Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1884 — SLIMMER’S NEPHEW. [ARTICLE]

SLIMMER’S NEPHEW.

I was sitting in my office chair solacing ipyself with a cigar, and trying to subtract SSO imom S3O so as to pay my quarterly rent, but bad about given it up in despair/ when the footsteps, as of I a No. 12 boot, coming up the stairs’ attracted my attention. Visions of the sheriff, or of the washerwoman with an unpaid bill, flashed across my mind, and I had hardly time to throw four or five dunning letters into the fire before the door opened and in stalked MeGuflin. He. looked different from what h 6 did a week ago. His eyes were bloodshot, and his hair stood up in every direction, so that he had to hold his hat on, and he had the general appearance of a man who had been blown up in a nitro glyceine explosion, or kicked by a mule. He let himself carefully into a cushioned chair, unbuttoned his duster, and deposited a club, which had been hidden under his coat, in the corner. After letting out two or three groans to show us that he meant it, he Ipoked up. “Do I look very bad ?” he asked, seeing that I was gazing on him in mingled astonishment and bewilderment. I told him that he did; that he was the worst looking man I had seen for a long time and that he reminded me of a tumble-down Chinese gas-house. “Slimmer’s nephew did it,” said he, “and when I see him I will maul him so that it will give his friends the impression that he had been struck by lightning. I will, by Gosh.” I told "him that I wouldn’t if I were him, and asked what was the matter. “Matter!” exclaimed McGuflin,“that idiotic fool of a Slimmer invited his nephew to come down and visit him.” “Did he come?” “Come? Well I should say he did. Why he has tormented the life out of me. A little while longer and I slWuld be a raving maniac, and then my friends would have to take care of me.” - “But what makes you look so? All you need is a hooked nose and two pawn tickets to be an old clothes shop. “I know it,” said McGuflin, despondently, “that is what. I wanted to tell you about. Y’ou see, ever since those burglars broke into Jones’s my wife has wanted a burglar alarm, and seeing one advertised in the Herald I got one. It is a sort of electric battery. You understand. Afl you have got to do is’ to connect it with all the door knobs in the house, turn the current on, and if a burglar should try to get in, it would send him over into Slimmer's back-yard and make him think a brick house had fallen on him.”

“Then it works first-rate, does it?” “It did, bnt it don’t now. It worked all right until Slimmer’s nephew found it out. It would make you stand on your head in an ecstacy of delight to see the way my wife used to fire tramps and book agents into Slimmer’s yard. Sometimes a heavy fat agent would get hold of the machine, and it would skim him along the ground right through the fenee. I have had to build six nßw fences since I got it, and it is getting rather monotonous. As I was telling yon, Slimmer’s found it out, and so one morning he crept into the cellar and turned on the current with a jack-knife. Y’ou know old Miss Mullen has the faculty of always calling around in the forenoon, just in time to be asked to dinner. It seems that this morning she came rather early, and instead of going in the front way she came round to the back door.” “Did she go in ?” I asked, seeing that I ought to say something. “She tried to, but Slimmer’s wife says she didn’t make a success of it; that she let right go of the door-knob, and turned two or three complete somersaults over toward the house, coming down head first in an old hogshead half full of straw, where she remained waving her number seven shoe in the thin until Slimmer’s nephew rushed up and helped her out; and now she says that he keeps a trained pile-driver in our back yard.” “But that isn’t what gives you the air of a run-down republic.” “I know it, I’m just coming to that. You see, I have to go to the Episcopal prayer meeting every Monday night, and last night I had to go asyway. That everlasting infernal idiot of a Slimmet’s nephew turned on the current again while I was gone, and, of course I didn’t know anything about it, I didn’t get home till after ten, and as all the folks were in bed, I thought I would let myself in easy by the side door, so as not to awaken anyone. Anyhow, I tried to get in, and then I can’t distinctly -remember what - took place. All I know, is that I found myself in the further end of the yard, wedged in between a tree and a heap of old crockery ware, hoop-skirts, etc.” “Did you get in ?” “Oh yes, I got in—in the morning; for I’ll be eternally blanked if I coulff wake anyone up, and it was raining pretty hard, I gave it up, and had to camp out under the old wash-boiler all night.” Then there fell upon us a dead silence, broken only by two or three bars of “Home, Sweet Home,” from the first spring hand-organ in front of my office, while McGuflin reached out for his club and silently slid out.— Peck's Sun.