Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1878 — How Mean a Man Can Be. [ARTICLE]

How Mean a Man Can Be.

“ Speaking of gall,” remarked an Eastern printer, last evening, in a C street beer saloon, “talking of solid cheek, I never saw a man who had niore of it than Pete Blivens, of Kansas City. Three of us used to room together there, in 1872. onß night in July—it was so hot that if you’d chuck water on the side of a house it would sizz like so much hot iroUg-we concluded to go down and sleep on one of timber-rafts on the river, Well, we got on the raft with our blanlfets. Just before turning in, Pete Blivens said he f messed he’d cool off by taking a swim. knew the current would snatoh him right under, but didn’t want to give him any advice, and he dived off the end of the raft. The under-tow caught and sent him out of sight in about three seconds. As soon as we saw that be*' was drowned, me and the other chap went for his effects. _We found $8.50 in his pants pocket and an old watch. We took ’etn up town and soaked the clothes for $9 and sold the watch for sl2. Then we went round the town on a sort of a jamboree and spent the money. About five o’clock in the morning we were drinking up the last dollar with some of the boys, at the Blue Cor-

nor, when who should walk in but Fete himself, in an old suit of clothes that he’d borrowed of a man three miles down the river. And hang me if he didn't demand his clothes, and the next day he was 'round dunning us for the paltry 98.50. The gall of some men’s enough to paralyze a Louisiana alligator.’’—Virginia (Nev.) Chronicle.