The Post. (Buffalo, Okla. Terr.), Vol. 3, No. 22, Ed. 1 Friday, November 8, 1907 Page: 1 of 14
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THE
POST.
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VOL. III. BUFFALO, HARPER CO. 0. T (SEE DATE INSIDE. NO 22.
=1
WHY JACQUOIN
LAUGHED
By JOHN F. MacDONALD
(Copyright, by Joseph B. Bowies.;
The bourgeois of Purls, like every
bourgeois, has his Sunday tie and hi
Sunday coat; his wife has her Sunday
bonnet; bis daughters have each a
iress of turquoise blue and heliotrope;
when they have donned their finery
he bourgeois and bourgeoise are "en-
limanches ” Hence follows this ad-
vantage: No one, seeing them, can be
dubious as to the day; the heliotrope
>uts an end to all perplexity—instant-
y you can safely wager, you may
wear, even if you have been an in-
valid for months or a traveler foi
years, even if you have lost all count
if time, that it is Sunday.
But in the village of Sannois, the
few hundred inhabitants are “endi-
nanehes” three times a week, on
Wednesdays and Saturdays as well as
Sundays. The Wednesday and Satur-
3ay finery is the same as the Sunday
inery, not a trinket has been helo
)ver; and if the church bells do not
umraon the villagers to High Mass on
hose common days, other bells from
he cobbled square call them merrily
0 the market.
Moreover, the aristocracy of Sannois
(a petite bourgeoisie that has retired
and raised six-roomed villas after 3t
years’ economies) has also dressed,
s Still, one incongruity is noticeable:
(Each person carries a basket; not a
fancy thing, not the little pannier intc
which the heroine of a melodram?.
lacks fresn eggs and honeysuckle; but
a stout basket, a veritable market bas-
ket. All foods are stored in it, enougl
food to last from Saturday until
Wednesday.
Jj As Sannois holds its bi-weekly “con-
versazione”—for this it is—the basket
becomes laden, heavy. The villagers
at last dispersing, cheerfully bear oil
:their, burdens; but.the aristocrats seek
an idler, a ne’er-do-well (Sannois has
many ne’er-do-wells) to carry the bas-
kets to the six-roomed villas in ex-
change for sous. A dozen idlers pre-
sent themselves and are engaged
■lost of them are scrubby, clumsy;'but
the readiest, the most agile of then:
all, is Jacquon—"le Follet,” as they
call him, as he likes to be called;
sbock-headed, with tow-colored hair
(light, restless eyes, a loose mouth, £
;l|an face; the lank figure of a boy
‘of 17, the brain of a child of seven
Ibiit in reality—so the villagers a dim
—30 years of age or more. He i;
jaileif as Jacquon, and he laughs. H(
lugbs again as he takes the basket
Dd as he raises it, and when he rests
1 on his shoulders. He laughs stu-
ffily. and his mouth twitches whei
| laughs.
No one feared Jacquon le FoIIei
Ilien we encountered him on the mar-
3t place some months ago.
*'He is insane,” Sannois admitted
rat never harms anyone. He only
uglis—laughs continually.”
And it was true—Jacquon laughed
nlinually; but his laughter was sc
miliar that the villagers did not
en shudder when it rang out sud-
nly, eerily, at night.
“Jacquon is returning from the sta-
in. ’ was all they said; for Jacquor
9,s hired sometimes by the Sannoit
istocrats to light them with his lan
m to the station; or to light there
Mne. as the way was rough and dark
i ney i ruble a jucquou, uuu > ei u<
was an uncanny spectacle in the moon
light, with his lantern and his laugh
Often he wandered abroad all night;
and the garde champetre describee
how he, on more than one occasion
had come suddenly upon Jacquon
laughing at the windmill—“but laugh
ing, moil cher!”—in spite of the mud
and the mist. The “garde champetre’
also trusted Jacquon; trusted him sc
implicitly that he allowed him to carry
a knife—a long, sharp knife—witt
which he dug out mushrooms am
fashioned sticks.
Sannois, in fact, was kind to Jao
quon; but his parents rarely humorec
him. They, the hardest workers in th«
village, the healthiest and the strong
est, farmed, grew vines; it crosser
them to see Jacquon incompetent aiu
half-witted. Constantly and altogeth-
er they toiled, father, mother and twe
stalwart sons. And they scarcelj
spoke to Jacquon; while Jacquon nevei
spoke to them. He ate his meals ii
silence, whereas they reviewed the la
bors of the day; and they never asked
Where is Jacquon? Never inquired
What have you been doing, Jacquon
Never gave him his beloved title
Jacquon le Follet. Consequently Jac
quon shunned the farm; and, out o
revenge, at no time brought horn
mushrooms for the table, but present
ed them instead to the garde cham
petre for his, and to the villagers fo
theirs.
The ne’er-do-wells (who hated Jac
quon’s parents because, sober folk
they spent none of their earnings a-
the wine seller’s zinc counter), loved t<
make Jacquon tipsy; then to chaff hin
about his father. When the ne’er-do
wells themselves were tipsy, thei-
jokes grew coarser, then vile. In
variably Jacquon s mother, falsely re
ported of loose conduct in her youth
became the subject of cruel jests. Ant
Jacquon would laugh and faugh.
But one wintry afternoor* when th(
roads were frozen, Jacquon slipped ant
fell, striking his head against a stone
A neighbor found him sitting by the
wayside, dazed, with blood trieklins
down from the cut above his face. Ht
took him by the arm, led him home;
the mother opened the door to them
And when she saw Jacquon blood-
stained and bewildered, with a timid
doubt of ber in his bright eyes, some-
thing of a buried affection awoke in
her. She was kind. She pressed the
neighbor to enter. She put her arm
round Jacquon; she led him to her
room; she bathed the cut, made him
lie down on her own bed; then, kneel-
ing beside him, she stroked his shock
of hair and murmured:
“My poor Jacquon. My poor boy,
Jacquon. My poor, poor, Jacquon!”
And Jacquon, amazed, felt a tear fall
upon his brow. And Jacquon did not
laugh.
Nor did he laugh when, after stealth-
ily escaping from the house whilst his
mother was preparing the evening
meal, he entered the wineshop a few
hours later. /
The ne’er-do-wells, greeting him as
usual, gave him beer; and Jacquon
drank several glasses, but he did not
clap his hands nor nod his head, nor
laugh when the jesting at his family’s
expense began.
More beer was called for, but it had
no exhilarating effect on Jacquon.
At last he was told that “he was
proud to-night; that this was wrong.
He had no right {o be proud, no rea-
son. Did Jacquon know who his
mother was? What she was?”
At that moment Jacquon rose stu-
pidly and, standing upright, appeared
as though he were listening to some-
thing. His mouth twitched; perhaps
the words: "My poor Jacauon. my poor
. • 4uuui i i-t uitBu ItJ mm.
He put His hand to his forehead;
perhaps he was seeking the spot whero
his mother's tears had fallen.
Bpt suddenly, “whilst he was then
musing, the tire kindled.”
With eyes aflame and a furious
shout, Jacquon sprang upon the man
who hq,d insulted his mother, and,
drawing out his knife, before the bth-
ratai eueea. i nt* enrageu oeast
charged him, and bit him severely on
the thighs. Its teeth also peneteratej
his hands and left shoulder. Fynw
tired and killed the lion. Marriott
was able to go home, but was ordered
to hospital, where he expired 24 hours
later.
“At least eight lions have appeared
in the districts of Moore’s concession
and Simmonia recently,” says South
Africa. “A farmer named Clayton, on
visiting his stable one morning,
wherein the previous night he had
tied up two mules, found nothing but
bones. Two of these lions, it is since
reported, have been killed in the
neighborhood of the Yellow Jack
mine.”
LAND WEALTH OF NEW YORK.
“SPRANG UPON THE MAN WHO HALi
INSULTED HIS MOTHER.”
ers could prevent him, stabbed him tc
the heart.
Then, for the first time that night,
Jacquon laughed — laughed, and
laughed and laughed.
And now, on market clays, the
ne’er-do-wells alone remain to carry
home the baskets of the Sannois aris-
tocracy; now, on dark nights, no one
sees the flash of Jacquon le Follet’?
lantern or hears his laugh ring out
suddenly, eerily, on the road between
the village and the station. Nor dees
the garde champetre come unexpected-
ly upon .Jacquon when he makes his
midnight rounds. Gone is Jacquon le
Follet, Monsieur Jacquon le Follet.
Gone, suddenly, for life. Gone into the
state establishment described by the
most polite of peoples as the House of
Health.
WHERE BIG LIONS PROWL
South Africa Is a Country Where
Hugh Beasts Are Numerous
and Dangerous.
“On the Broken Hill road,” says the
Bulawayo Chronicle of an incident in
that part of South Africa, “on a re-
cent night a lion entered a hut where-
in were sleeping two white men.
Pushing open the reed door, the ani-
mal made for the nearer of the two
sleepers, and, gripping him by the
shoulder with its teeth, lifted him
from his bed. The cries of the man
brought several natives to the scene,
and these pluckily attacked the beast,
bringing it to bay. A shotgun hap-
pened, fortunately, to be near by, and
this the captive succeeded in reaching,
instantly shooting the lion. The mar,
whose name is Thornton, was very
badly mauled, but he is making fa-
vorable progress.”
In Rhodesia, too, the lions are trou-
blesome. An Englishman named Mar-
riott was playing tennis with a man
named Fynn when news was brought
in that a lion was attacking the
mules. Both rushed for their guns
and went in pursuit of the beasts,
which they sighted within a short dis-
tance of their home. Marriott fired
and wounded a lion twice, but without
Greater in Aggregate Than That of
Many a Nation.
Few people realize the tremendous
land wealth of New York city to-day,
says a writer in Moody’s Magazine.
The total land valuations of the city
by its recent census reached the
enormous figure of $5,800,000,000; this
Is an increase of $400,000,000 in 1907
over 1906, and 1906, in turn, showed
an increase of $480,000,000 over 1905.
Within a decade the increase has
been considerably over 100 per cent.
New York real estate is to-day val-
ued at more than one-twentieth of the
entire wealth of the United States. It
is greater than the entire wealth of
many states and even of many for-
eign countries. It is 25 per cent, mqre
than the entire wealth of Holland,
Spain, Sweden and Norway; 50 per
cent, more than Switzerland, Den-
mark or Portugal; it is one-third that
of Italy, one-fourth that of Austria-
Hungary, one-fifth that of Russia, one-
seventh that of Germany, one-eighth
that of France, one-tenth that of
great Britain and Ireland. It is in-
deed an imperial city in an empir*
state.
FAMOUS CANALS OF CHINA.
Holland’s Waterways Outdone by the
Celestial Empire.
Holland’s canals are famous, but
the canal system of China is far more
marvelous and its value to the enor-
mous empire is simply Incalculable.
No country in the world has more
navigable rivers and canals than
China. The net-work of waterways,
natural and artificial, so covers the
empire that almost as many people
live upon the water as on the land.
The Great canal, that wonder of the
world, runs north and south from Can-
ton to the extremity of the empire,
and by this route the wares of all na-
tions are carried to Peking, a distance
of 825 miles. This canal is 50 feet
wide; it passes through, or near, 41
large cities; it has 75 large sluices to
keep up the water, and is spanned by
thousands of bridges.
Pontiac, Great Organizer.
Pontiac exemplified at once the best
and the worst traits of the American
Indian. As an organizer among a peo-
ple with whom organization is almost
impossible, and as a master of the
treacherous statecraft of his race, he
probably surpassed them all. As soon
as his death was known, the French
governor at St. Louis sent for his
body and buried it with full martial
honors near the fort. “For a mauso-
leum.” Parkman finely says, “a great
city has arisen above the forest hero;
and the race whom he hated with
such burning rancor, trample with un-
ceasing footsteps over his forgotten
grave.”—Outing Magazine.
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Forster, William. The Post. (Buffalo, Okla. Terr.), Vol. 3, No. 22, Ed. 1 Friday, November 8, 1907, newspaper, November 8, 1907; Buffalo, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc942231/m1/1/: accessed April 25, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.