Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 76, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 December 1918 — JACKSON TOWNSHIP, NEWTON COUNTY [ARTICLE]

JACKSON TOWNSHIP, NEWTON COUNTY

Plenty of moisture.. Everybody done husking. It won’t seem like Christmas to Bill this year. « The “boys” are getting back, ana right glad we are to see them again. A young man living in Lake township claims to have earned $65 in one afternoon hunting furred animals. Miss Nellie Makeever has been over near Rensselaer helping her relatives, the Jay Stockton family, through a spell of sickness. Last Monday bees were flying and dandelions were in bloom, and yet there are people who will tell you that Indiana isn’t an* ideal winter resort. Daniel Schanlaub returned from a flying trip—to northern Missouri the latter part of last week. Yep, Missouri is all right, but old Indiana is more so. How quickly a habit is formed. Now when we see the name "Bolshevik” in the hfading we invaribly glance down the column to see how many were murdered. Mrs. E. R. Schanlaub, of Morocco, left for Sparks, Nevada, the latter part of last week in response to a telegram announcing the serious illness of her. daughter, Mrs Elsie Burhans. Fish, it would seem, are quite plentiful this winter. A bunch of local “Ike Waltons” who went to the Kankakee one night recently report a catch of something like 500 pounds. Nice work, nice work, boys—if true. ’ . - Miss Eva Ewen, age 19 years, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Link Ewen, formerly of Morocco, died at her home in Wabash county on Wednesday of last week, of influenza. The body was brought to Morocco for burial. Miss Irene Bachelder, who for several years has been employed in the telephone office at Morocco, was married recently to a young man by the name of Sterner. The young couple will make their home in Pennsylvania, the groom’s native state.

Germany, when the present war began, spoke of England’s “contemptible I’ttle army.” However, it looks now as though Germany will have no occasion to speak thusly of the indemnity which England will ask her to cough up at her earliest convenience. John Mahara has a large job for this winter. John drives a school hack and in making his daily trips covers about 24 miles, mostly over dirt roads. If we were John, we would begin supplicating the gods right now for a better brand of weather than that of last winter. Edgar Steward, recorder- elect, is just kind o’hangin’ around till the day comes for him to assume the duties of his office. We’ll wager something that if Edgar had known how hard it would be to tear himself away from old associations he would have let the office go to the de —well, he would have passed it up. The hanging gardens were regarded by the ancient Greeks as one of the wonders of the world: but that was before a Democratic administration had occasion to organize an army out of raw material, transport it across the briney deep and administer a nice little trouncing to a strong, proud nation—all within the short space of a few months. Lest some of the readers of The Democrat may have failed to notice it, we hasten to calf attention to the fact that the rainfall in the last month or so has been unusually heavy. Water last week covered land .in many places in this vicinity that usually is dry the year round, and, to niake matters worse, local weather-prophets are predicting an open winter, with rain all through January. If the Democrat can scarcely be saved watinell will happen to that class of Republicans—not the rank and file, mind you—who overlooked nothing that would tend to embarrass the present administration in its conduct of the greatest war in history. And with their

campaign of vilification and misrepresentation, at a time when conditions called for the utmost loyalty and forbearance on the part of all, owinell can they hope to escape even a greater damnation than that allotted to the average sinner. It is a very common saying that the people of a town make or mar its success, and a very true saying it is. For instance, compare Babylon with Chicago. Babylon had 3,000 years the start of Chicago, but her merchants refused to advertise in the home paper or give a blame cent towards a new hitchrack around the court house square, and what is she today? Simply a hole in the ground. On the other hand, Chicago, a city spends 'millions in advertising, has miles of stockyards, shedding an effluvia from Dan to St. Joe, while the -fame of her daylight holdups has spread to every civilized nation on the globe. . - We are asked now to. ke.ep on eating baled hay and white-oak bark in order to help Russia. If Russia in the last year had devoted more time to the production of garden stuff and less ' to murder and pillage there would be no occasion for her assuming the role of mendicant at this writing. The American people were ready to skimp and save —to go' hungry, if need be, for,our boys in camp and at the front, but when it comes to keeping right on skimping and denying themselves in order to feed and clothe the Lazzaroni of all Europe, to all eternity, they should be excused if they lose a little of their enthusiasm in the matter. Hog butchering day is another institution that is fast disappearing before the oncoming march of

a more effeminate and refined (?) generation. Time was when butchering day was second in Importance only to the Fourth of July or the funeral of the neighborhood’s oldest citizen. On the morning of tlijat day all was hurry and excitement. Water had to be "het,” knives sharpened; and, usually by ten o’clock, six to eight defunct porkers swung to the breeze, eacrh to our youthful imagination, wearing a smile of the utmost contentment. And then the old Dutch woman from over the creek—with one tooth and a firm belief in the exiptence of a personal deviil — would come and make the sausage and liverwurst. And she would scrape and clean the entrails and then blow them up until you could read your title clear through them; and everybody was happy. Now a farmer hauls a hog to town, turns it over to the official killer, and calls it “butchering.” Diffidence, as defined t>y Webster, is want of confidence, modesty, •bash fulness, humility, doubt and distrust, and Webster, as usual, is rig.ht. Diffidence ifc all of this and more. It is that indefinable something that (makes some of our brightest people act like driveling idiots at times—a kink in the human make-up that ftnpels a strong young man to flee the presence of a pretty sixteen-year-old girl, that causes us to choke at table, unset our coffee cup and decorate the bosom of our shirt with rich viands. There are hundreds of men in Indiana today shoveling coal or digging ditches simply because they haven’t the guts to don a high hat and a long coat and assert themselves. We had a friend once, a young man who was as bright mentally perhaps as Jim Watson, but who, at the present time, and after years of hard labor, possesses only a few hundred thousand dollars and a good name, While Jim —-well, just look at Jim, and all because our friend was modest-and retiring and Jim wasn’t. By the way, this young friend of whom we speak developed hashfulness to a point where, on occasions, it bordered on downright idiocy. To him a soc'al gathering of any kind was nothing less than gehenna under an assumed name. When present at an affair of this nature he would become as weak and flabby as The argument of a Republican stump speaker in an off Year, would sag like an over-loaded government mule and Hike a nigger thinning corn.' 'His young life must have been altogether miserable, and often we pitied him from the bottom es our heart. Friend had one bad habit, he was an inveterate tobacco chewer. He would get away with 'his two pounds a week and seemingly thrive on it. In fact he didn’t really chew tobacco, he just naturally ate it. One night at a protracted meeting Friend entered the house

of worship with a large fresh quid of “Old Honesty” in the left side of his face, forgetting in the exci tcurrent of the moment to remove said quid outside. He tried to sneak into a corner without attracting attention, • but every seat in the- room was occupied except a vacant chair on the rostrum. The minister very kindly invited Friend to come forward and take this seat, and, like one under some hypnotic influence, Friend accepted the invitation. Now it is a law of nature that when a man has no convenient place to spit the flow of saliva always is greater than would be true otherwise. It worked thij-t way with Friend In a very short time his cheeks had expanded until they resembled two toy balloons, and under the fear of what was coming his eyes became fixed and glassy, while his face took on a look which seemed to say “God help me.” Presently two tiny rivulets began to trickle from the corners of his 'mouth, indicating that the end was near. We mentally gave him five minutes to last but the blow-up came in less than three, due to a drop of tobacco juice getting down his throat ahd causing strangulation. To say that Friend expectorated copiously then would be putting it mildly indeed,. Acting, no doubt, upon the theory—"as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb”—he apparently just threw his whole sob 1 into the effort, with the result that the rostrum was deluged fore and aft like the deck of a Cape Cod fishing smack in an off shore gale. Even at that the audience showed a disposition to ignore the matter until a com husker from Bartholomew county, a recent convert and who, seemingly, had reached .a perfect frenzy of religious ecstasy, began to sing in a loud arrogant voice, “Pull For the shore.” Then sootme one snickered, and then Friend made a rush for the door and dived into the bosom of the night.