Thursday, March 6, 1924
Why They Call it a Bughouse
The chief physician came up to an inmate in a private insane asylum, slapped him on the back, and said in comforting accents:
“Well, old man, you’re all right, I’ve just pronounced you cured of all the delusions which afflicted you. You can run along now and write word to your people that you’ll be back home in two weeks, good as new.
The patient departed gaily to write his letter. He had finished it and sealed it, but as he was licking the stamp, it slipped through his fingers to the floor, and fell on the back of a cockroach that was passing and stuck there. The patient hadn’t seen the cockroach – what he did see was the escaped postage stamp zig-zagging over to the baseboard and following a cracked track up the wall and along the ceiling overhead. In depressed silence he tore up the letter he had just written and dropped the pieces to the floor.
“Two weeks! Hell!!” he said. “I won’t ever get out of this place. I’m worse off than I was when they brought me here.”
TOWN COUNCIL
G. D. Lightner allowed until May 1st to complete brick work on his restaurant building.
An ordinance was made requiring all milk sold in Marlinton to come from tubercular tested cows only.
An ordinance regulating street traffic is conformance to the State road laws was made. Parking on Main street, from railroad to bridge, prohibited for more than 15 minutes at a time. Penalty from $1 to $10 fine.
Recorder instructed to charge off all uncollectable light and water bills.
Householders are reques-ted to place all garbage in cans or barrels in back alley where the town truck can get them.
A RED FOX
Some weeks ago the Carpenter family on Beaver Dam killed a peculiar fox. It had short hair, a dog’s head and tail, and padded feet. It was thought to be a cross between a collie dog and a fox, some were wild enough to wonder if it might not be a young coyote, which had wandered several hundred miles away from home. An experienced fur buyer refused to list the pelt as a fox and took it on consignment. A foot was brought to Dr. O. H. Kee, who sent it to The Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia. They pronounced it a red fox. Here is the letter:
“The foot that you have sent for identification is undoubtedly that of a red fox. We have specimens of the blue fox of Alaska in the molting condition in which the fur is very much such as you describe in this individual. Our taxidermist, moreover, informs me that he has seen captive foxes in our Zoological Garden which presented the same appearance, but he thinks they were diseased in some way or other, or that the longer hair fell out. He suggests, too, that long hair on the under part of the foot of this animal and the long claws would indicate that it might have been in captivity also. At any rate, it is a red fox.”
Very truly yours,
Witmer Stone
DIED
Moffett C. Smith died at the home of his brother W. F. Smith at Rainelle, February 11, from taking a dose of medicine which contained poison. He was complaining and asked his brother’s wife for the medicine and she gave it to him, not knowing that there was poison in it. He only lived a few hours after taking it. He leaves to mourn, his wife and two little boys, two sisters, a brother and one little daughter, Mildred, by a former marriage, and a host of relative and friends. He was a kind father, a tender loving husband, and will be missed by all who knew him.