Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 70, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 November 1920 — NEWS from the COUNTY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

NEWS from the COUNTY

REMINGTON (From the Press.)

Fred and Maurice Peck were Chicago visitors the latter part of the week. Walter Forbes and family of Watseka visited with relatives here Sunday. Mrs. Ross Meyers and little daughter went to Chicago Friday to visit Chauncey Dexter and family. Mr. and Mrs. L. E. Camblin and Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Kessler of Morocco spent Sunday with the editor and wife. r Miss Grace Clowry of Rensselaer is here caring for her mother, Mrs. Lairy Clowry, who has beeh quite ill the past week. George Hemphill, who is still employed at Gary, is home for Thanksgiving. Mrs. Hemphill, who has been in Indianapolis for some time for treatment, returned home Tuesday. Mrs. Isabelle Green will go to Huntington this Friday morning, where she will visit for the next month or so, going on to Memphis, Tenn., in January to spend the rest of the winter with her daughter. The business men and their guests, the A. B. C. band boys, marched in a body in the Catholic church last Thursday evening where they sat down to one of the biggest feeds It khan ever been dur pleasure to parof. When it comes to cooking, «se church women certainly know how. Mr. and Mrs. J. E. Meyers returned the latter part of the week from a visit with old home folks in Pennsylvania. While away they went to see Ellsworth Heath and family at Barbourville, >N. Y. They found the Heaths doing well and quite contented in their new home, which is situated between two high ranges of hills. It is said to be a fine grazing country in that part of the state, aqd dairy farmers do exceedingly well. Dave Cresse, who has been at Heath’s visiting, returned home at K the same time. - -

In spite of the faet that a of our most prominent citizens decreed by authority of the marvelous witch-stick that a regular subterranean lake existed below the surface of the town lot, no apparent result is to be seen regarding the new well dug on that lot the past two weeks, save a very deep hole with a few inches of water in it, and a nice pile of slate and clay piled around the brink. There may be plenty M water there if they only go deep enough, but they have abandoned the amd we are told will go back to their first love In the southeast part of town. A little more digging or a fifty-foot drill hole and a small charge of dynamite in the recently dug well might work wonders.

JACKSON TWP-, NEWTOM CO. The time to boost is today; to* morrow’s the time to “knock.” And, also, along with our other worries, there is the Democrat who hasn’t quite given it up yet. Mary Jane Phillips, who has been quite sick and who had her tonsils removed recently, is making a satisfactory recovery. Nice weather for husking corn. Not a solitary case of heat prostration among buskers up to the hour of going to press. “Wolley” Hockstettler, tenant on the Martin Barker farm, has rented the Dan Brady place in Beaver township for next year. Pat Burns, a Jackson township boy, but for a year or more a resident of Rensselaer, will return here farm the old Burns homestead next season, we are told. It Is passing strange that poor old Russia, after trying sovietism and about all of the other isms, seems never to have thought of trying soap and a haircut. With wood selling at six dollars a load It would seem that owners of timber land could administer quite a blow to old King Coal this winter and earn an old dirty dollai or two at the same time. And, on the other hand, the coal situation isn’t likely to assume a brighter hue as long as a few million people regard as so much waste time any plan to solve this vexing problem that does not Involve the utter annihilation of the mine owners. “Grim famine stalks In Poland,” says a writer for a New York magazine. Sure, sure! During our long and somewhat eventful career we never saw a famine that wasn’t “grim,,” and that didn’t “stalk.” Seems to be a sort of habit with the famine. x A soldier boy, writing of his ex-

c» . perience in one of the hard-fought battles of the recent war, asks: “Did you ever look Death in the face and feel the cold breath of Death on your brow?” Well, maybe not as bad as that, brother, but we have passed a county schoolhouse during recess, and we know bow you felt. Daniel Schanlaub Is traveling up and down the earth, these days seeking a reliable sawyer. Daniel owns a sawmill, has a pile of logs as high as Mount Shasta, and all that now balks the opening of the winter's campaign is a man skilled In manipulating the saw. Yesterday when Dan started out to renew his search he was armed with a six pistol and a pair of handcuffs and seemed quite hopeful. In our last communication to The Democrat we stated that the Republicans should give’ our “Moike” the job of pork inspector at Jerusalem, but the compositor got It “park” Inspector, of ' course. We have often wondered how the average typo managed to compass such whoppers as incommunlcabilIty, Swelsleichhaven, etc., and then fall down ten times out of nine on easy wordsi like “boy,” “dog” and “cat” A few evenings ago Colfax town ship put over another of those enjoyable affairs for which that township is becoming famous, when the male population of the bailiwick served an oyster supper in the central school building to something like three hundred people. ' The occasion was the regular meeting of the Colfax township farm bureau. W. O. Schanlaub, county superin tend ent, and. Mr. Davis, county agent, were present and delivered short talks.

President-elect Harding says “we must become a simple-living nation once more.” Well, under Republican rule, the people likely will be compelled to accept that dictum, whether they like it or not. However, it Is going to be dog-gone hard on the farmers and the day-laborers who, in the last eight years of good old Democratic times, contracted the habit of wearing silk plug hats, silk shirts, of riding in fine automobiles and feasting svpmtuously three times a day. Indeed, it is going to seem strange and far from pleasant—this “simple-living” idea — which, in plain English, means the old felt hat, the muslin shirt, fortycent corn and an old iron dollar a day. But you have said it, Mr. Harding, and we’ll bet a quarter that In the next four years you and your political associates will make good in this one respect, if In no other? Aye, verily, Republicanism and the “one suspender” idea are synonymous. We see by the papers that the prohibition enforcement officials have decided to prohibit the sale of malt and hops to the people in general. Of the various species of petty tyranny put through and attempted by prohibition leaders, this appears to be the most unreasonable. If the sale of malt and hops can be prohibited because they enter into the manufacture of beer, why not go a step further and prohibit the sale of wheat, corn and rye because they enter into the manufacture of whisky? The saloons were driven out of this country not so much by the work of the prohibitionists as through the violation of law by the liquor dealers, to the point of arousing citizens who otherwise would have remained quiescent. Shall we shortly hear the American people again clamoring

for the open saloon as preferable so that Puritanical class of temperance workers who evidently believe that the chief virtue of government consists In making the people* as uncomfortable as possible? The other day we found in out mail a treatise on the subject of “Faith Cure.” and, after reading It, we fell to thinking—something we seldom do —wondering just what the writer of the treatise meant by “faith” in connection with the cure of bodily Ills. Did he mean faith in a supernatural power to accomplish the cure of disease, or simply the human will operating along a certain line and to a certain end? If the latter idea was meant, then we a faith curlst in a mild, conservative way, for we believe that by the proper exercise of the will the cure of many of the minor diseases is not only a possibility but an actual fact. We are acquainted with a good old lady who had great faith in the prayers of John Dowie, the “divine healer." One day this old lady was taken sick,; but, instead of sending fpr the family doctor, she chucks a case note into an envelope and „ sends it -o Dowje, with a request for his prayers to the amount enclosed. The woman sent the letter to town ,y her son, who, by the way, was a .tranger to the covenant of grace ■nd incidentally an alien to the c ommonwealth of Israel. He spoke inearingly of religion and berated the prophets in a loud beer and bologna, voice.; Hence, it is not particularly strange that when he arrived in town, instead of mailing that letter to Jack Dowie, as he was bidden, he extracted the case note, burned the letter In the saloon’s big heating stove and proceeded to get gloriously drunk on the money that rightfully belonged to the “healer," winding up his carouse by bouncing a pool ball off the head of the barkeeper and smashing a dago peddler on the butt of the ear with a hard, unyielding fist. Now get what we are driving at—kindly note, as we have already stated, the power of the human mind when working along certain lines and to a certain end. The good woman gave that case note time to reach Mr. Dowie and then she" got out of bed and went to work —said she was cured, and she was, and to this day she will tell you how she escaped a lingering and. sure death through the prayers of John Alexander powie. Not long ago a man who voted for Harding and Jim Watson Imparted to us the following wolf story —he wanted to swear to the truth of the narrative, but we talked him out of it. This fellow, as we understand it, was out rabbit hunting, when a large wolf suddenly “lep” from a bunch of bullgrass and sailed hellety-bent for tall timber, his' speed being accelerated somewhat by the feel of two charges of small shot in his posterior. In his mad flight the wolf seemed utterly heedless of the fact that he was heading for a woven wire Hence and into which he plunged with a force that sent his head through one of the webs clear up to his dorsal fln. Now let a wolf that is carrying two loads of shot In his. pel-son become entangled in the meshes of a wire fence and he at once becomes all het up and seems to lose his selfcontrol. It was so with this particular wolf. He made a desperate effort to yank out that eighty rods of woven wire fence and his first failure did not deter him from trying- it again and again and then a few times more just to make sure that the thing couldn’t be

done. The air out on the marsh, where this affair took place, is not particularly rare, but It was rare and then some to the half-strangled wolf when at last he succeeded In tearing himself loose from that wire entanglement. Indeed, If we jnay believe bur inforn(ant, the wolf was so overcome that the hunter succeeded in administering til fee /resounding kicks on the animals rotunda before It could suck enough air Into Its lungs to make a getaway.