Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 90, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1903 — With a Firm Hand. [ARTICLE]

With a Firm Hand.

"I reckon folks can cure any habit if they’ve got enough determination,” said Mrs. Swan, with a glance of scorn at her cousin, Mrs. Mathews. “I guess if Almira Jennings can stop her sniff that she had for five years, §ou could stop that dry cough of yovirs, that doesn’t mean an earthly thing, and never did.” “Has Almira stopped her sniff?” asked Mrs. Mathews, with some show of interest. “She has,” said Mrs. Swan, firmly. “She passed last Wednesday afternoon with me—the circle met here—and she never sniffed once in the four hours. I call that a test.” “How’d she cure It?” asked Mrs. Mathews. “With onions,” said Mrs. Swan. “I felt it my duty to tjell her the habit, she’d got Into, along of that grippy cold she had all one winter, and I told her” how it had grown on her. ‘There’s others that would have liked to speak of it,’ I told her, ‘but nobody dares except me. You set a watcb on yourself and see how many times you catch yourself doing it,’ I said. And accordingly she did so. “And when she found how settled the habit was, she started right in to cure it. She can’t abide the smell of onious, raw nor cooked. So she shut herself up for a week, and she cooked onions and kept ’em setting round In dishes. And she got so by the end of that week she could keep from sniffing for an hour at a time; then she let up, gradual, on her system, as the habit gave way. But she told me she should always keep a bottle of onion extract in the house, and if the habit ever set in again she should deal with It promptly. But I don’t believe thera’U ever be any need.”