THE DEACON'S VIEWS
v .
Spooner Makes Some Observations
on Widows.
Hr'" '
SAFER TO COURT OLD MAIDS
r-'V
Tells How He Was Thrown Down
Good and Hard by a Widder Woman.
el.
The Case of Jim Hopewell Similar
to His.
^ fr "A ^
[Copyright, 1907, by Homer Sprague.]
"Gentlemen," said Deacon Spooner
as he took his accustomed seat in the
postoffice to wait for the mail be
distributed, "I Tras digging potatoes
r. ; this afternoon when Ezra Smailman
came along the road and hollered at
* . me that Jim Hopewell had tried/to
Mmmit cninisto hv r?nttin<r his thrhat.
i wasn't the least mi. > astonished. I
hear that some of yon got weak in the
knees and turned as white as flour,
but I'd been expecting a tragedy along
iv ' > **I USED TO 8IT AND HOLD THAT WILDES'l?
HAND IN THE MOONLIGHT."
for the last six months. For why?
j.;. ^ Because Jim was courting a widder
woman.
"I am living with my fourth wife, as
/ I told you the other night and not oneof
them was a .widder woman when I
married heri hut I've had some little
L~< experience with widders jest the same.
"A widder woman is a wife whose
husband has died and left her free to
play the detil with men for ten miles
' around. ?
"She hain't sure whether she wants
to marry ag'in or not but she is sure
that she wants to/make a fool of
, Z*. j
UOOUt twenty men oeiore sue uues iu
"A widder woman Is like a spider
, -In a web. She is waiting for victims
k to come along.
"She's a steel trap set on a sheep
trail. Yon are slouching along and
thinklpg of nothing in particular when
you suddenly put your foot in it, and
' there 'you are.
j. "A widder woman may not have
^ ' smiled at her husband for a year pref;'
' ' vious to his death, but four weeks afterward
she's tittering and giggling
with a tin peddler.
"She may have fallen down in a
\ faint when they buried her husband,
but the next sewing machine man that
fr came along found her singing.
f:. I "Yes, in my courting around I court-ed
widder women as well as the other
kind. I thought it might be jest as
well to find a widder with a farm
and plenty of live stock as to take a
woman with nothing but what she
stood in. I found that widder. There
was a hundred acres of land, a good
house and barn/and the horses, cattle,
sheep and hogs made my mouth wa4er.
"I didn't let on that I'd come court'fi
' tog. I was in the tombstone business I
then, and I told her I'd called to see
. about a stone for her husband. I described
the one I'd put up for my wife,
and when we got to telling each other
how lonesome we was we both agreed
we'd never marrv as'in.
"Thaf s1 where we both lied and
v knew we were lying.
She Shed Tears.
"The widder shed tears as she talked
Of the many virtues of the late departed,
and of course I told her that
what was her loss was his gain. That's
always a good thing to ring in. She
said that if ever I came that way
ag'in she'd be happy to have me call,
and down in her heart she knew that
I'd be back in about three days. I was.
I made the excuse that I wanted to
buy a cow, and she pretended to be
awfully surprised to see me, but both
of us were lying ag'in.
"Thajt widder woman drawed me on
in fifty different ways, but mostly by
tears when she spoke of the departed.
I never saw tears in her eyes that I i
didn't want to put my arm around her
waist and wipe them away. She said
that man was an oak tree and women
only a wilier and that it was natural I
for' the wilier to want to lean ag'in
the oak. She pitied me in my loneliness,
and I pitied her, and at last it '
got so mat i uuxeu &w?ii a. sacciw
tli&t had settled on the back of her ,
neck. Say, now, I jest as much calkerlated
to marry that widder as I do to
get a quart of molasses in this jug
after the mail is distributed. After I
had courted her for six weeks I had
no more doubt of her saying yes than
I have that Hiram Baker over there
ought to be ashamed of the old hat
he's wearing. ?
"One day I decided to settle things.
I drove over, and she had the same
sihile for ine until I begun to talk business.
Then she said she guessed I'd
made a mistake in the house and hintl|l
V
_
ly, bat checked It He remembered
the incident and he thought it a mean
trick on the part of Mrs. Gay to give
him away. He had thought himself
all alone, and when he went into that
hole backward and busted things and
sprained his back he just naturally
shouted out the same as Judge Landis
or Elihu Root would have done.
Mrs. Gay should have realized the
provocation and kept the affair to herself.
"Samuel, I don't want to weep, because
I know men folks don't like
tears, but I have to," continued Mrs.
Dolby as she proceeded to weep and
let the tears fall where they would.
"I leave you setting a new gatepost
and singing a hymn. If fifty different
people had told me that you were a
pirate, I couldn't have believed it.
Within half an hour you were hitting
the fence with the spade and using
such language that Mrs. Gay thinks it
curdled her pear preserves and that
she will have to throw them all out
^ ?V. 7 ? rx wa fointinrr o TX'fj tt *)
)UU UiUiilC UJC IUI lUWUUg <?. .. IA.T .
Can you blame me for wanting to expire?
Can you wonder that my spirit
longs to sail far away where post holes
and pirates are not?" *
The deacon didn't blame her one bit,
but as he had now reached the photograph
of his Uncle Jim, who always
claimed to be the original discoverer
of the Atlantic Ocean, he wanted to
keep quiet and do a lot oti! thinking.
"If that yvas all, Samuel," said Mrs.
Dolby after a sobbing silence of three
minutes, "I shouldn't feel so like dying.
I would lay it to your absentmindedness^
I would think that you
temporarily mistook yourself for Captain
Kidd and that the words fell unconsciously
from your lips, but that
couldn't have been the case. Three
days after that, as I well remember,
Mr. Brownfield came over and asked
you to go back with him and see what
ailed his cow. He; thought she was
coming down with the / holler horn.
You are not saying a word, Samuel,
but I know you remember all about it
Can't you get me the kitchen towel to
wipe my eyes on?"
The deacon never moved. He had
struck an attitude, and he thought it
safest to maintain it Besides, he was
now looking at the photograph of an
aunt of his who was the first woman
in America to discover that heavy
bread and sour buttermilk added years
to the life of a tramp.
Kicked by a Cow.
"You went over and saw the cow.
You were examining her horns when
she threw her head around and knocked
the breath all out'of you. Mr. Brownfield
was scared almost to death. As
he stood there, looking at you, you
jumped up and began kicking the cow.
He counted the kicks, and there were
just twenty-six of them. You called
her seventeen different names. You
swore forty-two times and was still at
it when Mr. Brownfield laid his hand
on your arm and told you to recollect
who you were and what yotl owed to
society. You grabbed him and ran him
agajnst the barn, and if Mrs. Brownfield
hadn't come out and screamed I
don't know how you would have ended
up. Think of it, Samuel?think of it!"
Samuel thought of it, and the more
he thought the more he wished he had
knocked the cow's horns off. He didn't
say so, however. He was in one of his
silent moods. Mrs. Dolby was permitted
to weep for the next five minutes
and wipe her eyes on the skirt of
her dress, and It was almost a relief to
hear her finally say:
"Wall Samuel von can eo out to
your taters, and I will lie here and
die. You'll find me dead when you
come into supper, but don't let it bother
you. You can get yourself some
bread and milk, and if you want tea
you'll find the teakettle boiling. Farewell,
dear. I can no longer live with
a pirate. My place Is with the angels."
Mr. Dolby went out and resumed his
digging, but he hadn't unearthed more
than a bushel of the white tubers when
Mrs. Dblby appeared. She had dried
her eyes, slicked down her hair and
was even smiling as she observed:
"Samuel, I think I want some more
spice for those quince preserves, and I
wish you'd think of it when you go
down to the postoffice tonight"
-u , M. QUAD.
The Main Thing.
Professor?Young man, what to your
mind represents the greatest problem
of the races? ;
Student (abstractedly)?To pick the
winner.?Baltimore American.
Diaboiicalness of Diabolic Diabolo.
???? ?
The world, the flesh and the d?.
The Only Way.
My butcher sells me doctored Teal,
My coal man sells we clinkered coal,
My grocer sells me moldered meal,
My baker stints the breakfast roll,
My vintner sells me weakened hoch.
With other tinctured chemic wines,
My broker sells me watered stock
And boosted shares in salted mines.
How can I make both ends to meet
When thus these rogues my wealth purloin
Unless I practice like deceit
And pay their claims with tainted coin?
?Arthur Guiterman in Judge.
COSTLY DRUGS.
Some Rare and Peculiar Substances
Used In Medicine.
A writer in Wissen fuer Alle throws
some interesting light qp rare and peculiar
drugs. Saffron, he points out
would strike an ordinary observer as
decidedly expensive at $13 a pound (to
change marks into our coinage) until
told that it is composed of the central
small portions only of the flowers of
the crocus, 70,000 of which it takes to
make a pound. Attar of roses sells at
$112 odd per pound, and it takes
10,000 pounds, or nearly five tons of
roses, to obtain one pound of the oil.
Aconitine, extracted from the root of
monkshood, is said to be the very
strongest poison extant, the dose being
one six-hundredth of a grain. It is sold
at the rate of $103 per ounce.
Turning from tlie vegetable to the
animal world in search of rare drugs,
the writer refers to the musk of the
Asiatic deer, which at $24 to $30 an
ounce must be a prize to the wily
hunter. In some of the tropical seas a
floating, sweet smelling mass of ambergris
is met with worth at present
$30 per ounce, or $480 per pound in
the market. The ambergris is said to
be the diseased biliary product of the
whale.
Another peculiar product in use as a
drug is a solution of the pure venom
of the rattlesnake, given occasionally
in malignant scarlet fever.
THE "COUP DE JARNAC."
A French Adage and tho Incident Upon
Which It Rests.
The "coup de Jarnac" has become a
French proverb, and it serves to distinguish
.a stroke as decisive as unforeseen
which intervenes for the settlement
of any affair. The adage rests
upon an incident in the life of Gui
Chabot, Seigneur de Jamac, a noble
of the court of Francis I. The lie passed
between him and Le Chateigneraie,
the dauphin's favorite. King Francis,
however, forbade the duel. At the succession
of Henry II. the old quarrel
was revived, and the overdue duel was
fought on the plain of St. Germain
with all the formality of the ancient
judicial combats and in the presence
of the whole court Jarnac was weaker
and less agile than his adversary,
who was one of the noted swordsmen
of the time, but he had taken lessons
from an Italian bravo. In the duel
Jarnac waited for an opening and
then dealt La Chateigneraie a heavy
and unexpected stroke which hamstrung
him. This was in 1447. Ten
years later Jarnac was a captain in
the'defense of St Quentin. Eventually
he met his fate in a duel. But the
"coup de Jarnac" is historic in the annals
of sword play?Argonaut
UAnl/Aue Dnrrvttc.
ITIvimv/* ?t??m
A lung specialist was talking about
a famous scientist who had contracted
consumption from a lot of consumptive
monkeys that he had been experimenting
upon.
"This should be a lesson and a warning
to us all," he said, "for nothing is
more dangerous to the lungs' health
than to have a monkey about the
house. Practically all monkeys have
consumption in this climate, and it is
just as easy to take consumption from
a monkey as from a man or woman.
It is the same with parrots. They, too,
have consumption, and they, too, are
most apt to give the disease to those
who pet them. As for me, .rather than
live in the same house with a pet monkey
or a pet parrot I would take a cot
in the hopeless ward of some consumptives'
hospital." ? New Orleans
Times-Democrat.
___ 4 r - '
A Wedding Day Reminder.
William James, the famous psychologist
of Harvard, said at a dinner in
Boston:
"An odor often brings back memna
Via/1 Ihnnsrhf UnrUvl f'rtr.
V11CB UittL TT C uuu uivuguv v*.v>
ever. As we regard some strange
landscape it often seems to us that
we have been just here before) The
oddest, the most momentous associations
oftentimes attach themselves to
the most trifling things.
"Thus at a Thanksgiving dinner that
I once attended the hostess said to a
sour faced man on my left:
"'May I help you to some of the
boiled rice, Mr. Smith?'
"'Rice? No, thank you?no rice for
me,' Smith answered vehemently. 'It
is associated with the worst? mistake of
my life.'"
Costs of Office.
On the day after his election the
chief magistrate of a certain town in
the Midlands who enjoys the reputation
of being rather "near" in money
matters was asked for a subscription
to the local football club.
"I really can't do it," he replied.
Must look at the outlay I've already
been put to through accepting office!"
And he produced a small ledger inscribed
on the cover "Mayoralty Expenses."
On the top line of the first
inside page was the entry, "Dress suit,
?2."?Reynolds' Newspaper.
An Exception.
The Philosopher?Tell me what a
person reads and I can tell you what
he is. The Dyspeptie--Not always.
There's my wife, for instance. She's
always reading a cookery book. The
Philosopher (confidently)?Well? The
Dyspeptic?But she's no cook!
A Human? Woman.
The Cabman?Gimme your bag, lady,
and I'll put it on top of the cab. Mrs.
Oatcake (as she gets in>?No; that poor
horse of yours has got enough to pull.
I'll carry it on my lap.?London TitBits.
Do not measure your enjoyment by
the amount of money spent in producing
it. j
NOTICE! : : NOTII
100 K. P. Guano Distributors $7.
50 Henderson Guano Distributo:
Moiine Cotton and Corn Planter
Moline Cotton and Corn Planter
Middle Busters and all kinds of 3
Agent for Planet, Jr. Cultivators
WIRE FENCING.
I TIT . 1 1 J_1 _ C 1* 1 J
* w e nave two cars in siock oi any Kina you want,
we can sell as cheap as anybody.
LIME, CEMENT a
We buy in car lots and always have on hand wlial
We can sell merchants Lime and Cement cheaper 1
be glad to make you prices in quantities.
PAINTS, OILS an
Let us figure with you on your Paints for Spring I
for five years, ready to go on your building at ?1.15 pei
We carry a full line of everything that goes with t
Come to see us or write. We will show you we ar
Batesbu:
GOT HIS MONEY. ? _
The New Depositor Made Quick Work I ^Sf
With His Check Book. ?3
During a financial stringency a |j
Swedish farmer in one of the middle raj
west states had sold some hogs on the |3 SdU3f6 F<
local market and upon receiving his ga
check in payment immediately went to |n ?
the local bank to realize on his sale, ggjj 0
Upon presentment of the check the ||| 8 Ufm f
banker said to him, "Do you wish the ?9
money on this check?" -M
"Veil, I tank I yust so veil take him,"
was the quick reply. |fi 131 a
"You really want the money?" a I U
"Yah; I tank I take the mon-e." 1 ^
"But do yot\ really need the money?" P* A 9 Q & It A
asked the banker. 1 ASllIlisP
"Veil, no; I don't exactly need him, I \?4JUlS5y
but I tank I take the mon-o." ||
"Well," said the banker, "if you really
want the money of course I will Of
give it to you, but 1 thought if you
did not need it perhaps you might open
an account and deposit the money and
then check against it as you needed ???
it."
"Den ven I send my shecks here you
vill refuse to pay dem."
"Oh, no, we won't If you open the I
account, we will pay your checks M I ( ff P
whenever they come in." H I L If, L f
This seemed assuring to the Swede, M I |~ If | j
and he said, "Veil, if you pays my
shecks, den I open de account" And g
the account was opened and passbook
and check book hande^ to the new cus- S
tomer. fi
Half an hour later a close friend of H ?,
the new depositor appeared at the -LUG
cashier's window and presented a Aj
check signed by his friend for the full H day ai
amount of the deposit, which was
promptly paid by the banker without SllOGS
comment / H
In about an hour the Sw;ede appear- H ^Thnpcj
ed and, walking up to the cashier's H OliUtJb
window, handed the banker his check
book minus only one check, with the ! are ex
remark, "Veil, I don't tank I needs H
him any more."?Youth's Companion. son.
soudlfflm i
boys' wes i LEVER
For Big Boys - - - -$1.50 M
ped by one of Dr. Shoop's Pink Pain COLUMBIA
Tablets. Pain always means conges.
tion?unnatural blood pressure. Dr. w A. CLARK, Pre:
Shoop's Pink Pain Tablets simply coax T. H. MEIGHAN, C
congested blood away from pain centers. ' '
These Tablets?known by druggists as
Dr. Shoop's Headache Tablets?simply "Put all the men on
equalize the blood circulation and then ocean and all the worn
pain always departs in 20 minutes. 20 and there would be m{
Tablets 25 cents. Write Dr. Shoop, \ , , ,, ?rna L.n^ar.
I Racine, Wis., for free package. Sold j drowned, poker
by Kaufmaun Drug Co. ' j an 1 not by a man.
Smaller Boys * $1.00,81.25
These Shoes are made of ______
good leather through and
The vamps are not cut off
just where the tip is sewed Vg|j$|3g 1 3
on,but goes on out and is sewed
same as the tip. They ||||0*M ^ ]
won't rip and tear the first mMm1
few times a boy goes rabbit f|p
They are made for that^kind |
Then they have got every
style; you can brush them up
and wear Sundays. Security for your Depos
ur~ 4-"U? Courteous treatment,
We are prepared for the Drafts or ^ of Cre,
girls also. Come see them. collections made,
I "Rank accommodation i
TITTT) T Tr^TT'C! sary for your businessPj
n rL lil 1 i rl about opening an accou
Our Capital
. e. Our Surplus
=? ? ! Carolina HaSia
Pain anvwherfi. f.an hf> rmioklv stnn- I
;B : : NOTICE!
bbhbhhbhbbbi
50 formerly $9.00.
rs $4.75 formerly $6.50.
with Guano Distributor $15.50.
$12.50.
Plows in stock.
4
9 *
WIRE FENCING.
rWe
bought it in big lot?, which puts us where
md BRICK.
t you need in this line.
than you can buy in less than car lots and will
d BRUSHES.
fainting. We can sell you a Paint guaranteed
r gallon. 1
i brush. j
l n onil u'ill on t'O T'An niftnnr
^ iu linv/ clIA VA >Y in cavv j vu
k?^9 S. G? ' j
37500 B
aa( rtf ETSaaico Cn^Aa PnuaKori K1
VI I IWI W W V VI VU |W
ULLEYS^'PACKING, ROOFING 1
AND TIN PLATE. 1
mbing Supplies. |
rn States Supply Go. I
COLUMBIA, S. C. H
I "The ShflP Man " 1
i) i iiu viivu iiiuii;
(IN COLUMBIA.) I
place to buy your every- A
id Sunday go-to-meeting I
Largest handlers of
in the Carolinas. t Prices I
tremelylow at this sea- I
Come and inspect our I
"The Shoe Man"!
(In Columbia.)
SPost Card Dealers
Printers 8 Stationers
TalKing Machines
and Records .
Robber Stamps
And Novelties of
clit,
,?OT. Every Decription
-see eur cashier t r
cm OR WRITE FOB
rT WHAT YOU WANT '
mal Bank,
?a iJ. Wilson Gibles
ashier.
one side of the j COLUMBIA, S. C.
en on the other
rV.CS' MJEI5HJMM148
; cps ths c^h aad heals
i i
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