Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 September 1875 — A Frenchman’s Practical Joke. [ARTICLE]

A Frenchman’s Practical Joke.

Great commotion was created in the wood of a few days ago by the discovery, by a party of promenaders, of the body of a well-dressed young man suspended 1 from one of the branches of a sturdy oak, while his dog, lying on the ground just beneath his dangling feet, seemed to keep watch over , the corpse. The terrified pleasure-seekers hastily summoned one of the forest-keepers, who advanced to cut the body down. A sudden kick from the supposed dead man sent him staggering in the other direction, while the dog, with a howl of fury, fastened his teeth in his leg. This done, the body hung motionless as before. >“Try again,” said one of the bystanders; “ that movement was merely the result of muscular contraction.” But the second attempt was attended with the same result, and then a shout of laughter from the apparent corpse revealed the secret. The whole affair was a practical joke. The young fellow was suspended, not by his neck, but by a cord passed under his arms, and he had the courage and perseverance to remain hanging in that painful position for more than an hour in order to successfully take in somebody. Unfortunately the joke will not prove as laughable a one as he at first imagined, as he was at once arrested and taken to the station-house on the two charges of defacing the trees and having, kicked a keeper of the forest.— Paris Let. ter.