Newspaper Page Text
One
Wonderful
Week
by
C. S. Forester
THE STORY
Harold Norman Atridpe, twen
ty-four, bank clerk, lives with
his great-aunt Matilda. When
the war came he entered a train
ing school for officers.
CHAPTER I—Continued
However it was, Harold had his ad¬
ditional year at school, and when on
the last day of the summer term of
3918 he came home early with the
news (it did not thrill him in the
least, for he had always been quite
certain about it) that he was now a
matriculated undergraduate of London
university he found her, as he quite
expected, clad in Her rusty black with
her little genteel apron, ironing his
shirts in the kitchen. She listened
attentively to his news, heard of the
distinctions he had achieved in ele¬
mentary mathematics, in English, in
French and in chemistry, and her poor
lined 'ace. which she had striven all
that year to keep set in all its old
hardness, softened beyond her con¬
trol. She made scarcely any com¬
ment, and Harold did not notice the
change in her expression. Of course
he did not. Miss Epping replaced the
flatirons, and turned out the gas with
meticulous care. With her face still
averted she made still more beautiful¬
ly regular the pile of ironed linen on
the table. But she could not keep
It up.
“Oh,” she said, and sat down sud¬
denly on the kitchen chair, very pale,
with her hand to her heart. She died
that day. Nothing very surprising,
perhaps, in the death of an old lady
of seventy who had worked hard all
her life, and the doctor whom Harold
fetched made no comment, neither on
the death certificate nor aloud to the
boy. And Harold, blinded by the mem¬
ories of the.fast twelve years, drew no
conclusions, not when he found her
bank account was only fifteen shillings,
nor when he found that there was a
bill of sale on every stick of furni¬
ture. Not even when lie saw his aunt's
face smooth and placid and kinder
than ever he had seen it in life. He
never guessed—never. That Is what
the grim old lady would have pre¬
ferred.
So at sixteen Harold was an orphan
without a relative in the world, lie
took matters calmly. The doctor’s
wife fought on his behalf a fierce bat¬
tle with the money-lending furniture
dealer (substantial furniture could
command an enormous price in 1918),
and with the spoils Miss Epping was
buried. With five pounds in his pocket
and a tin trunk ; (tlie original owner
of which may be guessed) full of beau¬
tifully mended socks and linen and
his best suit, Harold went out into the
world, unthrilled, unfearing, unknow¬
ing.
There was a job waiting for him;
the school sent him to the best on its
list and it grasped him at once. Har¬
old became a junior clerk in a city
shipping office at a salary very nearly
double the income upon which for the
last year Miss Epping had striven to
maintain the two of them.
He was without friends as well as
without relatives, but, truth to tell, he
did not notice it. The doctor’s wife,
who was interested and childless, would
have made much of him, but he
shrugged her off. He was satiated
with childless women of over middle
age. He knew nothing about any other
kind of woman. Ail he wanted wfts a
well-ordered life and a soul he could
Call his own. With a parrot and a
dowdy black skirt Harold would have
filled the conventional idea of an old
inaid to the very letter.
At the shipping office Harold was a
distinct success. No one in the office,
not even the worried little old men
who. had spent a.lifetime there, was
neater than he at figures, and his tidi¬
ness and punctuality and sober com¬
mon sense stood out in keen contrast
with the slap-dash methods of the
young women with whom, perforce,
the office was mainly staffed. tor
fourteen months Harold remained
there, first through the last three
months of the war, and then through
the hectic optimism and frantic hard
work of the great boom of 1919. His
weekly salary was regular, his home
life (if it deserved such a name) was
regular and his habits also were very
regular.
But the slump followed the Boom,
and panic-.prevailed over London.
Company after company went into
~ lirfUi'kKion: in a Tew short weeks the
sbareaijjfchicli v hbefr unobtainable
had
^ AaaK arcmiuin Hfrhe swooping down
r *im?trih tfu end they werp literally
given away in a frantic fear'of ’calls
and liabilities. Harold’s firm came
down with the others, toppling in ten
days from solidity to bankruptcy. A
curiously sobered staff left on Friday
evening with the knowledge that they
were unemployed, and Harold was
among them.
For a few days he was not very
frightened. He had never had any
difficulty before in obtaining employ¬
ment. A visit to the school secretary
was a facer, though. Jobs? There
weren't any jobs in this moment of
slump. Better men than Harold were
sweeping crossings or praying for an
appointment to the Police. And Har¬
old was so young—not yet eighteen—
and he had had only a year’s expe¬
rience. Yet he must keep in touch
with the secretary, and perhaps some¬
thing would come along soon.
It was a long time before anything
came along.
For ten awful months Harold knew
what it was to be down and out. He
learned how to pawn His clothes; he
left his comfortable room and acquired
first-hand knowledge of the dreadful
lodgings on t he south hank of the
river. He learned about hunger and
filth and vermin, lie learned what It
meant to go hungry and cold for
weeks, while food and warmth were,
to he had for the asking—in the form
of tiie proceeds of pawning the respect¬
able suit and shirt to which he clung
with desperation in the hope of hear¬
ing of a job. He learned to pick ver¬
min from the seams of his clothes;
and lie would never forget the utterly
hopeless feeling of his own worthless¬
ness which hacked into his soul ns he
climbed under the cold eye of an in¬
spector into tiie filthy bath which had
already been used by twenty paupers
before him at tiie casual- ward.
Harold had ten months of this be¬
fore tiie National County bank in¬
formed the school secretary that they
were reopening their staff recruiting,
and asked for some likely beginners to
he sent along. The secretary told
Harold of this when Harold paid his'
weekly call, and next day Harold was
at the head office Waiting for his in¬
terview. lie had spent most of the
past twenty-four hours washing his
shirt and sponging and brushing his
coat, and fixing in Ids mind tiie des¬
perate necessity for sitting through¬
out the Interview in such a position as
to keep tiie soles of Ids shoes out of
sight. Ten minutes after the Inter¬
view began Harold was leaving the
National County bank, a probationary
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For Ten Awful Months Harold
Knew What It Was to be Down
and Out.
employee. Tiie manager had read the
secretary’s letter; had noted tiie hon¬
ors at matriculation; had read the
letter which the managing director of
the defunct shipping firm had written
for him at the firm’s demise; perhaps
also the manager had noted Harold's
hollow cheeks and battered pallor;
and (whatever Harold hoped) he could
hardly have avoided noticing the shiny
trousers knees and the frayed, collar.
However it was, he had abruptly
ceased probing into tiie matter of how
Harold had spent the last ten months,
and told him he was engaged, in¬
cidentally he flung open the pearly
gates and ushered Harold (so it
seemed to Harold’s swimming brain)
straight into Heaven with a tornado
of trumpet blasts by tiie simple an¬
nouncement that his salary would he
three pounds a week.
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
Indian*’ Poisoned Arrow*
The bureau of ethnology says that
the arrow poison used by the Indians
was of vegetal and animal origin.
Among the vegetal poisons there were
the sap of the yucca angustifolia, a
preparation of aconite, and a plant
called tnago, the milk of which was
poison.-Some tribes, such as the Sho
sliOni and Bannock Indians, secured
a deer and caused it to he bitten by a
rattlesnake. The deer was then killed
antUaiiWed to putrefy. Then the ar¬
rows were dipped Into the putrid mat¬
ter,
Phra*e Long in Use
' The phrase "bite the dust” appears
to a casual reader to he strictly Amer¬
ican, it being familiar to those who
have read in the old dime novels of
how “another redskin hit the dust.”
But it is in fact rooted in antiquity.
Among the earliest recorded uses of
expression are in Homer's “Illiad,”
two, and Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,”
book nine. The words translated be¬
came popular the world over.—Kansas
City Times.
Accident Fatalitle*
The accidental fatality rate per
thousand is highest in this coutry.
comes next, then Australia
Switzerland, then New Zealand
Scotland, England and Wales, Ger¬
Italy, Sweden, Norway ant)
CLEVELAND COURIER.
POSSIBLE SPREAD
OF YELLOW FEVER
Experts Foresee Danger
From Airplanes.
A “new aviation peril.” said to be
sensational in its possibilities, came
up “for discussion at the annual con¬
ference of the British Medical asso¬
ciation. Sir Malcolm Watson ealled
attention to the likelihood, almost
the certainty, of “aircraft carrying
yellow fever from West to East Af¬
rica.” If that happened, he claimed,
there was nothing to prevent it from
spreading to Asia, from completely
paralyzing itself. Other physicians
at the conference undertook to show
how airplanes might be the means of
“propagating plague, cholera, small¬
pox and typhus.” And Sir George
Buchanan stated that, as there was
a possibility of aircraft introducing
new types of influenza and cerebro¬
spinal meningitis into England, the
subject was engaging the attention
of both the air ministry and tiie
ministry of health. For himself lie
regarded it as “an important matter
requiring measures in the yellow
fever zones to prevent the spread of
the disease.”
Almost simultaneously with these
deliverances, though without any
sort of connection with them, came
an article in the London Times set¬
ting forth facts regarding the trans¬
mission of cholera over the world
after its appearance at Calcutta in
1S17, ami asserting that by 1S31 it
had become certain that no country
was secure against tiie inroads of
the disease. Appearing successively
at Bombay and Madras, it reached
Ceylon in 1S1!) and spread thence and
from India over eastern Asia and the
islands of the Indian ocean. By 182:t
Syria was reached and Europe threat¬
ened. It disappeared from Turkey,
but began to push north and west
again after ravaging Persia and the
lands soutti of the Caucasus. In Hus
si a more than 250,000 human beings
died as (he result, in Cairo and Alex¬
andria 30,000 were swept away in 2-1
days. And the alarm in Great Brit¬
ain “increased enormously” in June,
1S31, when Londoners received the
news that tiie cholera had reached
Riga, where “700 or 800 sail of Eng¬
lish vessels, loaded chiefly with hemp
and flax," were waiting to come to
England. It was then, after an or¬
der had been issued for the quaran¬
tining of all ships from the Baltie,
that “the plague established itself
in England for the first time.”
Yet all through that period, begin¬
ning with 1817, there were none of
our modern airplanes in existence,
and no possibility of the cholera be¬
ing carried by them. Are they in
any way specially fitted for the con¬
veyance of contagious diseases, for
stimulating to special precautions,
and for thus alarming tiie world?
Must it not he assumed that there
is a like risk in the to-and-fro trips
of our ocean steamers and sailing
vessels that have been so long con¬
necting the continents, the latter for
many centuries past? Introduced
disease, whether imported by air¬
plane or steamer, is dangerous in any
case. The call is to prevent such im¬
portation so far as that can lie done,
but especially to continue the fight
against disease in till the countries
which are affected or serve as its
breeding ground, so that there will
be as little as possible of it to export.
And this is tiie task at which Ihe
scientists and the physicians are
working in their campaign against
that enemy of man, the poison mi¬
crobe.
Sole Voter Leaves Precinct
Tiie city of New York will save
$-100 next primary election day, four
men will be out of work and Manhat¬
tan will he minus one election dis¬
trict, because George Schrader lias
moved. Mr. Schrader for two years
has enjoyed the distinction of being
the only voter in tiie Thirty-eighth
election district.
You can’t talk t bachelor out of
his time-tried though often eccen¬
tric ways of enjoying hir self.
Ho you choose your friends or do
they choose you?
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THINKER HAS GOOD
WORD FOR THORNS
Serve to Keep the Individual
Within Bounds.
“The rose oufturists have accom¬
plished so much in the development
of blooms that I have often wondered
why they have not been able to do
away with the thorns,” said Mr. Cato
Ninetails. “Perhaps"’it is impossible,
or perhaps, in some instances, they
have succeeded, but the roses of the
garden stili have thorns; and vicious
enough they seem to the amateur,
who. when he prunes his bushes or
his climbers, should be sheathed in
plate armor; even tiie experts do nor
escape unseatjied, I understand. 1
have sometimes had the feeling when
I was applying an antiseptic solution
ti* my lacerated arms and hands that
roses shouldn’t be allowed at large,
hut that their cultivation should he
wholly within guarded boundaries
where they could do no harm. And
yet, a rose in bloom is—a rose in
bloom! And as long as such blooms
are produced it seems highly prob¬
able that we’ll endure the thorns.
“In horticulture rose thorns arc
menacing; in literature they are
monitory. Many of the classicists, for
many a century, have recorded the
discovery—which has been made by so
many other people—that there is no
rose without a thorn; and then, with
their usual ignoring of facts, the
metaphorists talk of rose-strewn
paths as the ways of delight, and beds
of roses as couches of luxurious com¬
fort. Fellow amateur, who lias done
some of his own rose pruning, would
you like to walk along a rose-strewn
path or lie on a hed of roses? Y’nu
needn’t answer. I’ll answer for you.
Certainly not!
“Let us, ilien, bear all this in mind
as we contemplate the superior bless¬
ings of our more fortunate fellows.
Those whose ways lead along rose
strewn paths must often find them
rather painful to the feet, and those
who lie on beds of roses probably
have a good deal of ^difficulty in ad¬
justing their posture so that tender
parts of their bodies will not be pain¬
fully pierced. All of this, of course,
is merely another form of a most
comforting philosophy—a compre¬
hension that there are flaws in the
advantages that are enjoyed by the
'most enviable.
” 'Buck,' I said, referring the sub¬
ject, as I do most puzzling questions,
to a man who has ideas, ‘don’t you
think that, with all the advance hor¬
ticulture has made, the experts ought
to he aide to develop a rose without
a thorn?’
“ ’Perhaps,’ he responded ; ‘but why
should they?’
“ ‘Why, because thorns hurt peo¬
ple. They are bad things that serve
no good purpose.’
“ ‘As usual, you are wrong,’ he de¬
clared. ’Thorns serve a very good
purpose. They keep people within
bounds. In fact, they ought to be on
a good many other things than roses.
Accelerators, for instance.’” — In¬
dianapolis News.
Jack Mail Route
The carrying of the mails has prog¬
ressed so rapidly in late years that
I lie airplane now speeds across tiie
country with mail in only a fraction
of tiie time required by trains of *
few years ago, yet in spite of all the
progress there is one mail route
which goes on unchanged in the 38
years of its operation. In Edwards,
Colo., W. 11. Wellington, a veteran
of the mail service, lias the contract
tor transporting the mail from the
post office to the railroad station,
and thrice daily for 30 years he has
driven the mail hack and forth in a
buck-board wagon drawn by a jack
mule. His is believed to be the only
jack-powered conveyance in the fed¬
eral mail service.
In Agreement
“How is your hoy Josh getting
along with his employer?”
“Well,” replied Farmer Corntossel,
"they have come to an agreement at
last. Josh said lie was goin' to quit
an’ tiie boss, he said so, too.”
You can he tolerant of the fool¬
ish, but how about being tolerant
of the intolerant?
wASneclnl 1
Brand
‘ Mall Dr
dor‘nro
16.10
.561
.234
5
4.75
34.85