A Much-Married Woman

1895

Mrs. Fowler, of this city, was married last January to her sixth husband, and strange as it may seem, five of them died exactly two years from their marriage day. Her present husband has been sick for the last four months with chronic jaundice, and was given up by four best physicians; as a last resort he began using Sulphur Bitters, and yesterday told our reporter that they had saved his life, smilingly saying that he guessed Mrs. Fowler would be unable to take a seventh better half for some time to come. — Exchange.



Raid on a Post Office

New York, 1895

An attempt was made Friday night to rob the post office at Thomaston. When Postmaster Cole went to open the place in the morning he found one of the panels cut out of the street door. There were also several auger holes in a side window where the thieves had endeavored to cut away the window catch.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, March 22, 1895, p. 5.

Shrapnel (Pointed Humor)

1916

A doctor's pills may cure some ill — but not ill humor.

Courtship is a game in which a girl plays her heart against a man's diamond.

If women looked like the pictures in fashion magazines men would take to the woods.

It isn't necessary for a man to be a hypnotist in order to get his mind concentrated on the toothpick.

If time were money, the average man would have his watch geared to run forty-eight hours a day.

A young widow knows that the easiest way to catch a successor to the late lamented is to run away from him.

If the phoenix of common sense rises from the ashes of a fool's money the conflagration has not been in vain.

Possibly an honest man might be otherwise if an opportunity worth while were to knock at his front door.

Mrs. McKinley's One Comfort

1902

"Her one comfort is in her daily visit to the tomb of her husband. She seems to be living only in his memory and for the purpose of honoring him."

The words were spoken of Mrs. McKinley by an intimate friend of hers. They tell in a nutshell the daily life of the woman who has not recovered, and never will recover, from the effects of the shock by the assassin's bullets that cost the life of her illustrious husband at Buffalo.

For her convenience at the vault a rocking chair has been placed in the house of the dead, near the McKinley casket. A heavy rug on the floor protects her from the dampness. When she enters the tomb she is always clothed with heavy wraps, so as to prevent any cold from getting hold on her system. The guards of National solders on duty have come to regard her daily visit to the vault as sacred, and they pay to the most profound sympathy and attention. — Philadelphia North American.

Advances In Science of Farming

1899

The wonderful advance made in the science of farming during the last few years is one of the best examples of American progressiveness. A little incident recounted by the Ashtabula (Ohio) Sentinel is characteristic.

One evening, a short time ago, a society in Jefferson needed a gallon of cream. The committee called up by telephone the proprietors of a milk farm two miles north of the town, and asked if they could furnish it. The reply was that they could as soon as milking was done. In thirty minutes from the time the call was made the cream was delivered.

The milk had been drawn from the cow, put into a separator, the cream extracted and sent to town by a man on a bicycle.

A few years ago the committee would have had to send a boy in the afternoon, "yesterday's milk" would have had to be skimmed, and if the boy had not treed too many chipmunks on the way, he might have got back in time for the festival.


When It Paid

It was at the village sewing circle, and the unprofitable question of the failure or success of marriage was under discussion. Beulah Blank, a war widow, thrifty to the last degree of New England thriftiness, kept silent until some one said:
"What do you think about it, Beulah?"
"Well, I must say that it depends," said Beulah. "Now when a woman gits married, an' her husband gits drafted into the army, and he gits killed, and she gits a pension of twelve dollars a month as long as she lives, it pays to git married. That's what I think."


Safe Stock

When news came to Boxby that the squire's son "down below" had made a large sum of money in stocks, some of the wiseacres shook their heads.
Not so old lady Sprowlet with whom the young man had always been a prime favorite.
"I don't see what the minister meant, saying he didn't favor Bob's having dealings in the stock market," she said, indignantly, to one of her neighbors. "I can't see why money made in trading cattle, if it's done fair and square, isn't just as good as money made any other way!"