the Almighty told the gang to throw stones at the woman o’ Jerusalem, if any of ’em had an idear his conscience was so dog-gon well balanced he could heave one straight. Don’t rembmber of any pebbles fly'in’ 'round in her direction, do you?’’ | We shall continue to hope that there will be no mud throwing on the part of the female politicians in the coming campaign. For what would it profit the dear thing to hurl a hunk of mire at the opposition in the steenth ward and hit an innocent bystander, of her own political faith, in an outlying township. With apologies to Walt Mason: A month ago the cow was sad, she scarce could lift her head, begad. I The stalks were stale, the straw was mould, and Pied was looking tough and old. But now the verdant dales laugh out, the gentle south winds blow, and Pied, chocfull of grass and greens scarce seems the same old cow. It didn’t rain last Sunday, but this fact will not deter some people from swearing that it did. Furthermore they will continue to prove !by certain bewhiskered antediluvians from Hancock or Posey county i that the law of the Medes and the I Persians was never more sound, unchangeable and dependable than 1 the theory that six successive rainy ' Sundays follow a rainy Easter. May we n!>t remark that those resolutions adopted by the Repub--1 lican district committee of the old I blood/ Tenth could have been curtailed considerably without materially impairing their usefulness. Would it not have been just as well, not to mention saved, to have said simply: “We endorse every dog-gone thing the G. O. P. has ever done or ever will do, and what you goin’ to do about it?” We have been trying to persuade

Honest Abe, the carrier, to accompany us on a campaigning trip over northern Indiana, in behalf of the Democratic party, we to do the speaking and Abe the singing, but up to the present writing he has steadfastly refused to be mixed up in the scheme in any matter whatever. Says that while the law permits him to sing for his own pleasure, it doesn’t allow him to sing politically. A magazine writer imparts the information that in 1674 a colony of Quakers bought from the Indians thq, greater part of New Jersey for ‘‘twenty guns, thirty kettles, thirty pair of hose, thirty petticoats, thirty bars of lead, fifteen barrels of powder, seventy knives, thirty Indian axes and seventy combs.” And, judging ifrom what we have seen of New Jersey, we should - say that the untutored savage got a God’s plenty for his real estate even at that. , \ “If a river flows at the rate of five miles an honr, and a young man with a red necktie that cost sixty-nine cents sets out in a rowboat, rowing nine miles an hour in the opposite direction, to meet a girl who is thirty-two years old, but claims to be only nineteen, what is the square on the hypothenuse?” When we think of the years that we spent in solving problems like this, instead of becoming a prize fighter or a catch-as-catch-can wrestler, and laying up something for our declining it makes us

bitter and cynical. A family over in Morocco possesses a freak in. the form of a talking crow\ "Jim,” the name by which the bird is known, speaks the English language fairly well. In fact, the high school graduate who persists in saying “I have saw” and “he has went,” has practically nothing on this particular James crow in the matter of grammar. One day last summer Jim escaped from his cage and flew out north of the city on a voyage of discovery. In his wanderings he came across an old negro sut in McClellan township, hoeing corn, and, as Jim had never seen a negro before, he sailed around the African a.few times in order to get a good look. “Good morning,” said Jim finally, by way of opening up a conversation. Now, the old darky, possessed all of the superstition usually attributed to his race, and iupon hearing himself spoken to by a birfl, and a crow at that, his 'hair at once began to assume an upright position and his eyes to dilate.' “Who dat talkin?” quavered the negro. “Nice morning,” continued Jim, still sailing around overhead. Jim was right; it was a nice morning, but the old man wasn’t aware of it just then, for when a darkey is

runnlhg his level best, through & hot cornfield, and thoroughly imbued with the idea that he has just been spoken to by the devil, he doesn’t consider such insignifii cant matters as the weather. Over in the neighborhood of Waldron, 111., there is a farmer who makes a 'specialty of “brandied watermelons.” When the melon season is on this farmer plugs his finest melons, pours into the openings a quantity of brandy, replaces the plugs and leaves the melons on the vine over night or long enough for the liquor to thoroughly permeate their internal organs. There is a great demand for these “doctored” melons, it is said, and the honest agriculturist has no difficulty in disposing of them at a <J°l* lar and a half each. One night last summer, so the story goes, this farmer, after “doctoring” a goodly supply of melons, was enjoying a period of well-earned repose on the front porch, when he was startled I suddenly by the lusty singing of a I

negro down in the melon patch. “1 I looked away ovah yondah what’d I see?’’ sang the voice; and an evil grin spread over the face of the farmer. “A band of angels cornin’ after me, coming’ fo’ to ca’y me home,’ continued the voice, gradually growing in strength and richness; and the melon grower stepped out to the grape arbor, secured ; a long, lithe hoop-pole, flexed his muscles by swinging the pole around his head for a spell, and then started out to investigate. “Dah hills dah skip an’ shout, my Gawd, my Gawd!” floated up from the field, the singer by this time having reached a very frenzy of religious ecstacy, superinduced by brandied melon. When the farmer finally succeeded in locating the singer he found an aged darkey, a well-known character in that locality, seated among the ruins of four fine “doctored’ melons and as happy as only a darkey could be under the circumstances. Whack —“Fo’ de Lawd, boss” —-Whack, whack—“Oh, Gawd ’ —Whack, whack —“Look out dah, .you haint goin’ to have no murder 1 on yo’ soul, is you”—Whack, whack 1 Ouch, help—Whack, whack, whack, and a footrace in which the darkey was the recipient of divers and sundry other whacks.