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Show A Massachusetts shoe factory Las just completed a contract to make a pair of shoes for a negro in Arkansas. The Trilby-covers are fifteen inches long and as.wlde as the middl of the road. If they don't fit,, the darkey is respectfully "advised to try the Chinese Chi-nese habit.' A . "coon" ought not to have to squeeze his feet much to get them in shoes of . those dimensions. There is an old and honored saw that a man' with big feet has a good understanding. Wfeen wfe-were a boy we went to school with a "kid" whose feet had spread during his . early infancy. in-fancy. His mother stood him on his pedal extremities .before he was fully out of the nebulous and waxy state, and his feet flattened. They not only spread as a babe, but they continued to elongate and broaden in that period of life when he was supposed to have known how to cross a honey-bee field without trampling all the honey-bees to death. ' As he grew to manhood, he quit crossing the path of the mad honeybee, honey-bee, but the sterner years brought him even less of comfort. His feet con- a Michigan man.whtf is rich went crazy the other day and started in to eat his money. Many of us would soon starve to death on this diet. Dying; some men are saddened because they cannot take their money with them; others pass to the golden shore happy in the thought that for once in their experience it makes no difference dif-ference whether they have money or not. The realization promises much and one. would almost wish to die Just to experience it. So far as we can recall, and we can gaze down a considerable avenue of the past for a your.g man, we have never been anywhere, day or night, wash days or Sundays, when we didn't need money to secure the needs to which man is heir. There have been brief and transitory times when friends have itold us our money wasn't good, but this is a fleeting deception and generally gen-erally lasts no longer than the second sec-ond "treat" around. Money is a , clamoring, hammering, serious business. busi-ness. We all want money. No mat-:ter mat-:ter how much we have, we want more money. We are like the hen that never sees a bug cross her path, but she must chase it, though her crop be full to bursting. "We need the money," mon-ey," has become almost a national byword. by-word. It is no joke, either, for at the pace Americans are living, there are few who don't need it. Desires grow with wealth and the mad crush at the money box-office has assumed alarming proportions. ''For wealth, without contentment, climbs a hill. To fell those tempests which fly over ditches." Even though a man has no fasti- tinued to grow and every time he went downtown six boys and a shying mule would step on him and fracture his corns.' He couldn't buy shoes big enough and when he went barefooted his feet were the sensation of the hour. One lucky day, however, he fell in love at a distance and after worshiping his inamorata as the tiny floweret looks upward to the glowing sun, he got the woman in a corner, planted his feet firmly in front of her and popped the question! She tried to break and run, but she could not climb over the broad expanse of feet, and at last, thoroughly exhausted, exhaust-ed, capitulated, providing he would promise always" to keep his nails bluntly manicured and take the family fam-ily darning out when the washing got too heavy for one woman and a hired girl. A man with as big feet as ha had will promise anything when a woman is kind to him, and he took a solemn oath to not only do this, but to stunt his feet from further spreading if possible. That was years ago. They have lived happily "ever afterwards." and once during an awful flood, when the waters came up about the house, this sciiool friend of ours shouldered his wife and their big footed brood and carried them all safely to dry , land, walking gracefully upon the surface sur-face of the water as a boat skims the tide. Contrary to all expectations dious desires, he strives rackingly to get rich. There is so much excitement excite-ment and satisfaction in accruing and then, too, he can, like Carnegie, give it all away again. Philanthropists Philanthro-pists who have amassed great fortunes for-tunes in the struggle, remind us of that famous general, Bill Jackson: "EiM Jackson had an army of 60.000 men. lie marched them up to the top of the' hill Then marched them down again!" And yet, we feel better toward the man who marches down again than the money grabber who camps on the top of the-hill. There is little good in such a general, for it is the essence es-sence of truth that: "There are, while human miseries. A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth. Without one fool or flatterer at your trd. Without one hour of sickness or disgust." dis-gust." Yes, we all need money. If we do not need it for those we love, we need it for those we should love the human family. There are pains and aches and sorrows that money can allay, there are . hearts that are breaking and souls that might be saved with money. If the love of it is the root of all evil, the possession of it, when rightly used, is the golden grail that opens the way to peace on . earth and comfort unadorned. Some Iowa editors are busily engaged en-gaged in a discussion of open work hosiery, feminine gender The consideration con-sideration is entirely uncalled for and foreign to the upbuilding of the commonwealth. com-monwealth. It is a subject, too, that they- are presumed to know little about, hence cannot write of intelligently. intelli-gently. The bachelor editors of the Hawkeye state, be it said with regret, seem to be the most interested, their editorials exceeding in length those of the benedicts who may have -had some trifline exnpripncA nirm fhta , the woman has not sued for a divorce, nor does she seem discontented, except ex-cept at times when her husband, grown absent-minded, leaves his shoes in the middle of the floor, and she gets up in the night to stop the mad gambols of the colic in the baby's interior. On these occasions she is prone to fall into the yawning receptacles recep-tacles with more or less aggravation" of temper, but as the husband is a light sleeper and usually brings the ladder in an hour or two that she may clamber out, she is fairly wea content. It will be seen by this little tale that a man may be seriously handicapped in life by big feet but still, with a good understanding, may come out as the owner of a happy home and two pairs of shoes, hand made. As a rule, however, the ordinary man is satisfied with the expanse of his own feet and is glad they are no broader or longer or thicker, because every square inch of area is a possible stamping ground for more corns. ? This trouble in the family business is joy wrecking. Just at present there is something akin to a man on a raft in our happy home. When there are skeletons in the closet, flat-irons flat-irons in the air and heart's blood all over the foreign rug In the conservatory, conserva-tory, the most natural thing for a man to do is to go outside of his own domicile for sympathy. In fact, if he can't be loved at home and agreed with, be is going out into the wicked world to look for love and the soothing sooth-ing comfort of a woman's lily-white hand. That is why we are taking you into pur confidence. Now, our wife owns a horse. He is, 'we must admit, a handsome brute, with a white face and eyes that appeal to you for more sugar lumps, but he is a horse, nevertheless, and he shies at automobiles, automo-biles, jumps at the fire wagon, cavorts at the elevated and breaks line. In their distracting considera- j tions they are entirely neglecting the "Iowa idea," and a possible candidate for the Presidency. All this is to be deplored. As a son of Iowa, we respectfully, re-spectfully, but yehemently, expostulate expostu-late at such carrying on. There is danger in thus meddling with, the perquisites per-quisites of woman. As a whole, woman is all right. Even Samuel Johnson was fond of the company of women; he liked their beauty, their delicacy and also their silence. Others have expressed themselves, but none of the great men has gone on record as to open work hosiery! What the noted men of yesterday had not the courage to do, the Iowa man of to-day had better not attempt. Byron 6ays, speaking of women: "What a whirlwind in her head And what a whirlpool full of depth and danger Is all the rest about her." This "all the rest" includes open work hosiery and the goblins will get some of those Iowa editors, "If they lon't watch out." !o;-ep to rcl! on t.;o eandy beach at every opportunity. Add to this the fact that he eats about twice as much money every month as an auto, and you have one side of our case. The other side, however, is much more important. For some reason or other our wife has allowed a great and massive affection to grow in her heart for this "hoss." To such an extreme has this love gone, that she thinks several times as much of tho equine as she does of us. That is the other half of our case. Because of this we are advocating a sale of the horse and a purchase of an automobile, auto-mobile, on the grounds that she can't very well love -a. bucking devil-wagon. A woman is more or less of a clinging vine, and she 'insists on clinging to this four-legged lover of hers, despite the fact that we l:.vish on her all the kindness of oyr,. exceedingly kind nature. What' would you do in such an emergency, and do you blame us for taking the public into our confidence? confi-dence? What make of automobile are you most favorable to? |