Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1885 — The Granger’s Delight. [ARTICLE]

The Granger’s Delight.

There is one brief fragment of time when the granger forgets that he is the victim of middlemen and monopolists; one slight jewel-bestudded interval of unconsciousness that the weather is as it were the very breath of his nostrils. . His wheat may be frozen out, and the cutworm may be holding high carnival in his corn, but the glistening streak of joy to which we liefer is not dimmed by the remembrance of thesigreat calamities. Though his cattle maydae hidebound and lousy, his hogs coughing with incipient cholera, the fruit all killed, and a lightning rod note about' due at the bank, he is as gay as a woman at a bonnet show, and couldn’t feel any better contented if he had on,a plug hat two feet high. It doesn’t matter a nubbin if the chickens are dying off with any sort of epidemic that does its work with expeditious thoroughness, even though notice has already been served that three or four preachers will stop with him over Sunday during the session of quarterly meeting; yea, and even though his favorite daughter may have taken the vow of poverty by marrying a country editor the week before, none of these direful, things can trouble him while the clown is in the ring and the spotted horses keep going. Seed time and harvest may fail, the wrinkles of care may pre-empt every inch of his solemn visage and encroach on his neck; but so certain as the circus comes along, the granger will be there on the highest plank, with his pocket full of peanuts, ready to raise the canvas with his yells of delight whenever a moss-covered joke finds its way through the hair over his ears. ,No human soul was ever created that could get as much enjoyment out of a circus as the man who grows the bread that feeds the nation. To him it is the garden of Eden under canvas, with no restrictions on the fruit, and every whoop and. yell he sends out means delight unchained. He claps his hands till his horny palms tingle with joy, and stamps his feet until the man in front of him is paralyzed throughout every section of his spine, and longs for a bottle of liniment and soothing solitude. The man who drives the mules through,the corn and puts the big potatoes on the top of the basket, never finds out what a vast store of hilarity bp has boxed up imder his vest until the spring crop of circus bills begins to blossom. From the time his eye catchy the first glimpse of the bounding kangaroo on the flaming poster, clearing the tree toils to escape from an angry hippopotamus with a mouth bigger than a hired man’s appetite, he is a changed being until that circus has come and gone.

On the day the show comes to town the farmer drops everything and gets into the village early, with his whole family and a majority of tlie neighbors, in time to see tlie procession and take in the sights of the side-shows before the; “grand aggregation” opens out in the afternoon. And when finally the anxious moment has arrived, and he finds himself and little ones on the top seat, with plenty of gingerbread, bar-ber-pole candy, and other ambrosial provender, his heart grows bigger than a youth’s ambition, as it pushes up his vest collar to the top of his ears, and he begins to realize that life is sweet and the fleeting moments very precious. In that diamond-pointed instant paradise has been regained, so far as he is concerned, and an angel would have to give considerable “hoot” for a chance to trade places with him. The time-worn sayings of. the clown strike fertile soil when they drop into the granger’s ear. They were tlie friends of his boyhood, and he never goes back on them. It is a part of his religion to laugh at circus jokes With all the muscle in his body every time ho gets a chance, and he does it with~out any discount. He is the clown’s • best friend, and wouldn’t miss an utterance from his painted lips for a gallon of cider. If you want to see a farmer awake all over, go with him to the circus and watch the wag of his jaw when the clown undertakes to jump over a horse and falls sprawling in the sawdust. This affords about the only chance any one can ever hope to have of seeing him go about anything in downright earnest. The student of nature who has never seen a granger cut loose and break out in screaming hilarity in a cir-cus-tent, has not only missed a golden opportunity, but has no conception of how near glory flesh and blood can get for a half a dollar.— Chicago Ledger.