The age-herald., 1901-01-21
SKETCHES FROM
 EVERYDAY LIFE

ed apparel on the hearts of the charitable. q was not always thus. I have seen bet ter days" This expression caught him as listener. The sentence, '1 have seen bet ter days never fails to bag the game, and the beggar knew it. 'I was not always thus" he went on, land my downfall Is due entirely to my large nose and a large and highly sensitive olfactory nerve. In my youth I lived in the country, where I was the best smeller in the neighborhood. The pure country air laden with the fra grance of the woods was of con- stant joy to me- When I approached a flower, so keen was my sense of smell that l had moments of ecstasy in inhaling it's volatile oils. My childhood was long bissfu period, and my friends could do anything with me by giving me a flower. Santa Claus put nothing else in my stock ing but I was quite satisfied. When I was F years old my parents died and I came to Birmingham to earn a living. I could not stay at work however, for everything offended my sensitive nostrils. I could not go back to the country for the farm had been sold, and at last I became a beggar. I was respectable-looki then and fairly well dressed, and no one would give me anything. Why don't you work?' they would say. Alas! mister, I could not tell them the real reason-they would not have believed me. Meanwhile I floated about town suffering agony every moment on &C., count of the odors from Birminghams streets, and at last to drown the pain I took to drink. I found it my only relief. had to keep drunk all the time for when- ever I sobered up I suffered frightfuly. I am now the wreck you see me, and thank heaven have lost my sense of smell"
 You have not lost your other senses, too," said his listener, Ito expect me to believe such yarn but here's a dime for another drink
 'I will be glad when this mid winter sale of diaphanous night robes is over," said a crusty bachelor yesterday. ''It gives me a chill these cold January days and nights to walk along Second avenue and see these waxen ladies in the shop windows shivering in thin and open-worked night gown. I suppose there are twenty or thirty of them altogether, for it seems that the idea of unloading last summers stock of sleeping apparel has struck every drygoods man in town simultaneously. In fact, there is little else to be seen in the windows. Ordinarily you would expect the windows to contain furs and wraps at this season, but I sup pose these are carefully packed away until next July. We live in an age that is fond of discounting everything from commercial paper to time, and I may be doing the shop keepers an injustice in speaking of last summers stock of dream costumes. It may be next summers goods that they are dis playing. l know that the manufactures send drummers through the country in July with samples of next winters goods to solicit orders for the fall trade, on the receipt of which they proceed to manufslc- ture the necessary supply. They also take orders for summer goods in December, but there is some reason in this, it takes d little time to manufacture them. This is really discounting the seasons about six months, but why the retail merchantsA should adopt this custom and display sum- mer goods in January I am at a loss to understand. If this becomes general the manufacturers will have to discount fash ions a year in advance and take orders in January for goods to be delivered the fol- lowing January. The retail merchants may then take to discounting styles a year in advance, and so it may go and on until thesfashions for ten years to come may be designed, contracted for and manufactured. Meanwhile this six months discount is uncomfortable and will continue to shiver on Second avenue. If they would only dis count styles a year in advance everything as far as appearances are concerned would be all right
 Libel suits are getting very common lately" said lawyer at the court house ''J know of at least a half dozen which have been filed here within the last month. Formerly if you called a man a liar or thief you were liable to get shot or knock ed down, but now you are certain to have a suit for islander on your hands. I am rather inclined to think that the latter is the better remedy of the two, as it can be applied to both sexes You never could shoot or knock down woman for islander, and while man has pretty inventive mind in the way of devising bomb proofs and steel plates which the heaviest guns can not pierce, he has always been helpless and impractical against the shafts of a wom- ans tongue. The suit for islander is a rem- edy for the school for scandal, and I see where it has been adopted by a minister in Kansas who has filed suits against two women of his congregation whom he says slandered him by calling him high roller and ladies man. He wants $50OO from each defendant as damages, but if he fails to recover at all the defendants will be put to considerable trouble and expense merely in defending the suits. The moral of which is that before calling man high roller or a ladies' man wou should retain the best lawyer in town to defend your suit"