Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 August 1902 — Our Man About Town. [ARTICLE]

Our Man About Town.

m Discusses I Sundry / and ) Other Matters.

A girl visiting in Rensselaer shocks her relatives terribly by ejaculating every now-and then, “Now, wouldn’t that rattle your slats!” The people are horrified, because they are not sure what “Rattle your slats” means. * * * The other night a charming Front street matron awoke and after a prolonged sniff remarked. “It seems to me, dear, that I smell whiskey. Of course I might be mistaken.” He — “What your nose has noticed, m’ dear, is the atmosphere of (hie) congeniality that the papers talk about. *.* We’ve all left this way: “I am ruined—teetotally ruined!” exclaimed the editor wildly. “What’s the matter,” asked the foreman. “What’s matter?” echoed the editor: “Why, in my notice of 001. Jones’ marriage I plainly wrote: ‘The ready and waiting bride advanced to the alter, hung with lilies and rose leaves and, confound you! here’s the way it reads in the paper: ‘The heavy and wretched bride danced to the halter, hung with, liars and horse thieves.’ Go off to the woods and die. I don’t want to waste buckshot on you.” V An occasional contributor to the Journal in speaking of a girl that lives in this vicinity says very coldly and cruelly: “She can fix her hair in fashion, and her manner’s rather dashing, and her dainty'little shoes are just in style; she can jabber French and German, and expound upon a sermon, and she sets a person crazy with her smile. In the tastes that are aeethetio, and in mixing face cosmetic, they say she has no equal anywhere. And in chewing tuttl frutti she enhances much her beauty, and the settings in her teeth are very rare. She can thump a grand piano and can sing in great crescendo, and her style of elocution’s very trim; she has college education, is the pride of her relation, but she still persists in saying, “It Is him.” V A judgment upon that person in Rensselaer who is constituting himself or herself as general condemnatory witness of every one’s wrong doing! If the All-Father takes note of the fall of a sparrow, and tenderly bears with our misdeeds, giving solace to the wounded spirit when even those who should cherish it turn from it, how grimly must He smile when He

sees little mites of humanity, and frail as small, usurping the power of God and dethroning Him to sit themselves in harsh, unforging, unrelenting judgment on their fellows, whose conditions of stress and temptation none but the All-Wise can know. And those of us whose hearts have sorrowed and suffered, whose feelings have grown tender in affiiotion, whose feet linger nearer and nearer the souroe of all gentleness and kindness, meekness and peace, have the growing sense that muoh of the evil in the world is fostered and strengthened by tnose who falsely conclude themselves to be good, barring as they do by their sacrosanct manners the way of hope and Ilfs and labor and happiness to the sinner, who sorrows and would do better. The wandering one grows hardened at exposure, callous to the gain of 4he race once honored, fierce in enmity to society; and so on from bad to worse until the end confirms the evil theories of the professedly good. V A young correspondent to the Journal, who is living in Michigan, sends the following contribution, hoping to see it ip our columns. “Northern Michigan is where they yank a big wet log ihto a mill and saw it Into dollars as quick as a railroad man can draw his salary out of the pay car. The log is held on a carriage by means of iron dogs, while it is being worked into lumber. These dogs are not like those we see women holding, on chair lap; they are another breed of dogs. The managing editor of the mill lays out the-log in his mind and works it into shingles and stuff so as to use the goods to the best advantage. At one of these mills not long ago a man backed up to get away from the carriage and thoughtlessly backed against a large saw that was revolving at the rate of 200 times a minute. The saw took a large chew of tobacco from the plug he had In his pistol pocket, and then began on him. They gathered him out of the sawdust and put him into a nail keg and oarried him away; he did not spsak again. Life was extinot. Whether it was the nervous shock or the concussion of the cold saw against his liver that killed him no one ever knew. We should never lean on a buzz saw when, as it says in the scriptures, ‘it moveth itself aright’.” * * * The excursion used to be regarded long ago by the people of this community as a doubtfhl experiment possessed of features that might be considered objectionable, but now it is voted educational and put on the school curriculum, and everybody wants a little of it at this time o’year, if it be only for one day. In a way the excursion has improved upon the old methods of going to a cider mill on a log wagon for a day’s outing, still it will have to bump along pretty

fkst to get ahead of the hot, dusty rides of antiquity; and until it succeeds In arriving at its destination about two or three seoonds after it has started, and in getting home without the engine or a hot box stopping the work for six hours or so, there will be objections to it. If an excursion could be arranged that would take each person to different points at so many different times, and get them all home again in a minute, if a storm should approach, there would be a great many patrons through this August weather. Rxoursions remind us of a certain little girl’s essay—perhaps you’ve never read it: “Excursions are for people that like to get warm and have money to spend. I have a quarter—but I think I wIU buy peanuts. I like to hear about excursions but when you go they aren’t mostly that way and you keep wishing they were until the strange lady that sells cakes says, ‘Just see that pretty little girl’s sour face’. Then you go off and wish you were in your own front yard eating a nice juicy apple and playing with papa. When you are on an excursion you are always thirsty and it isn’t your turn to drink. Sometimes your dress gets spotted and when you go home your mamma says. ‘What a little heathen pig.’ I am going to stay home this summer and let mamma and papa go so I will not be a heathen pig.”