Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 May 1882 — The Handsomest in the Drove. [ARTICLE]

The Handsomest in the Drove.

When he had finished with the climate, soil and productions of Idaho, one of the group asked: “How about education facilities ?” “That’s the only thing we lack,” replied the old man with a mournful sigh. “We’ve got schools enough, but we can’t keep no teachers.” “What’s the trou blfe?” “Well, take my school for instance, only two miles from the nearest house, eminently situated on top of a hill and paying the highest salary. We can’t keep a teacher over two weeks.” “Do thev die?” “Some do, though its no place for dying. We had a young fellow from Ohio, and he met a grizzly and whistled for him. The grizzly cum. We bad another, und a widder run him down and married him inside of a month. The third one was lame, and the Injuns overtook him. Then we tried vimmen folks. The first one got married the night she lit down there; I took the second about the middle of the third week, and the next one was abducted ny a stage robber.” “Why don’t you get the ugliest, homeliest woman you can find, some perfect old terror, like that lanternjawed, razor-faced female over by the ticket window?” “Why don’t we! Stranger, you Eastern folks will never understand us pioneers in the world, never. That’s my wife, the identical school teacher I married, and she was the handsomest one in the drove.”—Detroit Free Press.