Clippings.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 101, 26 January 1901, Page 1

Clippings.

THEY DIDN'T HITCH,

A wiry-looking old woman with keen black eyes, and a mouth an& chin strongly indicative of a mind of her own, sat directly in front of me on a train running between Chicago and Ealranazoo. Although apparently seventy or more years of age the old lady seemed alert and in no need of the assistance most old ladies are pleased to have when they are travelling alone. Nor did she have the timidity of the average old lady in regard to making the acquaintance of strangers, for presently she turned around to mo and said: " Nice day for travellin 1 , isn't it r "Yes, it is; very nice." "No dust, and jus-fc about cool enough. Goin' fer ?'" " To Chicago." "I'm going beyond there about ninety miles. I been back here ia the Ealamazoo stayin' awhile witii my eon Samyell an' his wife. I went there to stay a year, but Sumyell's wife and me didn't hitch, an' I ain't been thero but three months. I kin stand anything in this world better than I kin stand extravagance an' waste, an' I don't care who knows that I had to leave Samyoll's because of Susan's s&•> travagance. vVhy, do you know, that woman thought nothin' of turowin' two an' evoa three whole bilod pertaters into the henyard, an' when I told her how ea6y it would bo to work them pertaters-into a hash she ju3t laughed an' said that with their farm yieldin' two thousand bushels of pertaters a year and sellin' for forty cents a bushel she reckoned she could give the chickens a few. Then I've seen hor throw rags into the rag bag that would ov made the best kind of scrub an' Wash clothes, an' she thought no thin' of givin' the hens two an' even three stale biskits at a time, an' the way soap went in that house nearly drove me wild."

She stopped a 3 if to note the effect of thia on me, and, seeming to find encouragement in my face, she added:

" You see, my husband died throa years ago, an' my children thm thought I'd batter break up a*n' live with them, an' I been fool enough to do it. I went first to live with my daughter Hetty an' her man. The plan was for me to stay a year with each of the children, but two months was all I could stand of my son-in-law's old pipe ah 1 his vievg about infant baptism. I dunno which riled me most. I'm a bred-in-the-bone Baptist, an* I hate tei* backer wuss nor pizen, an' th;-t man's pipe was always? goin'; an* when he had his last baby sprinkled right before my face I left. Don't blame ine none, do you ?"

" Of course it wa3 wiser to leave than to stay whore there wag lack of

harmony." "That's what I thought. If folks can't hitch they'd better go sep'rate ways, speshly if they happen to bo mothers-in-laws and sons-in-law- WpII, I left Hetty's an' went out into loway to atny with my son Henry, but me an'.his wife couldn't hitch on the subject of Jbriugjng up children an' keepin' the Sabbath, If you'll b'ieeve me she let them children play on Sunday, an' no matter how sassy oe disobedient they might be the never switched 'em. Then she went an' paid five dollars for a new bat when she hadn.t bad ber one but two summers, an' that, too, when I offered to take the ribbons* off it an' and do 'em up for bar an* make the old hat good as new. Well, we couldn't hitch About » good many things,.so I left*

Wouldn't you dons the same if you'd been in my shoes ?" „ I think I would." " Well, I did, an' then I went back to Ohio to live with my daughter Mattie, an' I didn't hitch with her or with her husband, for they'd both gone over this Christian Soienoe, an' when I came down with gastrio fever an' they went to powwowin' over me an' tellin' me there was no such thing as gastric fever I up an' said an' done things that let 'em know that there was such a thing as a body getfcin' mighty mad, an' we didn't speak to each other for a week before I left. I b'Jeeve I could hitch with an out- an'-out heathen better than with a Christian Sciencer. How do you feel about it ?" . " Oh, I have never given the subject any thought." ! " Weil, I wouldn't if I wa3 you. After I left Mattie I went to live with my son-in-law out in Seattle, an' we didn't hitch from the miunit I found that he would rather go to a hoss race than to church, an' when I come across a pack o cards in the house I told my son-in-law p'int blank that ha could take his choice between burning them cards an' havin' me leave. Well, he tuk his choice, an' I left. I ain't one to meddle with other people's affairs, an' I think I'm as reasonable as the next person, but right's right an' wrong's wrong. I went from Seattie to son Samyell's, an' as I say, his wife an' me didn't hitch, an' here I be on the way out to Illinoy to stay with inj daughter Lucindy, an' if we don't hitch, an' I reckon we won't, if she's given to clubs and society the way I hear she is, I intend goin' to housokeepin' by myself. Don't you think I'd be better off in a home o* my own ?■" - - I I said, " yes, indeed, "so forcibly that the old lady looked at me sharply with a slight dilating of the nostrils and a somewhat ominous flashing of her black eyes. Then thinking, perhaps, that she could nog " hitch" with me, she turned around in her seat and began munching an apple.