Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1891 — WOULD RAISE SAND STORMS. [ARTICLE]

WOULD RAISE SAND STORMS.

How a Land Owner in the South east Got Kid of a Worthless Tract. Washington special to Indiana polls Journal. Commissioner Carter has found a man who has a tract of land down in the Southwest that is so poor it is proving a serious burden. The gentleman has a lot of good land, and has to pay taxes on the bad just so long as it remains in hie name on the tax duplicate. “The man was in my office the other day,’’said Mr. Carter, “and told me that he was disposing of some of his poor land. He tola me that it took him many months of hard work to get rid of the first tract. He tried to trade it for some value,and then began to offer to give it away. To give it away would attract attention and make persons suspicious,so he finally placed a nom ■ inal price upon it. The land would actually raise a sand-storm. The man said a friend tried to raise an umbrella upon it—the wind whiffed it inside out. Finally, however, a tenderfoot, who had just arrived in an adjacent county, offered to trade a calf for eighty acres. The offer was accepted with affected reluctance. When the deed was mado out the purchaser or trader turned it over, around two or three times, and then looked at it in a puzzled sort of way, as if he didn’t understand it. ‘I instantly saw,’ said the land-owner to me, ‘that the man whb was getting the land couldn’t read, and what do you think I did? I asked him to let me have the deed back to correct an error, and slipped in another eighty acres.’ ”