Meade County news. [volume] (Meade, Kan.) 1900-1918, 1901-12-19

| same state, you Will see that you ought
to give him something made with your
own fair hands, and you can't make an
easy chair. So slippers it had to be
for the Rev. NJ. Stanwix, especially
after his landlady had been sounded
on the subject and reported that the
poor man didn't have a slipper to his
name.
| Well, the result was, of course, that
the whole hundred and thirty-six mar
riageable. ladies at Appleburg went to
work on slippers; and few of the
flock who already had husbands also
began slippers, out of the goodness of
their hearts, probably, or maybe think
ing that they might be widows some
day and might as we'll have a pair to
their credit The slaughter of plush
and embroidery materials was some
thing cyclonic, and the local shoe
maker had to sit up nights pegging on
| soles. Even unfortunate little Jane
i Wilkinson went at a pair hammer and
tongs, though everybody said she
hadn't ghost of a show. In the first
place Jane was too young-her older
sister Katharine was conceded to have
]
was universally held that Jane had no
right to compete at all. Besides be-
| ing too young-she was really nineteen
! or twenty-she was also plain. She
might have certain girlish prettiness,
but. not the beauty which the wife of
so handsome shepherd. as the Rev.
Mr.. Stanwix should have. Further
more, Jane was in no other way adapt
| ed for the position-shs had been a
good deal of tomboy, and was yet, for
/ that matter; she was frivolous and
/ careless, and was always putting her
1 foot in it. THE, first time the pastor
/ had called at the Wilkinson house,
/ and while Katherine was entertaining
( him in the parlor in the most ap-
/ proved and circumspect manner, Jane
I had biundered in;> and inside of five
| minutes asked him why he didn't get
married-all the girls said he ought
| to-. Jane had explained to everybody
| that she meant it as a joke, but it HAD
generally been pronounced ill-timed
and in bad taste.
But poor Jane kept working away on
her slippers regardless of the talk
/
wouldn't fit, or that they would both
/ be for one foot, or that she would get
the heels sewed on the toe end. or
! something Jane finally put on the
| finishing touches and then packed them
| in pasteboard box and tied it with
pink ribbon.
Then she got her other Christmas
presents ready. She had lot of hand
kerchiefs for an aunt. and a shopping
bag for a married sister, and a little
knit shawl for her grandmother, and
a pair of skates for boy cousin, and
various other things for divers other
persons, including fine meerschaum
pipe and a pound of his favorite smok-
ing tobacco for her brother who was
at college, and who wouldn't be homo
till New Years. Each thing she care
fully put up in q box or bundle and
laid it away.
The day before Christmas was
ver-to-be-forgotten time for the
Rev. Mr. Stanwix. Slippers just came
down on him like an Egyptian plague.
Along about four o'clock Stanwix
got crowded out of his room-slippers
| piled nail way 10 the celllnS-dHu Hdu
to put chair out in the hall and sit
there with an atlas of the world in his
lap writing his Christmas sermon on
it. Mighty tough sermon it was, too,
and got tougher as the slippers contin-
ued to arrive. Fact is, he was getting
pretty mad; and every new pair sent
his temperature up five degrees. Con-
sequently, at ten o'clock he was just
boiling. OF course he couldn't swear,
but the way he tramped up and down
that hall and ground his teeth really
amounted to the same thing. The
arriving slippers now began to fall off.
For ten minutes nothing came, and he
was just starting down to ask the
landlady if she couldn't put cot in
the hall so he could go to bed. when