Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1879 — Minding His Own Business. [ARTICLE]

Minding His Own Business.

There was a herdsman driving a hundred head of sheep or more down Mineral Springs avenue. They went along as sheep always do, first a steady little plod, then a clumsy canter like a wooden rocking horse, and now altogether in a mammoth wad of animated wool. There was a good natured man with an umbrella in his hand standing near the fence and waiting for the disorganized herd to approach He thought he had better lend a hand, and so he rushed in front of the flock and waved his umbrella as a scepter of authority. The result of this generalship was that the sheep rushed pellmell into a schoolyard just as the scholars, like a lot of human sheep, were pouring out for a recess. In one minute urchins and lambkins were hopelessly mixed and intermingled. There was first a sheep and then a

boy, next a girl and then a lamb, while the man, the over officious and superserviceable chap, who bad tamed the “9®* * w *y from the turnpike, was left alone between the swaviiur and surging flock and the schdolhouse. Him an aged and petulant male member of the flock marked for immediate and condign punishment, and upon him this homed and woolly Nestor of the flock charged furiously. The man shut his eyes and opened his ufobrella, but of no avail, for through the umbrella covering the creature crashed like a circus rider through a papered hoop. In wild dismay the man took to his heels, and then old Nestor sent him sprawling in advance of his flock, and before he could regain his feet the flock fell back into single file and each sheep went scampering over him. It was ten minutes before the last sheep had gone over him. and then he arose, shook the bits of broken watch crystal his pocket, picked up the rim of his hat, and hobbled away, remarking: “After all, I kinder reckon the beet business a man ever stuck to is his own business and nobody else’s.”