Thursday, July 19, 1917
Jack, the eleven year old dog of T. S. McNeel, entered into euthanasia as the result of the infirmities of old age. He has been a well known little black water spaniel about the county seat for a long time and attended church and court with great regularity.
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In the Wyoming Tribune, of Cheyenne, Wyoming, we see that Warren H. Yeager has taken over the management of the circulation department of the daily edition of the Tribune. This is one of the best and most widely circulated papers in that part of the west. Mr. Yeager is the son of Walter H. Yeager, who was raised at Greenbank, the eldest son of the late Henry A. Yeager. The Tribune speaks of young Yeager in the highest terms, and this paper, along with the rest of his kin in Pocahontas are gratified that he has secured so good a position.
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Paris D. Yeager is in town this week. He is going on crutches from an operation for an injury to his knee, caused by a fall from a train while making an arrest of a freight train robber last spring.
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Officers at Morgantown took into custody and placed in the county jail a young woman who, though less than 17 years of age, has been twice married, never divorced, and never a widow. Though America has been in the war only a short time, she is twice a war bride, and both husbands are said to be soldiers.
THORNY CREEK
Nice weather the past week with plenty of sunshine. Wheat is looking fine, better than it promised some weeks ago. Corn is a bit backward, but a fair stand. Livestock is looking well.
Several of the farmers are buying automobiles and joy riding for pass time.
Born to Mr. and Mrs. Geo. Fertig June 30, a son.
Born to Mr. and Mrs. Odie Gay, a daughter.
We are having a fine Sunday school at Mt. Zion with an enrollment of forty scholars.
Dogs have been among the sheep in this section. The dog law does not seem to do much good.
DUNMORE
Mrs. Robert Chariton and Mrs. Forrest Pritchard gave a lawn party at Raywood Tuesday night in honor of some of the visitors to that town. Refreshments were served and enjoyed by all present.
Jacob Lightner and D. M. Gardner were in our neighborhood looking for young stock.
Howard Buzzard bought from John R. Hevener the best 14 month old bull that we have seen this year any place. It pays to raise fine stock.
Mrs. John McLaughlin died at her home at Deer Creek Monday evening, aged 52 years. She leaves her husband, five children and many friends to mourn their loss.
B. B. Slaven spouted June McElwee’s house last week.
Jo Allen is painting Doc Sheets’ house and John Stretch is painting at C. E. Pritchard’s.
It pays to raise good horses. B. B. Campbell bought a horse from Brown Gum for $250 and a fine horse from R. C. Shrader for $300.
S. B. Nethkin priced two yearling calves in the west – $1,000 for the heifer and $1,700 for the bull.
POETRY
A gentleman called on us last week to talk over a shock that his artistic sense had received through the editor of the Charleston Gazette declaring that the poet’s poet was Shelley.
Our visitor, a businessman of Wheeling, is no small shucks of a poet himself, and he said that the poet’s poet was Edmund Spenser.
To tell the plain, unvarnished truth, we do not believe that he could have introduced a subject that we know less about, but we plunged into the merits of the case at once and made out like it was plain. The most we know about Shelley was Shelley’s case. Not the one that decided what a fee simple deed was, and which the Virginians abolished in 1849, and which will not stay dead, but the one that refused to let the poet have the care and custody of his children by the first wife, when that poor lady tired of the strenuous life with a poet, went home to her pa, and the judge decided that Shelley should not have the children because his writing showed him to be an atheist, a reputation that he has had a hard time living down.
As to Spenser our ideas were still more vague. We do not know when we went into a case with a more open mind. The first time that we remember when Edmund Spenser was forced on our consciousness, we reeled with the shock. Before the State went dry, poker was a favorite indoor sport, and the name for the combination of three tens was “June, July and Sally Spenser.” This reply was used in declaring the strength of the hand at the tense moment when the fate of the pot was decided. Another name was “Thirty miles of railroad.”
On this occasion, after the raising, the winner declared that he had “June, July and Sally Spenser, and old man Edmund Spenser, too.” That making the four tens, that never was, or never were, beat. The thought of Edmund Spenser sickened us for some time…
THE EMPTY JAIL
O, don’t you remember the old times, Fred Blue?
When the fellows got drunk as an owl;
When the red liquor flowed, the red eye prevailed,
And the drunkards would wake up and howl?
All that has been altered forever, Fred Blue
The people have cut out the booze;
The money that kept the old parties keyed up,
Buys groceries, dry-goods and shoes.
But what has delighted us fully, Fred Blue,
Is the thought of our empty Bastile;
Not a prisoner is there, that is bully, Fred Blue,
That’s a sign of the times that is real;
I wandered up to the cooler, Fred Blue,
To inquire for a friend of our youth;
The jailer was lonesome, the cells empty, Fred Blue,
And that is the plain simple truth.
They told me our friend felt so rotten, Fred Blue,
When they first took his whiskey away,
That he went back to work, and he’s gotten, Fred Blue,
So cured that he works every day.
It cost us big money to build the old jail,
And more to maintain it in style;
It has gone out of vogue, it may possibly fall,
It may be a school after while…
