Page:Love and Learn (1924).pdf/261

 each, with the stern promise that if they ever came up before him again on a charge of singing, he'd send 'em to the penitentiary, where with those voices they belonged!

Then there was Ike Mason, the village blacksmith, who rowed an oversize dory ten miles out into the ocean and back on a bet. This feat of endurance, skill and lunacy took Isaac twenty-four hours and when he reached shore on the return trip it was found that the 100-pound anchor was overboard and dragging all the way. Also Hans Schmidt, the German shoemaxer, whose loyalty was questioned during the war. Thereupon Hans sat down and personally wrote a song dedicated to the local draftees and entitled, "Ve Are Caming py der Millions!" It cost Hans $250 to get this horrible ballad published and he was nearly lynched when it was discovered that the tune was criminally close to "Deutschland über Alles!"

Likewise Abner Young, so miserly he wouldn't give his daughter a middle initial. Abner built a catboat in his cellar one winter and had to break the craft up to get it out. Then let me present "Shiftless," the town loafer, who was leading Judge Bass's horse across an open plank bridge over the lake when the fiery steed reared, slipped out of the neck halter and fell overboard. Shiftless, annoyed at the animal's capers, flung the halter in the bathing fluid after it and continued blithely on