Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1902 — Items Here and There. [ARTICLE]

Items Here and There.

Albert Harmon, 3 miles west of town, is going to make a big public sale on Dec. 16th. His sale bills are of large size and printed in two colors and are about the handsomest sale bills ever put up in Jasper county. Ertel Lutz, the Hanging Grove young man whose sudden death, a week a&o, was duly reported, had returned from the Philippines some months ago. He was there in'the government service as an army teamster. Wm. Kenton, now on JoeHarris’s farm, north of town, is preparing to remove to South Dakota in a month or two. Himself, wife, three sons and three daughters will compose the party. He has bought a section of land in Douglas county near Mitchell. The sons that will go are Jim, Simon and Elmer.

J. C. Frazee, of Barkley tp., is Still another good citizen who has taken the fever to move eastward. He recently bought a fine 80 acre place in Miami ooun‘y, 1 miles from Peru and will move there, in the spring. He has two larger farms here whioh he will rent out or selli Monticello tongues are wagging over a new sensation. Ohas. Gustavel, a man of family, disappeared on Thanksgiving Day with Miss May Scott. Next day Gustavel came baok but be oouldu’t stand the talk and skipped again. His domestic relations are said to be unpleasant. Presiding Elder Wood, of the Valparaiso distriot, preached the funeral sermon of Wesley Reynolds, the baok robbers’ victim, at Westville, Tuesday afternoon, at the M. E. churoli at that place. All of the stores olosed and everybody paid respect to the young man who so bravely defended the bank’s oontents but was killed by the bandits.

Mr. Ellis Jones, of Carpenter tp. and Miss Hattie Besse of Remington were married Wednesday, Deo. 3rd, at 2:30 p. m. by Rev. C. D. Royse, at his residence. The wedding was an entirely private affair. After the oeremony the newly married couple took the 3:30 train for a visit to Chicago. There are now 11,650 free rural delivery routes in the United States, and Postmaster General Payne in his annual report urges a larger appropriation that every person may be furnished with this service. He also urges the extension of free delivery to all towns in whioh the gross postal receipts are not less than $5,000 annually. Whioh would give Rensselaer free mail delivery. Rough on rats is also rough on folks, when it gets inside of them. This fact was discovered by Oscar Hadley, treasurer of Hendricks oounty. He mixed rat poison with meal, and left the mess in a dish, on the kitchen table. His daughter, not knowing of the poison rolled the meat for breakfast in the meal,J}efore she fried it. All the family were made very sick, but all will recover.

professed oil expert has been in the Gillam field for some time past and written a long article to the Oil City Derrick es Oil City, Penn. He appears to take the view that the field is very limited in extent, and not now profitable for want of a market. The statement that the Federal Oil Company will pnt up a refinery in the field in the spring is re-iterated, and that will give a big boost to the whole field. Blaokford county’s fine oonrt house, at Hartford Oity, caught fire Monday evening, after it was dosed for the night, but a 10 year old boy saw the fire, through a I window, and it was extinguished

before much damagd-'Wae done. The fire probably started from a oigar stamp in a waste basket! This court house is oue of those which Served, to a considerable extent, as a model for our own court house. It has long passed as an axiom that there is more than one way to skin a skunk. It now appears that there is also more than one way to skin a rabbit. An exchange thus describes the new method: “A man in this town has discovered a new way to skin a rabbit. He makes a slight inoision in the rabbit’s bind leg, inserts the tube of a bicycle pump, pumps the skin loose from the body and there you are.” In riding through the country at this season of the yeaJt, it will be noticed that some farmers are very oareless with their machinery, remarks a neighboring editor. There are thousands of dollars’ worth of machinery scattered over the fields that we suppose will remain in the same place until another crop is raised. Cultivators are standing iu lonely fields or are pulled into some convenient fenoe corner. Owners of the neglected machinery wonder how it is that oaref ul, painstaking farmers succeed.