The Ketchikan miner., 1907-04-27
LOCAL CuRIOS

-Self-made .individuals-old maids. -CheerfulneSs Is better elixir of life than chemistry can ever brew.
 Many men marry because they ean-most women because they don't know any better.
 Not every knocker succeeds in riyeting wide spread D .55el
 no matter how vigorous he plies his hammer.
 -Curio dosen't relish tearing the the pith. so to speak. out of an oft told and popular nursery tale-one which has been put in print too-but a recent reference to the story of Blue Beard. whose supposed pastime consisted in reducing the partners of his joys and sorrows to the consistency of sausage meat, reminds him that the story. as given out and generally believed, contains number of very serious errors. Curio knew the gentleman with the azure beard quite well. when they both lived in Michi- gan. on the boundary line between that state and Indiana. Prior to com ing into possession of large wealth. through legacy. Mir Beard had followed the somewhat sanguine call ing of butcher. retiring from which he built himself pretentious mansion some distance out of town. and strove hard to hanish from his mind all recollection of his former calling. but was hindered therefrom by the fact that his successors in the business he had abandoned persisted in charg- ing him twenty cents a pound for surloin and sixteen for round. bone gristle and all. and the knowledge that il didn't cost them a cent over eight and a half made him mad clear through. So he undertook to beat their little graft by buying and killing his own meat. in little room which he fitted up at the extreme end of the hall on the ground floor of his large residence. Being rather profane man, the servants who had frequently heard him at work and 'cussing blue streak in the room. named it the blue closet. He was. withal, a proud man, and naturally desired to have what he was doing kept quiet. for fear his neighbors would call him an old skin-fint. or some other disagreeable name. and invent wild stories of how they had seen him removing the cutiele from the cheerful and acrobatic flea in order 10 enrich himself from the hide and tallow. Knowing how prone women are about telling every thing they know. and then some. he kept the thing secret between himself and the hired man. ard told his wife that he didn't want her to go poking her nose around the blue closet at all. but to keep ridigly away from it and attend 10 her own knitting. Mrs. Beard thought at first, that it was some secret society arrangement he didn't want her 10 see, and at a meeting of the mite society held at Mrs. Deacon DooSerberry's house, told the women that her husband had something strange and wonderful locked up in the blue closet at the end of the lower hall: and would give her second best dress. which was new at the time the deacon's first wife died. for just one good square peep inside. One of the women spoke up and boldly said she didn't think that a husband had any business to have anything hid away in the house he was afraid to let his wife see. and more along that line. When the meeting adiourned whole ''passell'' of the ladies went home with Mrs. Beard, and reached her house just in time to see her uitra-marine husband starting for town in quest of gallon of old rye with which to refresh the droopiug spirit of his harvest hands. including himself. He had, Of course. changed his every day garments for his ''store- clothes, and as luck would have it had forgotten to transfer the cen tents of his pockets. The women found his old jack knife, half a plug of navy tobacco, the keys to the corn crib. smoke house. granary, and one to the fatal blue closet-the one which had proved fatal to many beef and porcine 'critter.' They said they wouldn't anymore think of looking into that closet than they