Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1875 — Old MeStinger’s Engagement With the Rocking-Chair. [ARTICLE]

Old MeStinger’s Engagement With the Rocking-Chair.

Old Mcßtinger was going to bed a little wavy the other night, and not wishing to disturb Mrs. McStinger, who has a tongue like e, rat-tail file, he thought it just as well not to turn on the gas. He got along very well until he reached the door of the chamber where his patient wife lay sleeping. Here he paused h moment, balancing on his heels like a pole on a juggler’s nose. Then he made a dash for it, in order to make a beeline across the floor. Mrs. McStinger, with her usual exemplary fortitude, had placed the rocking-chair with such gifted skiil that no man could come into the room without running over it; so the first thing'he knew McStinger stubbed his toe-nail off against the rocker, which knocked the seat against the crazy bone of his knee, and made one of the long arms prod him in the stomach. Simultaneously he fell over the chair crosswise, and it kicked him behind his back before he could get up from the floor as he stood on all-fours. The engagement was now fully opened. When a man begins falling over a rocking-chair in a dark room he ought always to have three days’ rations and forty rounds. Before McStinger could get up straight his knee came down on one of the long rockers behind, and the back of the chair came down on his head with a whack that laid him out flat on the floor; and before he could move the chair kicked him three times in the tenderest part of his ribs with the sharp end of the rocker. This made him perfectly furious, and he scrambled up and made a blind rush at the chair, determined to blow up the enemy’s works. He ran square against the back and it rocked forward with him, turning a complete somersault over the handles, throwing McStinger half way across the room and landing on top of him, digging into bis abdomen like a bull’s horns, as he lay spread out on the under side. It would have been a good thing for McStinger if he had laid still then and let the chair have its own way. It lay flat on its back, with the long points of the rockers embracing his abdomen, and didn’t seem to want to do anything active just then. But Mcßtinger couldn’t make up his mind to give it up yet. He rolled over sideways and upset tjbe chair. It fell with a crash ‘6n its side, giving him a furious dig in the liver, which made him straighten out his legs spasmodically, barking one shin from the instep to the knee on the rocker which hung in the air, and setting the chair on it o feet again, where it stood rocking backward and forward at him, like a wary old ram making feints of butting its adversary, in order to throw him off his guard. The blow in the side nearly finished McStin ger, and while lying there, rubbing his wind back again, he was just beginning to reflect whether his honor required him to proceed any further in the affair, when Mrs. Mc&tinger suddenly began screaming all the names in the Crimes act, under the impression that the Charley Ross abductors were trying to commit a burglary, bigamy, robbery and everything else on her. Up to this time she had been speechless with terror, and had lain there trembling, shedding perspiration and accumulating shrieking power, until she had gained the screaming capacity of a camel-back engine. She had just reached her third tfnnando fortiitimo accelerando when old McStinger succeeded in getting to his feet once more and became dimly visible to Mrs. McStinger. With one last wild parting shriek she sprang from the bed and

made a dash for the door, near which the rocking-chair still stood menacing the whole universe with a hutting motion. Mrs. Mcßtinger had no' time for investigation just then, and she pitched into and over the rocking-chair and clear on dowh-stairs, the chair after her, turning over and over, and kicking Mrs. McBtinger every bump until they both landed in the hall below, where the chair broke all. to atoms. This ended the fight. If wives will learn from this sad story not to leave* rocking-chairs standing around the middle of the room for their poor husbands to fall over we shall not have written in vain. —Columbus Journal.