Miscellany: Farm

In 1911 one Samuel Meeks—a man of 45, looking much older, with vague eyes half-closed in a sunburned, drooping face—rose from his chair and walked uncertainly out of a courthouse in Indiana. He did not know quite where to go, but anyway he could not go back now—not to Logansport. Alice Meeks, his wedded wife, had just divorced him. She complained that she found him a burden to her; she had kept him for a long time. Now he could go. She needed a man to work her farm. . . . The judge agreed with her.

Samuel Meeks stood in the sun-light in front of the courthouse steps. Alice was right—he married her to be kept, but. . . you got to like a person. Buckwheat cakes, with the brown bacon beside them; nights when the windows rattled so you could not sleep, thinking how good it was to be warm. Sadness flooded him. He felt an immense, searching pity for himself, homeless, a wanderer.

“Samuel Meeks!”

He spun round. Alice was standing on the steps with her lawyer. Her face was stern, but in her voice he detected—could it be?—a kindlier feeling. She was making him an offer. Without shame, filled only with gratitude, he accepted.

Last week he completed his 15th year of service as hired man on her 300-acre farm.

Sword

One Ivan Manghikian, self-styled “American shoemaker” arrived at Paris recently from Moscow with a testimonial reading as follows: “General Antremick is proud to attest that Executioner Manghikian, attached to the Russian Armies, has to my knowledge rendered justice 364 times.”

At Paris Ivan Manghikian married. One night last week he fell a-brooding. At last he unpacked his heavy executioner’s sword, severed his wife’s neck with one deft blow while she slept. Arrested,Ex-Executioner Manghikian said: “There are 365 days in the year, but I had cut off only 364 heads. Now at last the number is complete.”

“Jucks”

In Cresco, Iowa, careful readers of the local newspaper lately shuddered with apprehension upon reading the following advertisement:

“Kindly Frends:

“Which I head 50 gal wine juice in cellar on Sunday night was stolen away. Which give notice to all town and other people in country in one of the jucks was poisen was put on side and was stolen too.

“Yours truly (Signed)

W. Jestrabb.