Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 March 1901 — Picked Up Around Town [ARTICLE]

Picked Up Around Town

All boys like to go skating. That is human nature in Rensselaer or anywhere else. A boy in this .town had been teasing the life out of his father for a pair of skates. He would give him no rest wnatever. Finally his father got tired. They will do that. He got clear out off patience and he said to the boy, “I never saw the likes of you. I never had a pair of skates in my life.” The father thought he had made the lesson sufficiently impressive and had the subject dispensed of, when Young American piped up: “Well, maybe you didn’t when you were a boy, but mamma says you had your skates on all last summer.” The rest of the scene was enacted in the woodshed. * * ♦ A man said the other day that he had a special liking for a certain worthless sort of a fellow. When asked to explain, he said, “Well, he gave the measles to the meanest man that ever lived in our township, and he died. I was so glad of it that if I can ever do the worthless pup a good turn I mean to do it.” Which shows that one good turn deserves another. * * A tombstone man was trying to sell a widow a tombstone for her deceased husband. She was opposed to such useless luxuries and very freely expressed her opinion to that effect, but not so freely to him as she did to her daughter. They conversed in German, totally ignorant of the fact that the agent could understand every word she said. He let her talk to her heart’s content, but when she was done with her raillery in German, he got out his sample case and they resumed business where they had left off and he sold a good tombstone and her husband’s memory is now honored, which would not be the case if he had been an . agent who was easily scared. A Remington girl says her beau is a terrible flirt, but she is positive that he never loved anyone else because he told her so. What do you think of a girl who would believe such a story? A woman in this town is such a eisagreeable customer at the grocery stores and at the places where she does her buying that everybody knows her just by her reputation. ♦ « A sore-eyed man stopped his paper the other day. He said, “The truth is, I read too much now and I will have to stop some ot my papers.” And the part of it all is, he tells that story in all seriousness, in spite of the fact that he couldn’t read his own name if it were written in letters of gold across the sky. * * * We know a man who is a grand father and he generally has candy in his pockets. He says he carries it so when his grand children rummage through his pockets, they will not be disappointed. Don’t you wish you were about pat that age.