The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1913-09-09
ON TIE SPUR
or THE MOMENT
The Diary of a Bonehead.
81 ROY K. MOULTON.

While the guardian angel of our house,
hold was taking a vacation on high
olympus and leaving us to our own re-
sources one day, my wife began making
canoe pillows After she had made eigh-
teen canoe pillows of various patterns, it
canoe.
l have never had any particular respect
Tor any man who held dynamite cracker
IN his teeth or who went out in a canoe
and an ambition to own one of the BIRCH
bark contraptions which can dance the
range on a perfectly quiet body of water
lows all made, my wife insisted on the
canoe and / went to one of our leading
canoeists and bought one. I picked out
docile looking canoe one that looked as
though it could be driven with perfect
safety by women and children and would
eat out of the hand. 1t was one of the
gentleSt looking canoes I had ever seen
but a canoe is like a mule. One must
never go on appearance. 1 once knew a
mule with the pleasantest face 1 had
ever seen on a mule but it could kick a
hired man through the side of a barn
quicker than an Alabama congressman
can vote against pension bill.
That canoe developed more artistic
temperament to the square inch when 1
got out into the water than any of Oscar
Hammersteins prima donnaS ever had in
her whole frame
That canoe actually smiled at me and
almost rubbed against and purred
while I showing it into the water but
once upon the bosom OF the placid lake
with me astride of it's wishbone with a
paddle in my hand. it did more tricks
than a monkey can do with a cocoanut.
had padded seven strokes, toward the
lighthouse when the canoe took the bit in
her teeth and turned around and made
back for the shore. When we arrived at
the shore, from which we had only recent
ly started 1 got on the beach and turned
the canoe around, kindly but firmly and
started to paddle again, in the direction
of the lighthouse. / had just taken the
STR 20 ~
ed which I will never be able to explain.
Without a sign of warning, the canoe
turned bottom up. with underneath
Then began a ch-Hackenschnnfdt bout
for the supremacy of the sea. was on
top half the time and the canoe was on
top the other half. First / got half
Nelson on the canoe and then a hammer
lock and finally I tried toe hold but
couldn't keep that canoe under me more
than a half second at time.
I tried to think of all the wrestling
tricks / had learned in the high school
gymnasium twenty years before, but the
canoe knew more tricks than I did and
better ones. I tried to grab it around the
neck and strange it. I got my knee in
its chest and tried to crush its ribs The
three minutes. ] coaxed and coaxed
and I threatened but the canoe would
not be bribed. cajoled or intimidated. 1t
threw three times every time / threw
it once and meantime we were drifting
out far past the life lines.
At last after the canoe had pinned me
down on my back for what seemed like
fifteen minutes, q schoolboy came along
in a rowboat and pricd it off from my
almost Hfeless form and took me ashore.
That was yesterday Today the life in
sllrance company cancelled my policy. To-
night trusty henchman is going to seek
out that canoe and s1r $40 in cash, reduce
it to ashes The pillows will go in the
church box for the heather OF NADIA
gascar-
The wooden faced man loaned me my
trousers to come home in. or at least so
thev tell me. and I have got to send them
to him today. The next time my wife
goes to the country, | am going with her