The sea coast echo. [volume] (Bay Saint Louis, Miss.) 1892-current, 1892-12-24
BEATEN AT HIS OWN GAME.
How Skinfint Farmer Was Outgenerai
ed by the Parsons Little Widow.

How Skinfint Farmer Was Outgenerai
ed by the Parsons Little Widow.
"Talk about pure grit" said a WON.
ian who was lunching the other day at
the Colonial club, ~ knew woman
.once who was full of it."
: 'Tel us about her," exclaimed the
other two women of the luncheon par
ty. "Who was she?"
"Why, she was my mother" answer.
ed the first speaker. ''She was the lit
tlest little woman ever saw, but there
was courage and fight enough in her to
stock a regiment. / don't mean that
she was a nagging creature, making
trouble for everybody. She was the
sweetest, kindest woman in the world.
1t was only when somebody tried to inn
pose on her or some of US girls that she
came out as fighter. Let me tell you
a story about her, and you'll see what
mean. We were living in Iowa when
my father, minister, by the way, died
and left mother to manage farm and
care for big family OF girls. The grain
was high in the field, and it had to be
cut at once Mother entered into nego-
tiations with a neighbor. and was just
about to close trade with him when
she discovered that he was trying to
overreach-insistingo on terms that were
exhorbitant and absurd. Mother told
him that she'd get somebody else to cut
the grain, and that made him SO angry
that he was quite rude in his speech.
But mother shut the door in his face
and left him to have his sputter out all
by himself.
'That night, about o'clock, mother
was awakened by noise out in the
yard. She slipped out of bed and peered
through the window. There was that
same farmer engaged in taking down
the bars of the fence that surrounded
the field of grain that mother wouldn't
let him cut. The bars down, the man
went out into the road for minute,
and the next minute he came back driv-
ing yoke OF oxen, which he turned
into the field.n
What did your mother say to the
MANI" asked a Times reporter.
"She didn't say any thing"
'Didn't she tell him to take the cat
tie right out of the feld?"N.
NO indeed; that was not her way OF
doing things. What she did first was
to dress herself. Then she stole quietly
down stairs and out into the yard.
Then she went to the barn and got
an oxgoad. Then she bounded to the
grain field and drove the oxen out
of it.''
"And then she went back to bed,
suppose" said one of the women. ''Or
did she watch the rest of the night?''
Neither. She drove those oxen
mile and half down the road till she
came to great field of corn which be-
longed to that awful man. Then she
took down the bars and wished the
oxen good morning. On the way back
she stopped long enough to open the
gate Of pasture in which was quite a
herd OF steers and to set some Of them
moving toward the corn field, and they
found that field, can assure you.
Next morning mother told us what she
had done, and we just Rugged and
kissed her till she cried" -
"And what came of ft?" =
"Oh, yes-that's the best part Of the
story. The neighbors somehow found
out what had happened and they were
so pleased over it that they came and
cut mothers grain for nothing. But
just think of that ninety-fve pound
woman driving a yoke Of oxen a mile
and half in the middle of the night on
such an errand! Ialways feel proud Of
my little mother when recall this epi
sode in her life. IN. Y. Times,