Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1889 — HE SAW IT. [ARTICLE]

HE SAW IT.

Why Farmer Johnson in His Story. New York Sun. “Sit down —sit down,” replied the HID ~DiUSU “So you want to know whar Hi Perkins lives?” “Yes.” “Know the family?” ; “Somewhat.” - “Can’t be Hi’ wife’s brother?” “No.” “Cousin of Hi’s, mebbe?” “No.” “You ain’t an officer with a writ to serve? “oh, no.” ; “May be going out to sell him a windmill or an organ?” “No.” “Know Hi long?” he queried, as he rubbed his sleeve over his face. “Not very.” “Ah! I see how it is,” he suddenly exclaimed, as a grin began to spread over his face. “You live in town —threatened with consumption—doctor advises farm diet and out door exercise—going out to fix up matters with Hi. They used to come tome by droves, but I got tired of it All of’em now go to Hi! Guess I Wasn’t quite soft ’nuff with ’em.” “How?” “Waal, it sort a’riled me to have a chap around who didn’t now the difference atwixt a bumblebee and a turnip patch, and I s’pose I got—” When I sat down T noticed a big bumblebee working his way up the old man’s back by his left suspender, but I thought the insect might be a pet of his, and so didn’t say anything. He had just got to the point above when he uttered an awful yell, leaped clear over an old stump, fell down, scrambled up, and then went tearing through the hazel bushes like a Texas steer on the rampage. I counted fourteen whoops before he ceased, and it was just twenty minutes before he returned. “Well, was it a turnip-patch or a bumblebee?” I asked. “Durn my flint! but you must a seen them critters prowling around when you fust come up, and now you jist please git over into that ar’ road and jog along atore 1 let loose! I can’t abide a one-lung, narrer souled man, and I’ll be hanged if I tell you whar Hi Perkins or any body else lives! A consumptive as wi’l calmly sot down and see a bar’l of bumble-bees holdin’a convention on a man’s back, which hasn’t got no undershirt on and never warn him of the coming calamity, is jist mean ’nuff to go and crawl into a feller’s barn and die there and spile three tons of hay.”