Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1874 — Truth Stranger Than Fiction. [ARTICLE]

Truth Stranger Than Fiction.

Is it or is it not for the interest of writers of romance to have the reading public convinced that truth is stranger than fiction? As a justification of their seeming vagaries and exaggerations perhaps it is; but as its ultimate tendency would be to spoil the market for fiction and create an exclusive demand for plain fact, perhaps it is not. Such a consummation would compel all writers who have been earning their bread by spinning yarns out of their inner consciousness to turn themselves into amateur vagabonds and casuals, etc., to prowl arouhd after abnormal and hideous facts. They would be besieging their political friends to get them places on the police force; they would be candidates for coroner; they would open private morgues and lunatic asylums; they would go out to service as waitresses and chambermaids, carrying tablets in their pockets; they would make believe bankrupt to study the effect on their friends, and note down the facts; they would get places as captains of steamboats, landlords of hotels and pastors unchurches for the sole purpose of viewing life at some unusual advantage or society in some special phase, and thus put themselves in training for startling achievements in the line of truth. These remarks have been suggested by several incidents that have lately come to our knowledge which we know to be true, and which would be confidently pronounced mere exaggeration and caricature if set forth in a novel. A boy recently called at the door of a most respectable lady in this city in comfortable circumstances with a package on w hich was a charge of four dollars and ninety-nine cents. The lady produced a five-dollar bill, but the boy did not have the cent for change. She then sent a messenger with the bill to the top story of the house to get it changed, but unsuccessfully. She then sent to the end of t the house, still Finally she called her husband and bade him put on his hat and go out and get the bill changed, which he did There are some old people living in the interior of New Jersey—two sisters and a brother —svho practice an economy not recorded of any of the famous misers. They have a comfortable house and are especially rich in bedclothes made by the hands of the sisters and accumulated through many veals. But they habitually sit up and sleep in their chairs so as not to wear out the bedding. A rich man, of more than ordinary intelligence. who had made his fortune by life-long industry, had contracted withal a habit "of haggling at prices. He met with some losses and determined upon suicide. „ Going to buy the pistol with which an hour later he ended his life, he made a determined effort to “ beat down” its price ; and probably the last sensation that passed through liis brain before it was scattered by the bullet was a pang that he had obtained no discount on the instrument of destruction! — Appleton's Journal. . r —The lay of the land—Egg-plants.