Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 May 1879 — "Going A-Fishlng.” [ARTICLE]

"Going A-Fishlng.”

The man who invented the fish-hook will some day have a monument. It will be a granite column 500 feet high, built by tne boys alone. A boy (might possibly get along with marbles; tops, stilts, balls and kites, yet he would feel that there was an aching void somewhere. A kite does well enough as. long as it will outsail all other kites ana the string doesn't break, and a pair of stilts are good property until after the first fall; but for real solid pleasure the fish-hook can never be beaten. A. boy will always expect more and get lessfrom it than anything else invented, but he never gets toodisoouraged to try again. The Smith boy was observed trying his luck yesterday in a pond on a vacant lot on Alfred street As far back as last December his mother promised him half a day out of school as soon as the fish began to bite, and yesterday was the glorious day. Wh«re there’s water there ought to be fish, according to., everybody’s reckoning,-' and the youth “surrounded” tSfitirwee ItTtJr pond-hole with its barrel of muddy water with just as much enthusiasm as a man would throw a line into Lake St

Clair. He had ham, sweetcake, potato, dried beef and boiled egg for bait, *<id when he had spit upon the baibjmd cast in his hook all the Beth Greens ever born couldn’t have convinced him that he would fail of at least one good big bite. For two lortg hours Be fished for sturgeon and pickerel and pike, changing the bait now and theii abet ' never forgetting to spit on it, snd as he hauled up for the last time he would simply admit that it wasn’t just tho right sort of day to go fishing. If he had had a little one to carry home his triumph would have been more complete, but yet his eyes were like diamonds as ho met fWo boys on the corner and called out: “Say! I’ve stayed oUt of school a whole half-day and been a-fishing. ! didn’t catch any fish, ’cos they were all on their nests, but you ought to have seen the big frog which tumbled off a stone!”— Detroit Free Press. A story is told of a man in Cheshire, Mass., whp always walks from that town to Pittsfield to save his fare. One day he carried to one of the banks $5,000 in coupon bonds, which he wanted to have converted into registered bonds, declaring that for five years he had kept them between the feather and straw ticks on his bed, and he had not known what a good night’s sleep was in all that time. It is also related of him that he became so harassed over his money matters that lie attempted to hang himself. A kind-hearted neighbor cut him down in time to save nis life, and when he had recovered he sent his benefactor a bill of fifty cents for spoiling a good halter which he had cut in saving the miser’s life. If Congress recommends a uniform standard of weights and measures for the civilized world, as has been proposed, David Davis and Alexander H. Stephens will be placed on equal footing.— New Orleans Picayune.