Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1885 — The Last Hairpin. [ARTICLE]

The Last Hairpin.

She had lost her last Lair-pin, hunted high and low for it, but, without avail. She would tie her hair up in a knot, but down it would come every three minutes. She was sweeping out the woodshed, and picked up the nailbox to pub it in its place, when down come her hair again, all over her shoulders and across her face; but just then a happy thought seemed to strike her. She selected the longest nail she could find, and pinned up her hair with it; with the satisfied air of one who had obtained the*>mastery of circumstances; and went on with her work uninterrupted., She had just sat down to pare the potatoes for dinner, when she felt something cold creeping down her spinal column. She knew what it was at once, one of those ugly, black, crawling worms that are always creeping round in the spring. “Ouch! Murder! Hel-p!” she screamed, as the ice-cold thing settled down against the small of her back. Her cries brought in the woman next door. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Oh, there’s a thousand-legged worm down my back, and it’s eating a hole right through me!” The woman comprehended the situation at once, caught her dress by the back of tfie neck, wrenched it in two pieces in an instant, broke the strings to her new “duplex,” when out dropped —not-the worm, but the identical nail with which she had so triumphantly done up her hair a moment before — just as her husband, with several of the neighbor men, reached the scene of action, ready to kill the tramp; to extinguish the fire; dr to rescue the baby from the cistern; or, in fact, to do justice to whatever was the tragedy that occasioned the outcry, A The scare was too much for the poor woman’s nerves, and she broke down and sobbed hysterically, laying the' blame all on her husband, of course, for not providing her with hairpins. But he was so glad that the house had not burned down without insurance; that the baby was still kicking; and that he was not goingtobehung for killing a tramp; that he took the scolding good-naturedly, and went off and spent his last nickel for hairpins. And now he never forgets to bring home a ■bunch of these necessary articles every Saturday night. But, he has hid his nailbox where his wife can’t find it.— Chicago Ledger.