River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1885-10-29
THE PATCHWORK QUILT.
That Good OId-FashiOned Comforter
with Which Grandma Used to Tuck
In

Young Funnyman. No, did not
decline your joke about the quilt con
tanning $500, Az stitches because it was
so much funnier than anything / can
write myself. That was one reason, it
/ is true. When a correspondent sends
me anything funnier than my own stuff,
| decline to insert it over the cores
pondent's name. But do not, as you
assert, reject it in a mean spirit of petty
jealousy and envy. Or, no; steal it,
| chuck it right into my own funny
column, as one of my own. | appro-
pirate all the funny things sent in by
funny correspondents just as calmly as
the business manager appropriates the
stamps inclosed for the return OF the
manuscript that never returns. Me
and the business manager has soft
things of it speaking after the B0stonese
dialect Nor did l initiate that it was
too old. That is, the quilt wasn't.
But | declined TO publish libel upon
that good old quilt and the dear, good
old woman who made it. There is no
guile in the woman or the quilt That
quilt is no patchwork fraud and com
forter. It isn't one of these things
that seem to weigh ninety pounds when
YOU first crawl under it and let you
wake up in the night, shivering at the
rate OF siXty-tive miles minute, frozen
stiff as an introduction from chin to in
step, to find forty-hye pounds of cotton
in each end of that comforter and moth
ing in the middle, while the old thing
rides YOU like pair of great saddle
bags. And these ''old women quilts
are never made scant, either, like these
dclusions that grace the guest chamber,
that are narrow in one direction and
short n the other. so that you have to
coil up like Il snake to get under them.
Nor Is it one of these tormentors with
always a small hole torn in them, into
the which every time you turn you
thrust a toe and either dislOcate your
toe or tear the hole bigger. Nor is it
one of these terrors, a quilt so much
longer than it is wide that if you draw
it over You Iengthwise YOU feel as
though YOU were covered with dress
! braid or the bell cord, and if you twist
it around sideways you think you are
irving to cover yourself with whole
bolt OF muslin stretched clear out and
only three-quarters of yard wide.
All. no, Young Funnyman,' the quilt
that grandma makes is none of these.
Dear old grandma, 90 years old, reads
without glasses and eats pie with her
knife, never had days sickness or
wore a hustle in her life. and doesn't
believe in sewing machines or the re-
vised Bible Why, the quilt she makes
is as big and warm as her own blessed
old heart. You can tuck it under your
feet until it comes up to your shoulder
blades, and then tuck the othS end in
around your shoulders until it reaches
down to your feet again, and then you
can toss and kick and tumble and roll
around under it for week before you
can find your way out.
The patchwork quilt is generally, but
quite enormously, supposed to be a
family history. This is piece of Aunt
Susan's dress, and this is piece of
grandpa 5 vest, and this is a piece of
mas old dress, because with six girls in
the family there are no new dresses for
ma; these four squares came from the
girls new dresses, and there the family
records end The other 9S4 patches the
girls begged off the neighbors, stole
from other girls and obtained from the
dry goods clerks under the spccious
pretence of showing them to ma, to see
if she liked them, before ordering
dress pattern, the invariable experience
of the poor clerk being that ma didn't
like them BUrdette IN BrO0klun Eagle.