Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 March 1903 — Our Man About Town [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Our Man About Town

Discourses on Many Subjects and Relates Sundry and Other Incidents.

m HERE’S trouble In Rensselaer and J- blood on the moon; there’ll be laments and fends and vendettas, I fear, and the peace of the public will be thrown out of gear, and the cause of the warfare you never would guess, for it’s very unusual, I’ll have to conibss. It’s all on account of the chickens’ bad capers, which fly over the fence and disturb Uhcle Bill Baker. They scratch up his garden at any old hour and make him so mad that he grows very spur. The chickens that cause all this row, belong to his next door neighbor now. Rut when Uncle Bill gets his ordinance through, it win not be long until they are in thestew. And that’s why I say there’s trouble a hatching if his neighbors chickens keep on scratching.

rnHE following words may be found with meaning attached in the country editor’s dictionary: Guy—A sixteen year old farmer’s son, who loves t>b get rosy on a glass of lemonade. Crank—A fruit-tree agent. Devil —The editor himself. Girl—A young lady who helps make mistakes on the paper. Bull—" Annotator” and similar words spelled with one “n.” Copy —A batch of ungrammatical writing, in which the exact truth is said never to be told. Autobiographer—A f‘jay” who strives to make a hero of himself with unbecoming modesty, in the evenings about town, if he cap find a crowd. Subscriber—A seldom found staunch friend of the editor; also a man who hopes to pay for his copy of the Journal thirty days after he has arrived in paradise. Advertising— That which the business men do reluctantly. Church—Where we have to go on Sunday to acquire sufficient poise and respectability to carry us through the week. *** uTt/TARIE,” said a Rensselaer man, "A “laat night I played poker and >> “Played poker!” interrupted his wife. "How dare you spend your money gambling, sir?” “As I was saying, I played poker and won enough to buy you a set of furs—” “You did? Oh John, you are so good. I knew those sharps could not get the best of you.” “And lust as I was about to quit I dropped it all and fifty more—” "You brute! To think I should have married a gambler!” TD EMINGTON has one of the grouchlest men we have ever heard of. Last Sunday his wife came into the bedroom and found her husband up in front of the mirror with a razor in his hand and lather all over his face. "Are you shaving, Will?” she asked. “No,” he growled, ‘‘l’m blacking tbe stove.” And the woman wept. Rensselaer old maid has set up a big howl about germs lurking in mustaches. Girls, there is no ocean-

ion for alarm. The germ that could go against the modern face paint and' come out alive would need the constitution of a mule. *•* TTT HAT would be said of a man who would have his trousers made Mixteen to-twenty inches too long for his legs and then go around holding them up sometimes and sometimes permitting them to trail along in the dust or mud? says an exchange. We would pronounce him crazy and take him to the asylum. /"XNEofour well-known bachelors, very popular and amiable, was good-naturedly teasing a certain Rensselaer young lady about his own age. "How old would you take me to be?” he asked. She replied: "You look to be about 65, but you talk like you were about 12.” The quietness that followed was so perceptible that the drop of a pin could be heard.