People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1897 — FORGETFUL MR. BILLTOPS. [ARTICLE]

FORGETFUL MR. BILLTOPS.

Anti Clauds'3 SKOO3 Finally Got to th-o Slioe maker’s, “Forgetful?” said Mr. Brlltcps. “Well, well, well, I should say sol I haven’t any memory at all. If I want to remember anything, I have to make a memorandum of it, and then twist tbo paper around my key ring, or shut it in my knife, or tie it through the ring of my watch. I can’t remember anything at all.' “Mirs. Billions tried for days to get me to take .Claude’s shoes to the shoemaker’s. He’d worn them through on tine soles and put on his best shoes to wear while the others were being fixed. Every day Mrs. Hilltops would put the bundle on the table near me as I read the paper and say: “ ‘Now, Ezra, don’t forget theshoes. ’ “And I would look at them and say all right, and then forget all about them and go away without them. “One morning Mrs. Billtops said to me, ‘Ezra, I have put Claude’s shoes in your hat. ’ “That really did seem like business. It did really seem as though when I came to pick up my hat I would take the bundle out of it and put the hat on my head, and that then, being ready to go and having the bundle actually in my hands, I would take it along and leave it at the shoemaker’s. I laughed ' to myself as I thought what a tremendously shrewd woman Mrs. Billtops is. But—“I am as particular as I am forgetful. I never go cut in the morning without first brushing my hat. I took the bundle out of my bat and laid it on the table, brushed my bat and—- “ Mrs. Billtops looked at me just a little reproachfully that night when I came heme, but that was all. Next day shq took the shoes to the shoemaker’s herself. ”—New York Sun.