Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1906-01-06
AMatrimonial Sand Bar


When the good wife of Deacon Sam
uel Bradshaw departed this life and
it's trials and tribulations it was Miss
Mary Jones, spinster, who came over
and took charge of things for three or
four days. She had known the deacon
and his wife for several years, and it
was reported that when the wife found
herself dying she said to Mary:
II am going to that better land. l
am glad on my own account that am
going, but sorry on Samuel's. He viii
be left all alone, and how he Will get
his shirts washed, his cooking done and
his bed made don't know You must
be kind to him, Mary, and year or
so after 1 am gone should he ask you
should he ask YOU
But she got no further. After the
funeral and as the weeks went by
some folks interpreted this to mean
that Miss Jones was to marry the dea-
con if he asked her and others that she
was only to oversee his house.
For ter months the deacon himself
gave no sign of how he personally in
terpreted it. Then it was noticed that
he began to walk home with Mary
from church and prayer meeting and
pay her other little attentions She
was living with brother who was
married, and by and by the deacon be-
came q frequent caller. When a full
year had gone by Uncle Joe Tracy, who
was known to be a pillar of goodness
as well as the biggest gossip in the
country, stopped the deacon on the vii
lage st@eet one day to say:
"Look a-here, Samuel, I'm a-hearin'
that you are sorteE shinin' up to Mary
JONES'"
swell, it's my business if l am" was
the blunt reply.
$50 it is, Samuel-so it is, but don't
you make no mistake on Mary Jones.
She lived with us for four years when
she was a gal, and I'm tellin' you she's
got a worse temper than a sore footed
cat"
ST hain't seen no signs of it,
''And mebbe you won't till you are
married, but it's there, just the same.
She's expectin' to marry you, and she's
as soft and smooth as 1asses, but
when you are married it will be a diff
ferent thing. She'll let her temper
loose and make your hair stand up
81 don't believe a word of it, and
don't thank We for your gossip" OBJ
served the deacon as he broke away.
One moonlight night a week after his
talk with Uncle Joe the deacon invited
the spinster out for a row on the river.
1t wasn't much of river nor much Of
boat, and the deacon wasn't much of
a hand at the oars, but it seemed the
proper thing to do under the roman
tic occasion. The whippoorwills were
singing the harvest moon blinking and
the weeping willows waving their
plumes in the soft night air as they set
out, and everything went well for ten
minutes. Then Miss Jones suddenly
discovered that the boat was leaking
and that she had already got one of her
feet wet. The deacon was sorry, but as
far as he knew all rowboats leaked,
and people who went out in them had
to make the best of it. He bent to his
oars to keep time with the whippoor-
wills, but he hadn't been rowing five
minutes when he firted one of them
out of the water and at the same time
fiirted about gallon of the briny over
Mary.
Deacon Bradshaw she called out
as she rose up.
81 am sorry, but couldn't help it,"
'But you ought to have helped it. 1t
was very clumsy in you. I'm all wet
through, and we must turn back this
minute. | don't believe you know any
thing about boat"
IF you hadn't been bobbing around
it wouldn't have happened"
81 wasn't bobbing around. 1 say 1
want to go right back home"
The deacon started to pull the boat
around and lost an oar. In trying to
recover that one he not only came
within an ace of upsetting the boat,
but lost the other.
''Why don't you jump out?" shouted
the spinster at him.
Because the water here is over my
head and l can't SWIM
"Then what are we going to do?
Deacon Bradshaw, you are nothing but
blundererr'
Nobody could have done any differ
ent. You were bobbing this way and
that, and
Il wasn't bobbing! You ought to be
ashamed of yourself to try to lay it on
to me. Amt you going to do any
thing?"
'The only thing we can do is to wait
for the boat to drive ashore"
'And how long will that be?"
mo telling. If you hadn't been talk
ing about the moonlight on the water 1
should never have asked you to come