Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 February 1902 — Our Man About Town, [ARTICLE]

Our Man About Town,

Discusses 1 Sundry / and 1 Other Matters.

The best cold weather story I have heard yet is about a Rensselaer girl who placed a hot water bottle in her bed one night last week and when she got up in the morning the water was frozen solid in the bottle. *•* A Main street women bought a fancy spittoon for her husband’s Christmas present, a year ago. It was a beautiful creation of real China. That Is to say, it was beautiful If spittoons ever are beautiful. He prized it highly and the woman was proud of her achievement, for it was seldom she could please her husband by giving him Christmas presents. He always said he had to pay for them anyway. One day she set the spittoon out in the yard to air it. It was forgotten and was left out over night. The next morning the fancy spittoon was found in the street with the bottom broken out. A horse has entered the yard during the night and stuck his foot through the spittoon, breaking a hole Just the size of his hoof. It is a wonder what the horse was trying to do. He may have been chewing tobacco and tried to spit into the spittoon or he might have been examining the ware to see if it was Haviland or Sevres. A fellow in this town got married apd moved in with the family, and now the mother of orfe of the parties says they have about run them out of their own house. Which shows that no house was ever big enough for two families, which is a true saying if an old one. V A man in this town likes to change things so well that he will spend an entire Sunday sometimes just moving the coal in his cellar. His wife tells that he spent one entire Sunday shoveling the coal from one bin into another. She doesn’t know what to expect next, unless he shovels it back again.

A certain young society girl is not as careful of her wearing apparel as she might be. As proof of this assertion we submit the following: Not long ago she lost a good hat and hunted high and low for it and could not find it. She had about come to the conclusion that it had been stolen and thought of notifying the sheriff, when the week’s washing came home from the washer woman’s and the hat had been found in the bottom of the clothes basket. She insists that she did not put it there, but the family has its own opinion about the matter. A man in this town says of his daughter that she is so careless that she absolutely has not shut a door when she came in from out of doors, this winter. %* A Rensselaer girl says she has heard Uncle Tom’s Cabin fourteen times, and yet she cries over little Eva and Uncle Tom every time. If all the tears she has shed were placed into one vessel they would fill a wash boiler. *.* A family in this town had a lamp burning all night not long ago. The neighbors noticed it, and fearing some One might be ill, Inquired in the morning if there was sickness in the family since there was light in the house all night. The daughter said, O, my, yes, our cat was sick all night. The kind hearted neighbor has not asked anything about the family since.