Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1879 — The Farmer’s Joke. [ARTICLE]

The Farmer’s Joke.

Tramp! tramp! tramp! and a farmer with solid, old fashioned feet, and hands big enough to cover a Sundayschool excursion, came into the editorial rooms of this newspaper to say: * “Howdy? I’ve walked down from market to give ye the particulars of a good joke.” “All right—proceed.” “You know them lightning-rod fellers,” observed the old man as he dropped into a chair. •‘Yes—heard of them ” “Well, you know they’re a purty tuff set. Been after me for more’n twenty years. I’ve got signs out all along the road warning ’em to keep off the place, but t’other day one of the chaps driv right up to the gate big as life.” “Did, eh ?” “Yes he did, and ’fore I could get my tongue to going he had about 1,000 feet of rod out of the wagon and was ready to put it on the barn.” “What cheek!” “Guess t’was; but purty soon I went for him. I had my mind made up to kill him right there. The old woman she came out and sailed in with me, and the two hired men supported me on the flanks.”

“And you jammed him all to pieces, of course?” “That’s where thehull fun comesin,” answered the old man. “That ’ere feller squared off, shed his coat, and licked the hull four of us in less’n two minutes by wig-wag clock!” “Did, eh?” “You bet he did, and drunk upahull pan of milk, and drove off whistling ‘YankeeDoodle Dum.’ Whenlgotoft the catnip, whar’. he piled me, and saw one o’ the men with his nose mashed flat, the ’tother with three teeth knocked out, and the old won an jist crawlin’ out from under the old bobsled, I begun lafflng, and didn’t stop till midnight. I—I—!” He slapped his leg and uttered a “Haw! haw! haw!” which echoed clear to to Canada, and in his coritortim he broke the back of his chair. “But the joke was on you,” said the perplexed journalist. “Bartin—sartin, but I am not such a dod-rotted idiot that I can’t lass at the way we four sailed in on him, calkerlating to mop him a over the barn yard, and lass harder yet at the way we started in on the Lord’s prayer before he had fairly got the rust off his elbows. When I saw Hannah clawing up from among the bobs, I—I—” And he went off in another lit, and choked and gasped till he went down stairs with his collar hanging by a single button.