Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 November 1902 — Our Man About Town [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Our Man About Town

Discourses on Many Subjects and Relates Sundry and Other Incidents.

"ORO. Marshall bought a new type •U writer a few weeks ago and has been practicing quite diligently on it ever since, and has been as successful in learning to operate it as he was in learning to set type. The agent who sold it called this week on him and asked him how he liked the new machine. “It’s grand,” was the immediate reply. “I wondar how I ever managed to get along without it for so many weary years? Now I sit down and in fifteen minutes turn out most accurate and legible copy, which I was not able to do by hand.” “Would you mind giving me a testimonial to that effect?” “Certainly not; do it gladly.” So he rolled up his sleeves, took a firm grip on the corner of his whiskers, and in an incredibly short but interesting while pounded out this: “After Using the amtomatig Back action a type writ,er forthre eweeks and Over. I unhessttattinnly pronounce it prono ce it to be al even more than th e Manufacture Claim for it. During the time been in our possession e. i. th ree weeks zi id has more than paid for ltself in the saving of time an dlabor, —$—.” “There you are, sir.”

“Thanks,” said the agent, and moved quickly away. M * * TN the good old days the more a woman presented the appearance of an animated chicken coop or an inverted funnel the more she was considered “the only of the onliest.” But say! Our mothers and sisters didn’t know anything about styles in those days—just gaze at our wives and daughters today. When they don a Monte Carlo that makes it impossible at a distance to tell whether the wearer is coming or, going from you, and present an appearance not unlike a Dutch country woman’s night gown —it (the coat) is the swellest thing in the women’s wear today. She doesn’t require any form—may be as straight as a stick—to wear a Raglan. She just hangs it on her shoulders, jams her arms into the sleeves, and the more it looks like a little tent or an umbrella one-third raised the nearer she is in the swellest class. V A correspondent of the Journal asks: “Editor, please tell me when a lie is not a lie.” When is a lie not a lie ? When you kiss the bruised flesh of a baby’s

finger and tell him it will hurt no more. When you tell the dear sick ones, looking with eager and anxious eyes toward the shores of health, how bright they look and how they are improving day by day. When the doctor with happy smiles assures the patient that he is “on the mend” and soon will be out. When the captain on the wide waste of the sea with a sinking ship, calms the rising, frantic fears till he can launch the boats away. When the boy at the cross roads in New Jersey was asked by the pursuing red coats which way Washington went, pointed in the opposite direction. When the genius of the world weaves fiction that enriches all mankind and leads them to the highway of eternal right. Indeed the lie between truth and untruth has puzzled mighty men for ages. %* TF there is anything in looks the man who shyly approached the editor’s desk the other day was poetic, but appearances are sometimes deceptive, and the editor did not want to do his visitor an injustice, so he waited for developments ere he ventured a conclusion. “I have here,” said the visitor, after the conventional salutation had been passed, “a production of the gentle muse which”— “Pardon me,” interrupted the editor, sure now of his man, “but we have quarantined against the alleged gentle muse in this office. I wouldn’t be impolite for the world, but selfpreservation is the first law of nature,

and we_have simply got to quarantine, that’s all there is about it.” The visitor was perturbed. “What,” he exclaimed, “no poetry? Are your coiums closed to the sweet food of sweeetly uttered knowledge, the drainless showers of light, the elder sister of prose, the May flowers, the June roses, the eternal sky, the changeless dome of blue, the etherial”— “Sorry, very sorry,” again interrupted the editor, “but we have done the very thing you fear. Poetry nowadays has got into such a bad way that we can’t afford to use it on our readers any more. You see, we can’t compete with the magazines. Their poetry doesn’t say anything that anybody can make head nor tail of, so it can go for a kind of wonderful wisdom, but newspaper poetry always says things, and we don’t like what it says well enough to publish it. So we have shut up the shop on the poetry business, and you’ll have to take your goods elsewhere,” and the editor smiled pleasantly. “I’m sorry too,” said John. “You see I intended to subscribe for a year if the poem was published, but”— “Say,” interrupted the editor, “I guess we can arrange the matter. Take the gentle muse and lead her into the sanotus sanatorium; if the compositors and type don’t play out before it is finally got into type, I think we can find a place for it in our columns.” As the Cherry Sisters gained fame by bad acting, so may the “poet laureate of Nubbin Ridge” find fame by writing bad, abominably bad, rhymes. We can hardly call it poetry.