HOOPING A BARREL.
Putting a hoop on the family flour barrel i 3 an operation that will hardly bear an encore. The woman generally attempts it before the man comes home to dinner. She sets the hoop up on the end of the staves, takes a deliberate aim with the rolling-pin, and then shutting both eyes, brings the pin down with all the force of one arm, while the other instinctively shields her face. She then takes a dive lor the camphor and unbleached muslin, and when the man comes home she is sitting back on the stove, thinking of St. Stephen and the other martyrs, while a burnt dinner and the camphor are struggling heroically for the mastery. He says if she had kept her temper she wouldn't have got hurt. And he visits the barrel himself, and puts the hoop on very carefully, and adjusts it so nicely to the top of every stave that only a few smart knocks apparently are needed to bring it down all right; then he laughs to himself to think what a fuss his wife kicked up for a simple matter that only needed a little patience to adjust itself; and then he gets the hammer; and fetches the hoop a sharp rap on one side, and the other side flies up and catches him on the bridge of the nose, filling his soul with warmth and his eyes with tears, and the nest instant that barrel is flying across the room, accompanied by the hammer, and another candidate for camphor and rag is enrolled in the great army that is unceasingly marching towards the grave. Danbury News.
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Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1147, 3 February 1874, Page 4
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276HOOPING A BARREL. Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1147, 3 February 1874, Page 4
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