Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 June 1876 — How a Man Can Get Ready to Go to Europe In Fifteen Minutes. [ARTICLE]

How a Man Can Get Ready to Go to Europe In Fifteen Minutes.

It has been said that it takes a woman half a day to get ready for an absence of an hour. It has also been said that a man can get ready to go to Europe in fifteen minutes. Whether it means that he will get ready to go in fifteen minutes, or will go in fifteen minutes after he is ready,can be definitely ascertained by putting the pauses where they belong. As the reader pays his money he can take his choice and just suit himself. “ Variety is the spice of life,” and some people's lives require a deal Of the aforesaid spice to make theirs endurable. But not to meander from the subject means to stay by it. One day during a speck of sleighing Jim Jones hired a horse and cutter ana went home to take Mrs. Jim out for a ride. He got home just as she was rocking the baby to sleep. The baby had the whooping cough and wouldn’t let any but her mother rock her. So Jim said he would drive around awhile and then come back. So he drove and drove, as he thought, about half an hour and went back and the baby wasn’t yet asleep, and he looked at his watch and found he had been gone just ten minutes. So he went away again and drove and drove and came back and slammed the door when he went in and awoke the baby that had just got to sleep and aether crying and coughing, and she whooped like a young Comanche Indian on the warpath. But after much rocking and singing she subsided, and poor Mrs. Jones thought she would get ready for her ride. While she was getting ready she had three calls; then after that she had to go into the kitchen and tell Bridget what to get for tea, then there was no water in the wash pitcher, then she had to get a clean towel. But she flew round pretty

briskly, and at the end of ten minutes or thereabouts she said she guessed she was ready. Then Jones found there was a button off his overcoat, and it was the top button, too, so she sewed that on and pricked her fingers, and the said emphatically that “she wished that she could ever go anywhere without first sewing on a button or rocking a baby,” and Jim said no one asked her to sew on a button, but if she hadn’t sewed it on she’d been two hours getting ready any way, and added, incidentally, that “he coula get ready to go to New York and get back wjille she was making up her mind.” She said “ probably he could if he had , three or four waiting on him, as he usually did when he got ready." a Then he said “ ’twas no such a thing," and she said it was, and as sure as you live her words were verified that night. " After they got home and had tea and were sitting comfortably by the fire, there came a ring at the door-bell, and a moment thereafter a telegram was brought in, and it was from New York, and requested Jim to “come on” on the next train, which went at 10:30, just three hours from that time. So Jim settled back to reading, remarking that there was “ plenty of time.”

So ho read the news, polltlAl, Surveying It most critically o'er— And poor Mrs. Jones fidgeted, for she knew “just how it would be.” Well, about nine o’clock Mr. Jones said he guessed he would get ready, and just then he clapped his hand on his coat pocket, after the manner of men, and says he: * • There, I’ve got to run down to the office a minute, and while I’m gone you just put a shirt and some socks in my sachel,” and he grabbed* his hat and rushed out. She went to get his shirt and couldn’t find the key to the bureau. She hunted and hunted, and scolded, but she could not find it, neither could she find any other one that would fit, except herself, and she would fit any one for half a cent. She got in an awful state of heat and vexation, goaded on by the gaping sachel that stood in the middle of the floor and a momentary expectation of hearing Jim’s hummels on the stairs, and just as it was a quarter oi ten and she had arrived at the tearful stage of the proceedings he came and opened the door and stopped and said —come to think it were better not to tell what he said, because it was dreadfully personal to Mrs. Jones, and she felt it to be so, and answered that she wasn’t, and she couldn’t pack his sachel when everything was locked up in the bureau and the key not to be found. Her tears flowed afresh when he unfeelingly remarked that “nothing could ever be found in that house after one once let go of it. So then he hunted and hunted, and turned overall her handkerchief ana collar and glove boxes, and looked in the perfumery bottles, and moved the bureau out, assisted by the whole household force, who ran hither and thither, their motions being greatly accelerated by sarcastical remarks from Mr. Jones, who managed to talk all the time, whether he was heard or not. At last, says he, “ Well, here it is”—he went to say ten o’clock:, and stuck his fingers in his vest pocket and pulled out the identical key. If Mrs. Jones hadn’t seen him he would never have told; but she did see him, and she didn’t say a word so that he could explain that he locked the drawer up because he had put some valuable business letters in it the day before, and any man is justified in taking care of business letters. She only gave him a. look that somehow reminded him of the picture of Polycarp and the lions, and she stood by meekly while he unlocked the drawer, and she put the things in his sachel while he went to black his boots, he having first, however, put the letters in his pocket. Then there was running hither and yon for his slippers, which were found under the lounge, where he kicked them in the morning, and then his dressing-case had to be forthcoming ; then his bottle of cough balsam had to be found and putln his inner overcoat pocket, and he was ready. So he kissed Mrs. Jones, who slobbered on him, and then started to run a mile in fifteen minutes. It is supposed that he succeeded, for he eventually reached New York. And such a drtfodful looking room as the one he left. The chairs were having a meeting over in the corner, the towels were distracted and the washbowl was overflowing. The soap was in the spittoon and his cast-off' clothing graced the center of the room; and oh, my, the buremit One drawer was out on the floor, the other one was half out, and the top looked very like the counter of a secondhand clothing store,so varied and conglomerated was its lay-out. And it stood out from the wall just where he left it, which would give one the impression that it had started to go somewhere, and then changed its mind and didn’t. But Mrs. Jones was avenged; he didn’t get ready in fifteen minutes, and when she wrote she told him so. She laughed tyst and laughed longest, too.—Detroit Frp Press.