Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 December 1874 — A Common Experience. [ARTICLE]

A Common Experience.

Mr. Middlerib limped a little when he went home the other night, and he evinced the most feverish haste to get off his boots. Soon after supper he took his razor out of the case, and in response to his wife’s inquiry if he was going to shave snarled out: “Naw-w-w, he wasn’t.” Then she didn’t think to ask him what he was going to do. She w atched him while he bared his dexter foot; then he put his'bare foot across his left knee and made an “offer” at it with the razor, but stopped short. Then he reached under the foot with the »razor and came up on the other side and re mained in that position in deep thought for a few moments. Then he took the razor in the other hand, and, bending forward until all the blood in his system settled just above his eyes and his head was about six inches from the stove, he caught hold of his little toe, twisted it and made a slash at the corn on it with the razor. By this time his head was so hot that the hair was-fairly crackling, so he straighened up and moved back to the other side of the room and testily said that he wished he had 6,000,000 lamps, and he might be able to have one when he wanted to use it. His wife took the lamp from the sewing-table and set it on the floor beside him, and his daughter put another one down behind him. Then he reached h>s barefoot up as near to his hip as he could and made a dive at the corn again. Then he tried holding his foot up in front of him and leaning out after it, but he could touch any part of it with the razor, he said, except the. corn. Then he put his foot flat on the floor and stooped down to it and began carving. His wife and daughter could only tell how he progressed by the sibilant sounds he made by drawing his breath quickly through his teeth. He did this once or twice and suddenly dropped the razor with a brief but expressive remark bearing on the subject of future punishment, and sarcastically wanted to know if he should go down town and buy a rag or could he get one in the house, and two or three old shirts and sheets were instantly tendered him, when he-very carefully; tied up his* thumb, and gazing thoughtfully at the unscathed corn which decorated his toe in all the glory of its untouched hardness said he would employ the services of the first regularly-ordained chiropodist that came along. For if there is anything in the world that can compel a man to go into a variety of painful and ridiculous contortions without accom~ plishing anything it is carving a corn.— Burlington Hawk-Eye.