Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 102, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 September 1901 — Isaac Stackhouse Can’t Come. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Isaac Stackhouse Can’t Come.

Isaac Stackhouse, of Indianapolis, the ablest writer among Jasper county’s early residents, can not come to the Old Settlers’ meeting, Sept. 13th and 14th. Replying to Judge Thompson’s invitation to be present, he writes the following interesting letter. Nothing in the world could give me more pleasure than to visit the old town around which cluster the happiest memories of my life, and to again clasp the hands of the kind friends inseparably connected with those memories. But, while “the spirit is willing the flesh is weak,” and irrevocably vetoes the impulse. When a half mile limits ones peregrinations, and a half hour his ability to stand on his feet, and his heart beats the, cake-Walk, with variations, if he does either of these it is needless to dream of ever again meeting you all on, “this .side of the divide,” much less to make you a speech. But how few there are left of those who-I counted and valued as friends, and how many there 'are on the other side! The fingers of one hand, I think, would serve as tally stick upon which to enumerate the men still living who, with those who have gone before, made up the town of Rensselaer forty years ago, And all there —the few who are left, and the many who are gone —co-mingled each day upon an equality, and with a bonhomie, and absence of restraint which I have never found in any other community. And this it was which constituted the great charm of the place, and the people. This it was that has embalmed those old days and those old friends m the memory of every one who was so happy as to constitute one of that community, and to participate in the cordial greeting which was every recurring day meted by all to each! But, for reasons above given, notwithstanding the great pleasure it would give me to again meet those who are left, I shall be constrained to postpone participating in a re-union of the old settlers of Rensselaer until it assembles where Alf Thompson, Gen’l Milroy, Doc Loughridge, Jeduthan Hopkins, Dr. Laßue. Doc Moss, Arch Purcupile, , John Spangle, Thos. Thompson, Will, Neum and Mora Hopkins and a host of others, truly “the great majority” of those dear friends whose names, along with those who yet survive, are ineffaceably engraved upon my memory by many acts of thoughtful kindness. That you who will meet on the 13th, and 14th, to refresh the memory of those old days may be long spared to perpetuate the kindly spirit whioh pervaded the town forty years ago, and which, linking us together as the people of a town are seldom united, now makes each thought of that olden time that passes through our gray heads a cherished memory is the wish of one who would be with you if he could. Your Friend, I. M. Stackhouse.