Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1877 — Two Stories. [ARTICLE]

Two Stories.

A Massachusetts gentleman, just returned from over the Canadian border, tells us these stories: He was in the hotel general-accommodation room, when two verterans of the (hotel) bar, laying schemes for a drink, began to tell stories to each other for his benefit. “ These are awful hard times," said one. “ I never saw such times before, except when I was in Ohio, an’ then I was hard put to’t to git along. Nothin’ to do. I had a yoke of steers, but they wan’t earnin’ nothin’. But I lived right on the road the Western emigrants went over every day. So I dug a hole in that road at the foot o’ the hill, near my house, turned a livin’ spring o’ water into’t, and made a good mud-hole. Well, when the emigrants came along, every day there would be one or more teams git stuck in my mud-hole, an’ they would see my steers standin’ out doin’ nothin’, an’ they would send up an’ git me to come an’ help ’em out, an’ I alwuz charged as much as $5 a lift Well. 1 kep that mud-hole right up in good repair till I made $35,000 out on’t, an’ then I sold it out for $3,000, an’ moved up here." Story number two was the other Munchausen’s companion-piece for the yoke of steers: 44 When I was a choppin’—l could chop some, you know*an’ folks used to ask me how much I could do in a day. 4 Have you ever tried it?’ says they. 4 No, never,’ says I; 4 never but once, and that wan’t really a try.’ Tou see, Just to show ’em what I could do, I got up one winter mornin’ afore light an’ ground up my ax sharp, oh, jest as sharp, an’ went into tbs woods. An’ I chopped like sixty till about three o’clock in the afternoon, when I thought it was as much as I could pile afore sundown, an’ I went to pilin’. Well, when I had it all piled up it measured twenty-seven cord. An’ then 1 knew somethin* was wrorig, for I knew at the rate I had been choppin’ it oughter be more. So I went back and begun look, in’ ’round to see what the trouble was. An’ there, right at the fust tree I cut in the mornin’, was my ax-head. You see, the thing was loose an’ slipped off, an’ 1 had been choppin’ all day with the bare helve.’’— Boston Adoertiser.

44 1 had to stand up all the way home in the street cars,” said a Chicago wife to her husband, as she came into the house the other day. “You didF’ said he, “well, that’s a shame.” 44 0 h, I didn’t care—l enjoyed it,” declared she, as she pulled off a glove; 44 ever since you gave me these handsome bracelets I like to atand up and bang to a strap, the gold filigree work shows off so beautifully." The Black Hills IHotuer speaks of the biggest clean-up of the season—seventy pounds of gold, ot 816,800, the result of one week’s labor. TkU fiona the Father Dcßiuvt Lode.