Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1890 — Keeping the Gate. [ARTICLE]

Keeping the Gate.

A man who was arrested on a charge of vagr incy, says the Arkansaw Traveler, was asked by the magistrate why he did not go to work. “I cannot,” the man replied. ••You cannot? Why 1 haven’t seen a more strapping fellow in many a day than you are. Does anything ail you?" “No. sir.” ••Then why don’t you work?” “Because 1 used to keep toll-gate on a turn-pike in the South.” “You are discharged.” said the judge. “Here, take tins dollar.” The judge was a wise man. He knew the r-sture of a toil gate-keeper; be knew that the most active im 1 indo - trio us man in the world, if |ut it to 1

gate-keeping, would become a sloth incapable of self-support The town constable is lazy, and the country school teacher is not given to undue exertion, but the toll gate-keeper is the head waiter (we can think of nothing more suggestive of indolence.) The old toll j gate-keeper was a sort of newsbudget ■ He had nothing in detail, but held the I paragraphic gossip of several neighborhoods. In season he had a little weedy garden back of his house, and in it yellow cucumbers could be. seen, withering under the fierce rays of the sun, but no one ever saw him chop down any of the weeds or gather any of the cucumbers. Near his house there was a well, from which water was drawn with a long pole set in a see-saw, and with a heavy weight oil one end. It would be risky to say that there was any worse water in the world. It was blackish, and had, in connection with .its other atrocities, a burnt-leather taste. But how the old fellow did delight in handing out that water to the thirsty and dust-cov-ered traveler. He had a gourd that had been broken and sewed up with a twine string, but the wound had never healed, and through it the water poured down the wayfarer’s sleeve. As a rule the old fellow had seven children and several grandchildern. His daughter, a pale-faced woman, with large, s id, brown eyes, had buried her husband away over tlie~hlll under the persimmon tree. The oldest of the grandchildren, a chubby little rascal, with a daub ~oU molasses in his hair, would toddle out to collect the toll. The old fellow does not keep the tollgate now.He lies under the persimmon tree on the hill.