Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1902 — Our Man About Town [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Our Man About Town

Discourses on Many Subjects and Relates Sundry and Other Incidents.

corset that will let a woman sob without breaking the strings of the same in a recent invention. All the wearer has to do is to loosen the squeezer and go on with the grief. V TT is reported that in a neighboring town a man named Spunk has married a western girl named Spink. Their friends can have a great deal of sport untwisting the conjugation in this wise. Present tense, spunk; past tense, spink, future tense, spank. V ■CT VERY young person in Rensselaer should memorize the following quotation from Shakespeare: “See thou to character. Give, thy thoughts no tongue. Nor any imporportioned thought its act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. ITIHE women wear suspenders, and are fond of men’s cravats, and also wear their blazers and their nobby little hats; their gloves are very mannish, and they wear their hair out short, they are up in all the racing slang, and Base ball is their forte; and things are so reversed that men in the country will not speak until they ascertain how much a wife can earn a week. ** 'Y’OU may have read a good deal x about “kissing bugs” in the past but there is a new insect clamoring for attention, and Rensselaer housewives will do well to bar their gates. This new bug is a corker and is spreading over the country from the southwest and human beings are its prey. Already it has invaded the Mississippi valley in great numbers and many persons have died from its bite. Not a whit more cheerful does this news become when it is explained that the insects in question is a giant species of bed bug. It comes from Mexico and Texas, and it measures a full inch in length. This alarming creature is sometimes called the “sharp nose.” It has a flat body, a pointed head, and a strong beak. In color it is a dark brown. Its “buggy” odor is even more offensive than of the ordinary bed bug. Worst of all, perhaps, it has wings and is a flyer. What is the housewife going to do to protect herself against a bed bug that flies? And such a bed bug too. It flies at night, being attracted into open windows by lights. In the day time it is not apt to resort to its wings, but runs so swiftly as to be very hard to catch and to kill. » * * A"\NE of the pleasing and necessary accomplishments possible to young ladies in towns like Rensselaer and to those who live in the farming community roundabout is music. It is comparatively easy to obtain splendid tuition at rates which make the polite art within the reach of every aspirant. It has been frequently pointed out that the noted writers and statesmen come from the farm and from the country towns. This fact is no less true of the musician. A number of our leading composers, musical teachers, and professional interpreters of harmony were born and spent large portions of their lives on their father’s farms. Indeed, the exacting requirements of the art so drain the vitality that no one but a country bred, vigorous person can undergo the torture of the preparatory years of practice. Music, better than any other profession, pays the learner, both in pleasure to be obtained in listening to the exquisite renditions of finished performers, but in direct financial returns. It is not infrequent that young ladies who have fitted themselves to teach music make one thousand dollars a year. Of course they go into the profession systematically, and use their entire energy in preparing for ths work and obtaining patronage. Outside of the ranks of ordinary teachers there are the courses in the city after the student has prepared herself to fill the requirements. The boy on the farm oah “pick up” a musical education with profit. The large military bands and orchestras are recruited every year from farm and country town players. A boy with spirit and ability can become a proficient upon almost any horn without positively studying it at some distant university. Close attention to the fingering and to the quality of tone makes an expert. The great cornet

soloists often have no other musical education at the start of their career than such tuition as they can obtain in the country band room. Seneca Mygrants, of New York, is an illustration of this fact. He was born and raised in an obscure Indiana crossroads town, and by his own study elevated himself into the ranks of the foremost cornetists. This is not true of the piano, volin, flute, or clarinet as these instruments are complex enough to require experienced teachers; but of the ordinary band instrument the spirited eager boy can learn enough to place him well upon the road toward making money.