Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 May 1893 — Wonders of Indiana. [ARTICLE]

Wonders of Indiana.

Atlanta Constitution. A.citizen of Mazeppa, Ga., tolls the following story: A man with a drove of mules, the man claiming to be from Indiana, stopped for the night with the citizen's father. The family had an idea that Indiana was near the North Pole, and, asked a great many questions about the country. In answer to questions the Indiana man said: ■ ' “Yes, there the nights are shorter but they have ad- d sight more of them and they are darker." He had seen them so dark there that you couldn’t see the headlight of a loco motive thirty feet away. He also said it was a great fish country; that you could not ride a horse across a creek without knocking out a twohorse wagon load of fish; but that he had only gone a-fishing once, and then only caught but one fish, and when he pulled the fish out of the Mississippi the river fell six inches from its mouth to Cairo. He also said it was a fine timber country. A few days before he left home he cut down a treee that measured exactly one hundred yards long. He drove a wedge in the big end, and it burst entirely open and split a thicket of three hundred yards that was so thick that you couldn’t run a fishing pole into it endways. The place opened by splitting the log was then being used for a wagon roa d. He also said it was a very healthy country; that only one man had died in twenty years, and they had to pull his last breath with a corkscrew. A young clock peddler was also spending the night with his father, and he asked if it would be a good country to sell clocks. The Indiana said no, they had no use for clocks; that they kept time by the growth of pumpkin vines, which grow five feet each hour. He said it was the best vegetable country in the world. Every kind grew well except beets, and they grew so long they stuck thro ugh in to China, and the Chinamen pulled them through. In answer to a question whether it was a cold country or not, he said it was awful cold; he had seen a blaze of fire freeze to the back of the chimney, and they had to knock it loose with a pole-axe,