Thursday, July 27, 1899
There are some mud holes in the road between Green Bank and Travelers Repose that when you drive through them, you can hear the chickens crow in China.
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For some time past, approach to the Huntersville cemetery was quite difficult and, in a measure, dangerous, owing to a deep side ditch. In a number of instances, the rough jostle at the crossing given the corpse has been painful to witness. Sherman Curry took it in hand, refusing offered compensation, to construct a stone culvert and covered it with slate, which has been done in a very substantial manner, and it will last a hundred years. Those interested in the cemetery owe to him and those that helped him their grateful thanks.
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The Charleston Gazette is a model Democratic newspaper. It breathes forth a conviction of the righteousness of Democratic principles with a fervor that makes the reader feel that the editor considers the party and all that appertains to it above reproach. He has the childlike confidence in the party that the little boy had in his mother when he said, “what mother does is right even if it ain’t right.”
A Democrat with whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning. We occasionally try to pick flaws, more to our own detriment than to the party’s.
We take exception to one or two things the editor says incidental to his position. Is Bryan the “duly accredited leader of the party?”
Have we such a thing in Democratic politics, except between the nominating convention and the election?
This is what we have been raving about. We want no Lord Roseberrys in this country. Heretofore, when our Presidential candidates have been defeated, and when our Presidents have served out their terms, they have gone back to their work like American gentlemen. Bryan has been eternally at it since 1896…
A GOOD DEFENSE
We hear of a good sort of West Virginia Lawyer whose maiden effort was to defend a man accused of stealing a hog. He had prepared an oration for the occasion, dipped judiciously in the Scripture and Shakespeare for quotations, and was prepared to “go the whole hog” in defending a man, and incidentally to make use of this opportunity to show what a jury lawyer he was. But, unfortunately, when he got on his feet to address the jury, his whole speech slipped from him and he sat down after delivering this speech to the jury:
“Does my client look like a man who would steal a hog? I reckon not! I reckon not!”
THE AUTOMOBILE
The time is not far distant when the horseless carriage will be as common as the bicycle is today, and what is worrying the linguist is the name. He sees that the public has changed the “magnetic telegraph” to “wire,” the “bicycle” to “bike,” the “telephone” to “phone,” and it is a foregone conclusion that “automobile” will be reduced to “bile.”
A LUCKY SHOT
A hunter was bemoaning the decrease in the quantity of game in Pocahontas County and told a tale of the good old time when there was plenty of game. He said he started hunting one day and after he got a short distance on his way, he fired off his gun which had been loaded for some time. He put in a very heavy change of powder and rammed the bullet down on top of it.
He started home for more bullets and a short distance away he saw a large buck on the other side of the river. He shot it and it fell in its tracks, and the bullet struck a limb on which five turkeys were resting, splitting it and the turkeys’ feet slipped through and they were caught. The bullet sped on and killed two pheasants and a squirrel. The gun kicked so hard that it knocked the hunter’s overcoat off, and it fell on a flock of partridges and smothered them. He swam the river and a dozen fish got caught in his clothes. When he swam back, he was heavily laden with game, and as he climbed out on the bank a button flew off his breeches and killed a rabbit in the bushes. He had so much game that he did not need any ammunition.