Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1903-04-25
InvasiOn of Beacon Hill:
From Letters Froma sefMads Merhsntt to His SON." " George Horace Lorfmer
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I Allowed that they were the ive.!est lit
tie lot of ieas that he had ever chased,
Decided to quit trying to nall 'em one
at a time, and planned out something
that he reckoned would round up the
whole bunch.
Hank sent out a thousand invitation
TO his grand opening. as he called IL;
left one at every house within a mile.
Had a brass band on the front steps
n fireworks on the roof. Ordered
forty kegs from the brewery and hired
a fancy mixer to sling together mild
snorts, as he called them, for the ladies.
They tell me that, when the band got
to going good on the steps and the fire.
works on the roof, even Beacon street
looked out the windows to see what was
doing. There must q v been ten thou
sand people in the street and not q soul
but Hank and his wife and the mixer
in the house. Some n yelled speech.
and then the whole crowd took II UP,
till Hank came out on the steps. He
shut off the band with one hand and
stopped the fireworks with the other.
Said that speech-making wasn't his
stronghold; that he'd been living on
snowballs In the Klondike so long that
his gas-pipe was frozen; but that this
welcome started the ice and he thought
about three fingers OF the plumbers IA
vorlte prescription would cut out the
tACSN NOulu TIC CTO"u JUN nun TIC
had invited q few friends in for the
evening. but there seemed to be some
Misunderstanding about the date, and
he hated to have the good stuff curdle
on his hands.
While this was going on the May
hover descendant was telephoning for
the police from one side n the
Signer's great-grandson from the other,
and just as the crowd yelled and broke
for the house two patrol wagons full Of
policemen got there. But they had to
turn In a riot call and bring out the re-
serves before they could break up
Hanks little Boston tea-party.
After all, Hank liz what he started
out to do with his party-rounded up
all his neighbours In a bunch, though not
exactly according to schedule. For
next morning there were so many de-
scendants and great-grandsons In the
police court 10 prefer charges that 1t
looked like q reunion of the Pilgrim
Fathers. The judge fined Hank on six
teen counts and bound him over to keep
the peace for a hundred years. That
he left for the west on a
special, because the limited didn't get
there quick enough. But before going
he tackled on the front door of his house
a sign which read:
"Neighbors paying their party calls
will please not heave rocks through
to attract attention. NOT In
and not going to be. Gone back to
Circle City for q little quiet.
Yours truly,
lar Smith.
IN. B.-Too swift for your uncle"
Hank dropped by my office for a min
ute on his way to Frisco. Said he liked
things lively, but there was altogether
to much rough-house on Beacon Hill
for him. Judged that as the crowd
which wasn't invited was so blamed
sociable, the one which was invited
would have stayed n week If 1t hadn't
slipped up on the date. That might be
the Boston idea, but he wanted a little
more refinement in his. Said he was a
pretty free spender, and would hold his
end up, but he hated a hog. OF course
/ told Hank that Boston wasn't all that
II was cracked up to be In the school
histories, and that Circle City wasn't
so tough as 1t read in the newspapers,
for there was no way OF making him
understand that he might have lived In
Boston for n hundred years without be-
ing invited to n strawberry sociable.
Because a fellow cuts ice on the Arctic
circle, 1t doesn't follow that he's going
to be worth beans on the Back Bay.