Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1876 — A Specimen Family. [ARTICLE]

A Specimen Family.

Detroit celebrated—you bet your house and lot she did! As a specimen of how she celebrated, take, for instance, the Hamerlin family. Early in the morning the old gent fell from a second-story window while putting out a flag, broke three flower-pots and a rib, aDd lemonade, doctors, brandy, sky-rockets and the Declaration .of Independence were all tangled up around his house all day. Thea his wife fell down the back stairs while hurrving to caution Johnny not to shoot crackers in the oven. She didn't break any bones, but she couldn’t holler for liberty half as much as she wanted to. The Soy John held one fire cracker in his mouth while he shot oflf another on a hitching-poast. Owing to some misunderstanding tlie two went off together, and then John went “off. He didn’t say much with his mouth during the rest of the day. A younger son fooled around with some loose powder in the tfiorning, went out to cool his blisters in the afternoon, and was brought home to supper with a hole in his leg. Mr. Ilamerlin's grown-up daughter didn’t meet with any accident of any account. Some one hit her in tlie ear with a torpedo, and a strange boy fired a shot-gun so close to her other ear that when any one now addresses her she puts her hand up and remarks: “ Hey ? What ju say ? Speaks a little louder, if you please.” It won’t be a month before the Hamerlin family will be as good as new, and, as he yesterday remarked: “ Why, it’s worth SIO,OOO to leave a patriotic record to posterity.”— Detroit Free Press.

In order to preserve tomatoes through the year it is not necessary to resort to the expense of canning them. If stewed in the ordinary manner but without butter or crackers, only a little salt and sugar, they can be put into jugs—two quart or gallon, according to the size of the family—and if corked up tightly they will keep for a year. To make assurance doubly sure, some melted wax may be poured around the cork. Tomatoes may also be dried easily. Skinned and prepared with a littie sugar they make a good substitute for figs, and are sold under the name of tomato figs.— Brehange. OFthe 2,600,000 American farms, 8,070,000 are less than 100 acres each. \