Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1875 — The Soda-Fountain Boy. [ARTICLE]

The Soda-Fountain Boy.

He was rinsing the glasses when the old lady entered the store. It was hot weather, and the soda-fountain looked so tempting that she conquered her avarice and walked over and told the boy that she Would take a glass. “Do you Wish for a fly in it ?” he inquired, in a whisper. “A fly! gracious, no!” she replied, a took of disgust on her face. “Just as you say, madam,” he went on, as he drew some lemon sirup. “People are so different in tastes, you know. Some object to flies, and some don’t. I’ll mix some pineapple sirup with this lemon, and now will you have a great deal of gas and a little Water, or a great deal of water and a little gas?” * “ I’m purty thirsty,” she said. “ Well, then you want more water than gas, and there won’t be so much, danger of an explosion.” - “Explosion?” she queried. - “ That was the word, madam. We have had but few such accidents here this summer, .and 1 truly hope that: we may have nomdte.’’ “ Does soda-water blow up folks ?” “ That depends on the state of their health. Some people could stand here and drink all day, while others plight get the glass tipped up this way, and boom! they’d go!’ r “Btift?” “ Ye?’m—fly into a thousand pieces. You nerfei* saw a human being explode, “Wfeilj you don’t have the least Warning. They may be laughing or talking and all at once the store ia filled with false hair, monogram garters, hustles, corsets, feet, teeth and rolled plate jewelry. It makes a great muss around hero, and if we hadn’t three of the smartest negroes in town to pick up and sWeepi dut we’d have to shift up the stoip for a whole afternoon after an explosion.* ' He stood with the glass hand agitating the syrup and waiting, and she said: : “ I didn’t suppose it was dangerous stuff.” i “ Well, as I told you, it depends on the state of the system. If your liver is torpid and your digestion impaired one glass of J sodarwater would blow you higher than Gildepoy’s kite, and the Coroner wouldJie lucky ,to find as much as your i t ,y iev Jteß to hold an inquest on. If yovo- ‘ < is all right you might drink ? % Aired § lasses and feel no tectaTow then, you’ll have a goo\ ®LJaI of water and but little gas, eh?” She made a deprecatory motion and asked: .

“ How’s the stuff ryade?” ) “Well, I can’t go on and explain all the process. There’s marble dust, add, gas, sugpr-coeted pills, giant powdgr v eo-logne-water aqd kerosene all mikjd together and then distilled. The distifted liquid is placed in a retort, where a che™ica! action separates it, and the gasjg $ it up separate pipes.” “ Kerosene and pillsT” she gaspe w “ e S “ That’s what I said, madam. Y fi OTi ,k innocent and "honest, ana I won’t Say anything about it. I ten* 0 ”,! fountain in order to support a wiP at Ul mother and seven fatherless childrr au "[f you should say anything I’d bf. jcharged, and. if I were discharged Ir} e commit suicide. You’ll have water, eh?” >a) “No, sir, | won’t,” she replied. “Do you suppose I’d drink acids and kerosene?” ”, “Not in their trade state, madam, but this process-—” . “1 don’t care for the process!" she snapped; wouldn’t touch the stuff!” “ It is a mild beverage, madam, and the doc ” ' u Well, I don’twiant any. When I goto" swalleringtarand lard and kerosene you’ll know it. S’posen I’d drank some and exploded!” “Don’t mention it!” he whispered. “ Don’tspeak of it!” “I’m sorry for you, young man, but there’s a constahle living right in sight of our house, and I think I —l ” “You’ll drive me to a suicide’s grave, you mean!” She lowered her spectacles, took a long look at him and went out without replying.—Detroit Free Press.

The coolness ol some men in certain trying emergencies is beyond praise. He was a cool man if he was a poor carver, who having at a dinner parly deposited by his unskillfulness the turkey on a lady’s lap, courteously inquired: “Madam, may I trouble you for that turkey?” But even this exhibition of a temper which no mishap could rutile is eclipsed by the coolness of an English curate—the Christian Register relates the incident—in managing his sleepy congregation. Having tried, without success, many plans to keep alive the attention of drowsy people, he on one hot summer afternoon, just as the people had roused themselves at the end of the sermon, quietly said: “Well, my friends, that sermon aoes not seem to have interested you; I am very sorry for it: but there is a remedy for all things, and I have another in my pooket which you will perhaps like better!” To the dismay of bis wide-awake flock he coolly preached a second sermon through from the text to the amen. That curate would lead a forlorn hope or oversee a nitro-glycerine factory. ' The Twirler of the St Lou\* Republican appeared at his place in the office the other morning, his nose ornamented with eight small strips of cduit-plastor, and with decided indications of approaching baldness. After an hour’s struggle with Eil and paper he evolved the follow. “ If Prot Tice will only devise some method of foretelling a domestic equinox, now, millions of nervous men, knowing when to stay away from home, will rise up and call him blessed.”