Year: 1875

1t happened out on South bill, nine thou
sand miles from Maple street. The man said
ii we located it anywhere near Maple street
he'd cut our lungs out, and although we
dearly love the truth, we love our life more,
and have therefore violated the truth at least
seventy-fve times in locating this item, in
order to save our life, which is dear to COM
munity that we love to serve. Well, the
mans wife had taken up the carpet in the
bathroom the day before, and put all the
crooked tacks in saucer, and put it on a
chair. 1t is marvellous thing why women
will always save tacks, that come out OF the
carpet, although it is a matter of record that
out of the coutless millions of tacks thus laid
by, not one was ever used again save in the
soles of the bare masculine feet. They, the
tacks, not the feet, are slowed away in
saucers up on high shelves, in dark closets,
and in ali sorts OF Out-of-the-way places. And
on these dusty perches they remain until the
cOrroding hand of time, and dust and srider
webs, and dead flies, and flakes of whitewash,
al nd old bits of rosin, aud chunks of sealing
wa x, and old steel pens, and similar accumu-
lati, ,ns, have filled the saucer to overfowing,
when it is taken down and thro wn away by
the woman, who petulantly wonders who
under t be sun put all that trash in the saucer
and stuck it up there. And nine times out
of ten she charges the crime on her husband.



girl And als7ays, before the saucer of crooked
tacks is slowed away on the shelf, it is stuck
around for three or four days on chairs an in
corners of the room, spiing out occasional
tacks on the carpet OF every bedroom in the
house which fill the masculine soles with
agony, and darken the air of the bedroom
with inartistic but fi,rcible profanity. Moth
ing is so painful as a crooked tack in the mid
die of ones foot. A broken heart doesn't
hold half so much an .yuish, and boil is a
blessing in comparison.


This man who lives so far from Maple
street, had splendid bath, and when he had
rubbed his skin into glow with a crash
towel, as rough as a pigs back, be gathered
his socks, and backing up to the only chair
in the room, sat down to put them on.


Every tack in that saucer saw him coming
down.


Every last tack smiled in anticipation of
the denouement, and stood on its head and
reached for him.


Every last solitary individual and collective
tack fetched him, got him and held to him.


He dropped his socks and rose from that
chair with an abruptness that knocked his
head against the ceiling. de came down and
gyaltzed wildly round and round the room
sBrieking and yelling, gyrating madly with
his arms, while his eyes stuck out so far they
hung down. He howled until the neghbors
besieged the house, yet he wouldn't let any
of them in. At last his yels died away, but
hey could hear his breath hiss between his
set teeth, while at short intervals would come
a yell, supplemented by the remark, There's
slnother out" In about three quarters OF an
l,our the yells ceased entirely, the window
was opened and shower of tacks fell over
the assembled and wondering multitude,
while large saucer skinned across the street
and smashed against the side of house op-
poste.


Nobody knows what ails the man, for he
will not tell auy one thing about it. But
tax es his meals off the mantel-piece, all
the same, and when he sits be sits dowu on
his hip for all the world as though he wore
a "tied back But he doesn't. It's a
tack ed back that ails him.