Wouldn't Sell the House

1901

The house in which Joan of Arc was born is still faithfully preserved in pious veneration at Domremy, where it is looked upon almost in the light of a shrine. Passersby invariably cross themselves and utter a prayer for protection as they go by.

The story goes that a rich and eccentric Englishman tried hard to buy the place in 1837. It was at that time the property of a farmer named Girardin. The Englishmen offered to let him name his own price, but the old man held firm. "No, no, no," he cried. "I would not sell it even to a Frenchman, much less to a foreigner and especially an Englishman. People here would call me a traitor and a coward were I to part with the house from which Joan of Arc set out to serve France."

The Englishman convinced himself that further bargaining was useless and went his way.

Soon after an officer from the king's household arrived in the village and asked to speak with Girardin. Before the whole village, assembled in the street, he said: "Girardin, the king has learned that you have refused to sell your house to an Englishman. He desires to reward you, but not in coin. He knows that you no more want the money of the French than of the English, therefore has he commanded me to present you with the cross of the Legion of Honor."

Man's Head For Sale, Twice Normal Size

1903

Personal and Otherwise

Arthur Jennings, aged 27, a resident of Florence, 0., has negotiated with an Eastern medical institute for the purchase of his head. Jenning's head is almost twice the normal size. According to the informant the price is $1,000 down and an additional $1,000 to be paid to his relatives at the time of his death. His head measures 36 inches in circumference.

After having been lost 33 years, Dr. J. H. Lenow, of Little Rock, is on the eve of recovering a medal which he won in his boyhood at the Kentucky Military institute. The doctor has received a letter from a jeweler in Brownsville, Tenn., Dr. Lenow's former home, saying that the medal had been brought to him by a negro who had plowed it up in a field near town.

—Davenport Daily Republican, Davenport, Iowa, March 4, 1903, page 4.