Thursday, January 14, 1926
Six degrees below zero sometime Tuesday night. Zero at 7 o’clock Wednesday morning.
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The children of Seebert Wilfong, at August, have whopping cough. Also, two children of Denton Wilfong. Other cases have been reported in the same neighborhood.
THE ANT
Continued…
The ant yanks his property this way and that, shoves it ahead of him in a moment, turns tail and lugs it after him another moment. Gets madder and madder, then presently hoists it into the air and goes tearing away in an entirely new direction; comes to a weed; it never occurs to him to go around it; no, he must climb it; and he does climb it, dragging his worthless property to the top; which is as bright a thing to do as it would be for me to carry a sack of flour from Heidelberg to Paris by way of Strasburg Steeple. When he gets up there, he finds that that is not the place; he takes a cursory glance at the scenery and either climbs down again or tumbles down, and starts off once more – as usual, in a new direction.
At the end of half an hour, he fetches up within six inches of the place he started from and lays his burden down; meantime he has been over all the ground for two yards around and climbed all the weeds and pebbles he came across. Now he wipes the sweat from his brow, strokes his limbs, and then marches aimlessly off in as violent a hurry as ever. He traverses a good deal of zigzag country, and by and by stumbles on his same booty again. He does not remember to have ever seen it before; he looks around to see which way is not the way home, grabs his bundle and starts; he goes through the same adventures he had before; finally stops to rest, and a friend comes along. Evidently the friend remarks that a last year’s grasshopper leg is a very noble acquisition and inquires where he got it.
Evidently the proprietor does not remember exactly where he did get it, but thinks he got it “around here somewhere.” Evidently the friend contracts to help him freight it home. Then, with a judgment peculiar antic (pun not intended), they take hold of opposite ends of that grasshopper leg and begin to tug with all their might in opposite directions. Present-ly they take a rest and confer together. They decided that something is wrong, they can’t make out what. Then they go at it again, just as before. Same result. Mutual discriminations follow. Evidently each accuses the other of being an obstructionist. They arm up, and the dispute ends in a fight. They lock themselves together and chew each other’s jaws for a while; then they roll and tumble on the ground till one loses a horn or a leg and has to haul off for repairs. They make up and go to work again in the same old insane way, but the crippled ant is at a disadvantage; tug as he may, the other one drags off the booty and him at the end of it. Instead of giving up, he hangs on, and gets his shins bruised against every obstruction that comes in the way.
By and by, when that grasshopper leg has been dragged all over the same old ground once more, it is finally dumped at about the spot where it originally lay. The two perspiring ants inspect it thoughtfully and decide that dried grasshopper legs are a poor sort of property after all, and then each go off in a different direction to see if he can’t find an old nail or something else that is heavy enough to afford entertainment and at the same time valueless enough to make an ant want to own it.
DIED
Mrs. Nannie Crouch Beard, 79, died at her home at Beard January 10, 1926. Graveside service and burial at Oak Grove Cemetery. Mrs. Beard was the widow of the late Lieutenant Henry Moffett Beard, who died nearly forty years ago. She was a member of a prominent family of Randolph County. She was an exceptional woman, and the world is the better for her having lived in it.
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Louis Bauer, 61, died in the Montgomery Hospital January 11. He was buried at Mt. View Cemetery. He came to Pocahontas from Pa. over 20 years ago with the Campbell Lumber Company. For the past few years, he has worked at Raywood.
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In the passing over of W. J. Dilley, a good man has gone to his reward. Born November 5, 1847, having passed his 79th birthday. The funeral service was conducted from the home at Dilley’s Mill with interment on a little knoll near his late residence.
The deceased was a son of the late Andrew Dilley. November 24, 1868, he married Miss Carrie H. Stalnaker, of Elkwater. …
In 1870, Mr. Dilley professed religion at the Mt. Zion camp meeting and throughout these years he lived a faithful and spotless Christian life. He was ever ready to aid the needy ones.
At his age, he knew more people over on the other shore than he did here. We do not sorrow as those without hope.
