A dilemma, a divorce, and a spool of thread.

Yesterday didn't feel at all like Monday so therefore the blog didn't even cross my mind.  This is one of the hazards of being retired but a small price to pay.  What did we do on a day that felt more like Wednesday or Friday than Monday?  We went to the pool only to discover two school buses of kids there so we walked past the pool and  into the spa, where no children are allowed, sat in the hot tub and in the sauna, floated around in the lap pool, and took a nap.  Small price to pay.  :-)

I have been spending most of my time finding goodies in the Burlington, Vermont FREE PRESS - 1884.  Here are a few clippings I found yesterday that made me laugh:

The season is furnishing novelties in horrors.  It was found one day last week by the relatives of Horace Baldwin, who had died at Oak Creek, Wis., that the coffin provided was quite too short for the remains, and a nephew proceeded to sever the legs of the dead man, using a common saw.  While at this ghastly work he imagined that the corpse moved, whereupon he fainted.  At this juncture another stalwart relative finished the job and the funeral was proceeded with.  Soon after the occurrence the neighbors threatened to mob the nephew, though why the other guilty man should escape their criticism is a matter that can hardly be understood outside of a community where such occurrences as misfits in coffins and their remedies are tolerated.

The wife of a western undertaker applies for a divorce on the ground that her husband is a sleep walker and annoys her very much by getting up in the night and attempting to lay her out for burial.  We should think this might disturb her sleep a little.

 A certain pretentious shopper, after teasing the clerks of a dry goods store beyond the forbearance limit, pompously ordered a spool of thread to be sent to her house.  It was agreed that she should be made an example of and a warning to her kind.  She was surprised, and her neighbors were intensely interested, shortly after she arrived at home.  A common dray, drawn by four horses, proceeded slowly up to her door.  On the dray, with bare arms, were a number of stalwart laborers.  They were holding on vigorously to some object which she could not see.  It was a most puzzling affair.  The neighbors stared.  After a great deal of whip cracking and other impressive ceremonies the dray was backed against the curb.  There, reposing calmly, end up, was the identical spool of thread which she had “ordered.”  With the aid of a plank it was finally rolled, barrel fashion, safely to the sidewalk.  After a mortal struggle it was finally “up ended” on the purchaser’s doorstep.  The fact that the purchaser came out a minute later and kicked her own property into the gutter detracted nothing from the scene.