Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1872 — A Practical Joke. [ARTICLE]

A Practical Joke.

A Swiss court has had before it a 'case originating from a. practical joke of an equally daring and ridiculous njvtiirei A sapper, With a bushy beSrd, who was returning to his nativo village front his military duty, stayed a night- in the chief town of the Canton, lie was found drunk in a ditch on tlie road side. Two wags passing by, according to the Swiss Time*, took the drunken man first to the house of one Of them, who owned an old monk’s cowl and a tonsure, shaved all the hair off his face,,aj|d dressed him in the habit of a monk. " - They then took him to the nearest convent, and said they had found hint,lying drunk on the roadside, and had brought biin there in order to avoid the scandal which might ensue if lie were fpund outside. On awakening, the sapper was not a little astonished to find himself in the cell, of a convent, with a monk’s cowl on; and that he liad no hair left on his face or on the crown of his head. To his protestations, the fathers replied that he r must be still laboring under the effects of drink, and advised him to go to sleep once more. At length they consented to send for the priest of the parish whero he resided, in order to clear up the mystorv. On the priest arriving, he recognized in the pseudo monk his parishioner, whereupon lie was permitted to depart. Means were found to discover the two wags,, and the sapper, thus extemporized into a monk, as well as the brotherhood who were so fooled, Intend to bring an action against them. As in religious matters the Canton of Friburg is very strict, and is not likely to see the point of the joke, the two wags will probably get the worst of it.