The Wrangell sentinel., 1922-05-25


 You can take your cigars home and feed them to your COW. If you would give that beast enough to eat, she wouldn't be forever breaking into my back yard and eating the washing off the clothesline. The other day, spent several hours cleaning up lot of my old neckties. I went over them with gasoline and made them as good as new, and then hung them on the line to dry out. Your COW came over and ate every blamed one of them, for the ties were gone when I went out for them, and I could see her tracks along under the clothesline. If you want to make her feel comfort able, you ought to give her handful of bone collar buttons and a few stickpins. Those neckties must feel lonesome down in her old sheet iron stomach.
 T don't want any presents from my neighbors when I am celebrating a birthday or any other occasion. Last Christmas Bigelow came over and said he had just received some fine cigars from a friend of his who had a stokie ranch down in Cuba. Only kings and emperors ever had such smokes, he said, for the tobacco of which they were made was never put on the market, but supplied to few private customers among the crowned heads. I took the cigars and thanked Bigelow in all the languages at my command, and made up my mind that he was a pretty good fellow, after all.
 Tn the afternoon, I went down to the postoffice, smoking one of those royal cigars. It certainly was rich A few friends were standing with me in the lobby, and I began telling them of having received a present of some cigars of the sort reserved for the crowned heads. I felt pretty good over it, and the other fellows were enyious, for the best they had were the two-fers you get at the grocery store. Just when I was all swelled up, and enjoying myself like a hired man at the fair, that cgar went off. There was spiral spring about yard long compressed into it, and when the cigar burnt up a certain distance, it was released, and flew out with a whir. On this occasion it hit Absalom Jenks in the eye. He's a nasty sort of man, and he just nat urally landed one on my nose before he had time to reflect that I wasn't to blame.
 q don't think I ever felt as silly as I did, standing there with three feet of twisted wire dangling from my mouth, and my nose pushed out of alignment Those fellows I had been talking to seemed to think it was mighty funny, and the way they whooped around was disgusting. For three weeks after that, every man l met wanted to know if the crowned heads had sent me any more cigars, and I was arrested twice for disturb ing the peace.
 Something of that sort happens every time you fellows begin to take a fatherly interest in me. Fesseden came over one day and said that the great problem of the age was saving fuel. Most of our money goes up the chimney, he said. Fortunately, he was on friendly terms with a great eastern scientist who had invented a powder that could save fuel, and this scientist had sent him some, and he wanted to throw a handful in the fire, and the coal would burn twice as long, I threw some into the kitchen stove, and l haven't found all the pieces yet. One of the oven doors must have been blown so high it never came down. So I tell you, I don't want any present from you. I'll buy whatever I need"