Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1881-02-03
GO Hon vino sup.,

NorH1sa SO quickly divests man Of
dignity as long, sprawling fall on q
slippery pavement. He clutches fran
tically at the sky. He half RECEIVERS his
equilibrium, and then suddenly lurches
the other way. Every limb starts off
on its own hook. He gyrates. He
gesticulates. He expostulates. He ro-
tates.3 His right foot strikes out for
heaven, his left for the far West, while
his hat gambols gayly over the curb
stone. With resolution, emphasis and
resonance, he sits down hastily on q
sharp piece of fce-to reflect, the last
vestige of dignity and piety gone And
yet this thing goes on from day to day,
and will to the last syllable Of recorded
time. Ordinances to enforce the clean
ing of pavements are dead letters. They
prove, like many other laws, that stat
utes in advance of public sentiment
amount to nothing. They are silently
ignored by common consent. Mer-
chants, who would seem directly inter-
ested in making pavements safe and
pleasant before their own doors, quietly
allow their customers to slip and slide
along to the peril of life and limb, and
all for the want of an hours labor and a
bucketful of ashes or sawdust. There
is reason for this deep down in the
AmericaE heart 1t is found in our ir-
repressible love of the ridiculous. Any
American tradesman in the land
would rather lose the sale of q
bill OF goods than miss seeing his
best customer make an involuntary
spread-eagle of himself on an icy pave
ment. There is something in it that
pays him better, and he holds his sides
and gasps in ecstacy of mirth behind the
door at the recollection of Jones trying
to execute a double somersault, without
handspring, on the crowded pavement
OF frosty morning. He tries to tell you
where Jones's hat went, and how he
appeared at that awful moment when he
looked around to see who witnessed his
astonishing exploits, but he suffocates
and goes off uttering sounds diabolic.
He sympathizes with the boy that roared
in glee at JOnes's discontinue, and he
could hug the unfeelipg brute over the
way who is laughing stentoriously yet.
Let Smiths new silk hat be blown off
his head by the winds and see how the
crowd will stop to witness the race be-
tween the hat and its disguised owner.
Nobody stops the hat, yet everybody
cheers Smith with whoop and yell and
words of encouragement. Now he has
it, now away it goes again, through mud
and slush as Smith tears madly after.
The crowd is evidently betting on the
hat, though it never fails to whoop up
Smith. Nobody is in such hurry as
not to be able to stop and see that race
out, and contribute to the general joy
with uproarious shouts and peals of
laughter. There is a general disap-
pointment when the battered hat is cap
tured and the fun is over. It's mean,
but we do 1.-THE politest and the rudest.
Ii we hold in until Smith, utterly de-
moralized, has retreated up stairway,
we explode Immediately afterward per-
fidiously and go cachinnating home in
commissions to tell the story to delighted
auditors.
On that slippery day in New York
when one-sixth of the people were in
the act of constantly falling down or
picking them selves up,' the other five
sixths "might have been SEEM bend
ing too and fro in agonies of merriment
and laughter. What a pandemonium of
noise went up from hundreds of miles of
streets. one-sixth groans and curses,
fve-sixths yells of derision and peals of
Joy! Then and there was exhibited a.
UlaTkeu LTdiG O1 our ndtlOudl CudTdCGeT-
we laugh and grow lean.
We really feel very sorry for Brown,
who has nearly ruined his spinal column
by his sudden determination to sit down
on a slick, flat rock, but we have no
idea of restraining our joy at the pictur-
esque and bizarre attitude he assumes.
A man slipped up recently in Canaan
daigua and nnjointed his spinal column.
The accident elected shouts of laughter
from the street, and then everybody
wanted to help carry him home before
he died. There is no malice or mischief
in the American sense of the ludicrous,
which EFFORTS tittering from the girls
and whoops from the boys, old and
young, but an irrepressible desire to en-
Joy the too few opportunities to shoot
folly as it flies and laugh when we may.
Hence our pavements are seldom
cleaned. Hence our city ordinances are
dead letters. Hence we slip and slide
and laugh away, willing to take our
chances in the hope that our pudgy
neighbor, not we, may be induced to
perform acrobatic feats, with a tin
bucket on his arm and q bottle in his
pocket, the next time he goes down
town. 1.-THE man who laughs " is an
ACKNOWLEDGMENT Journal.