The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1897-12-13

900 miles If the world had bin round,
we'd hev either gone up or gone down hill.
I felt in my bones jest how it would be,
and now it's come The idea O. that gal
comm here to talk SIGH stuff and nonsense
to folks as hev bin ketchin crabs and lob
sters fur the last hundred y 'ars. F"
Three or four others follered in the same
strain, and then the preacher got up and
purity nigh took the roof off the buildin by
declarin that the gal was right. He brung
in a globe to prove it, and he tinted out
sails on the ocean to back up the globe.
He run ag'in a mud bank, however. He
pinted and talked and talked and p'inted,
but nobody would believe him. Bimeby
he go ired and said he didn It keer whether
we believed or not and we passed a reso-
lushun that the gal shouldn't teach any
more SIGH stuff to our children if she want
ed to keep her job. Things went along all
right fur a week or so, and some OF the
children had got SO they could tell the pic
tur' O. a kangaroo from that O. church
steeple, when the skulemR' am broke loose
ag'in She told the children that the airth
moved around the sun, and before dark
Squan Greek was b lin over with excite
ment 1t was wuss than when we got the
news that P. T. Barnum's five legged colt
was dead. We called another indignashun
meetin that very night, and Tim Smith
got up and said:
AR this heresy or sedition OF what9
Ever since Columbus diskivered this North
Ameriky, with Moo Jersey and Squan
Greek inclooded, the sun hev bin moyin
from Squan Greek pint around to Seven
Feet inlet. Our grandfathers saw it, cur
fathers saw it. and if we hain's seen it
then we must be blind. She's moved ev-
cry day o. her life, and the airth hain't
had nuthin TO do with it, but along comes
O gal from Philadelphia that don't know
an oyster bed from jib topsail ana says
the sun has bin standin still all this time.
1 was purity nigh knocked out when she
deelar' d ag in the flatness O. the airth, but
this thing finishes me. I can't low my
son Jonas to tend that skule no more.
With SIGH teachin's as that he wouldn't
know huff to bait fishhook next y ar"
Tim Smith sot down amid the awfullest
sort O. applause, and then Solomon Tomp-
kins got up and said
1--WE ar told that this airth do move.
When has she noyeda Every man of US
here tonight was born in Squan Creek,
and did any O. US ever know this town to
move up to New York OF down to Barne-
gat? Has the wharf or the lighthouses
moved2 Amt eyerythin standin jest
whar it was so vars ago? As to the sun
standin still, if my ole woman should tell
me that should hev her locked up fur an
idiot She's bin movin ever since the
wheels O. time was set in moshun, and
she'll keep right on movin when Squan
Greek has bin forgotten. I've got a boy
named Thomas what is attendin that
skule. He's a good boy, an he'll find
clam under two feet O. mud. Ruther than
hev that boy split III sell out and move
away.
Solomon also got lots o. applause, and
then we sent fur the teacher to explain
matters. She showed up, and she was
powerful sassy about it. She stuck to it
that the sun stood still and the airth
moved, and she talked and talked to prove
it, and the preacher backed her up We
knowed we couldn't be mistooken about