Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 December 1882 — A COMMONPLACE CHRISTMAS STORY. [ARTICLE]

A COMMONPLACE CHRISTMAS STORY.

BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE.

It was not a very cheerful apartment in which Wihfon McWhyrter opened his eyes Christmas morning. His real name was Wilson McWhyrter, but his business name was “Gubbs.” Nobody know why everybo !y called h'm * Gubbs, * but nobody also knew why he was originally called Wilson Mc- ' Whyrter neither, so that made it even. On this Cbristmis morning he was exactly almost 13 years old. I don’t remember just how almost, but it was almost; as the “Tourists” say, not too almost, but just almost enough. He was not rich, Wil-on wasn’t. He wore on this sharp, biting, Christmas morning the same clothes he bought, last June. He bought them at a rag warehouse when the warehouse man was not ingWilson was not a boy who was particular about settling his bills, and society accordingly put i.im in the cold and silent jug two or three times for this little eccentricity. If he had been older, and wiser, and richer, he might have gone through life, paying 30 centi ■Where be owed 100. and went on building more houses and buying new furniture, and been inspected and esteemed. But he was too > oor and didn’t know enough for that. So he did all his mercantile busin ss. in the old-fashioned way. and got very little credit for it, On one occasion he got ten days, but that was the first time, and it did .’t count. He re olved that it should never happen so And it never did. The next time it was twenty days, and he never afterward fell below that high standard. Wilson was born at an early period es his life, of poor but honest parents. They weren’t very honest, but they were most awfully poor, so that made a good average. Wilson didn’t remember much about them. His mother went - away with a pircus and never had time to come back, and his father raised the deserted boy on the bottle. Occasionally, as the child grew older, he raised him on the toe of his boot. Wilson never went to school but once, and then it was to the Reform School, and he ran away two days before his time was out. He never went to Sunday-school, and if he ever knew any good thing, he had forgotten it long ago. And if there was anything bad that he didn’t know, he was going to learn it before he went to bed if he had to sit up all night. A hopeful, a very .hopeful subject for' a Christmas gift, Wilson was. When he rolled out of his miserable bed Christmas morning, he didn’t look for anything in his stocking. In lac’, he didn’t look for his stocking, became he had none. Not a solitary stocking, no more than if he had worn peg legs. In fact the peg-leggedest man that ever stamped around the streets with a curb-, stone orchestra of the circu'ar pattern, never ignored stockings more completely than this thriftless boy. Nor did he look for his father. He had a father; one father. And that was just one more than he had stockings. Most men with two feet have at 1 a-t one more slocking than they hive fathers, but Wilson McWhyrter was an exception to this rule. He did not look for his father, because he know th it his father did not require to be looked after. He was too well looked after already, that was the trouble with him. He was in the work-house, which is so called because nobody stays there and goes there except people who cannot n d will no work. And Wilson McWhyrter’s father belonged to that church. He was a member in good standing and full fellowship. As he lift the wretched tenement which' was his home, there was nothing attr.ic ive about this boy. His face was ns freckled as his clothes were ragged, and his mouth was as much too large as his eyes were too small. The only expression that shone out of his eyes was cunning; the cunning of the wolf rather than the fox; cunning that was mingled with ferocity. He hated society and law, for society and law had never paid anv atte tion to him except to cuff him; to kick him ; to starve him into rags and ugliness and then avoid him for being ragged and ugly; to starve him into theft an I then loci him up in prison for stealing. At this very moment he Wanted something to eat. His supper he h id lifted, with more manual dexterity than moral rectitude, from an apple stall and lunch counter. His. breakfast was yet an unsolved problem. If you could have read the boy’s mind you would have seen him thinking: •I must nag a wipe.” A Christian man, of liberal education and broad culture, would steal a handkerchief. Wilson McWhyrter, being an ignorant, darkened child of poverty, “nag a wipe.” To get his hand in, as he went along, he stole two newspapers from doorsteps. hooked a tin pail that had been set out for the milkman, broke a window, kicked a dog, and slapped a boy and took his comforter from areund his neoh. Just about the same time, or if it wasn’t exactly the same time it was a time so nearly like it that you couldn’t have told one from the other, that Wilson McWhyrter left his wretched den, old Mr. Bartholomew left his beautiful go down to his office. It was dirjstmas day, but old Mr. Bartholomew didn’t care for that. Like Wilson McWhyrter, he wanted his breakfast, but his appetite was much larger than the lad’s. He wanted to eat a farm out in lowa. And he was going.down to his office to get his breakfast. He was going to lend an lowa farmer S9OO on a $3,000 farm, and charge him S4O for lending it |o him, and SBO a year for keeping it lent, and then at the end of five years he would take the farm and rent it to the farmer for all that could be raised on it. But he had a tender spot in his heart. It wasn’t large onou -h so di-figure his heart. It was about the size of the upper half of a semi colon; but such as it was he was proud of it. He was a widower, andjie ha I only one relative in the world, a sister, who married a poor man against hi i wishes, Mr. Bartholomew’s wishes, that is, aid'went away ye.-rs ago. M-. Bartholomew was. thinking of this sister as he walked Along. His face wore a troubled look,

and somehow his prospective breakfast of the lowa farm didn’t taste good to him. He tried to drive this sister out of his thoughts, but she would-come back. Fifteen years Bgo she married a man Mr. Bartholomew hated, because he was so poor he hadn’t anything to borrow a dollar on. Fifteen years ago, Mr. Bartholomew, rich, proud, selfish, bad clouded his only sistes’s wedding day with his haughty anger. He remembered her pleading face. Where was she now? She had a son, she had once written him, and she had named it for him. Her husband he had heard was dissipated, and it wasn’t likely they had prospered. He tried to drive these thoughts away, but they steadily haunted him. Poor Eleanor, he thought. Then he made up his mind that he would make this a merry Christmas for somebody. He would make the day bright and full of sunshine and happiness for the first poor wretch he met. He would, for a few bright hours at least, lift the burden of poverty off some burdened heart; he would let the sunlight of his wealth stream into some povertv-darkened life. Little did this hard, stern, wealthy man know of the tangled web that fate was weaving for him in the troubled channel of his vague, half-formed wishes. It isn’t often that fate does weave a web in a troubled channel, because a troubled channel isn’t just exactly the place to stand a loom in, but when she does, you wafit to stand from under. Unless you are web-footed. , Mr. Wilson W. Bartholomew did not hear the stealthy tread of Wilson MbWhvrtyr as the lad came sneaking along b. side him. He was too deeply engrossed in his project for devouring the lowa farm, for making somebody happy, and in thinking about his sister, tp notice anything else. Presently he paused in front of a store window to look at a chromo of a young lady in a bathing suit, whose stockings vrere-so short that she had to wear a lace collar to supply the deficit. While enjoying this beautiful fit of chromatic art, Mr. Bartholomew felt a tug oii his pocket, and, turning suddenly, caught Wilson McWhyrtor just taking out the broker’s watch to see what time it would be at that time next Christmas. It was the work of the same minute to fondle the frightened boy once or twice with his cane and call a polieman. While the officer was crossing the street, Mr. Bartholomew shook the boy until his ragged clothes nearly fell off him. When the policeman came, he collared the boy and shook out of him what little breath he had left. Then he shook him because he wouldn’t stand up straight and walk along. On their way to the magistrate’s office, Mr. Bartholomew stirred the boy up, from time to time, with his cane. Such people, he said, should never be allowed to walk on tlie streets. And then, as he looked at the boy’s pinched, hungry face, the thought of his sister came back to him somehow or other, and the old troubled look stole into his face. Then he would shake off the thought, and wonder where-he had seen that boy before. “Why did you try to steal this citizen’s watch?” asked the tender-hearted magistrate. “Because I was hungry,” said the culprit. “Oh, good land!” ejaculated the policeman, in overwhelmingly disgusted tones. “With the wheat crop in this country 40 per cent, larger than it was last year,” sneered the broker, in derisive incredulity. “As though you could eat a watch,” said the lender-hearted magistrate, and that settled it. “How old are you?” he went on. “Thirteen years,” said the boy. Mr^Brirtholomew started. Thirteen years? Somehow the troubled look came and went over the broker’s face like a passing cloud. Thirteen years ? Why he thought but just then he heard the voice of the tender-hearted mugi-trate once more. “What is your name? And don’t you lie about it or I’ll put you in a dark cell on bread and water for six months.” “Wilson McWhyrter,” s iid the prisoner. Mr. Bartholomew started to his feet. “Well, I am blowed,” he said, but he said no more. Again he heard the voice of the tender-hearted magistrate. “Thirty days, Wilson McWhyrter, and if you come up here again I’ll make it sixty and hard labor. Take him away. ” Mr. Bartholomew went down to his office and there he found a telegram awaiting him. He read it, and his worst fears were realized. His sister and her nine children and her convivial husband were coming to spend Christmas with him and stay four or five days, as they had done regularly every year for the past thirteen years. And the brother-in-law would drink his wine and get drunk in the dining room, and the children would romp in his parlors and tear through his conservatory and fight in his quiet library, and his sister would go through the house and find fault with things, and make the servants dissatisfied and try to discharge the housekeeper, and sigh and groan because things weren’t managed as they were when she was at home. And once more the old troubled look came into his face, as it usually came when he got to thinking about and dreading the regular annual irruption of h s brother-in-law’s family. Then he picked up a business letter, and learned that another broker, three doors farther down the street, had loaned the love farmer SBOO on the $3,000 farm. “By George,” Mr. Bartholomew groaned, “this starts out well; a cub of a tr.imp picks my pocket, that thief of n Grasper robs me of my customer, and here Bill Gormley and his brats arc coming to turn my house into a week of bedlam, on the 10-o’clock train.” And when his clerk half opened the gl ss door of his private office to say “Merry Christmas,” the enraged broker fired an oflice stool at him and b; oke S2B worth of embossed gla«s. And th.' old troubled look in his face kept on getting troubler and troubleder until train time.

The only person in America who has survived the operation of cutting apart two children who were congenitally attached, is G. W. Lytle, Connellsville, Pa. He bears apon his left cheek a deep scar where the ligature had been cut. Twenty-four years ago the operation was performed by the elder Dr. Pancoast, in Philadelphia. It was considered a bold feat of surgery, and many physicians shook their heads with fear lest the attempt would result fatally to the patient. Lytle was then but seven months old. He was born with a a hideous appendage to the left cheek that resembled an imperfectly developed infant. There was a circulation of blood through the ligature into the malformation, which also had a heart. The success of the operation attracted universal attention, and photographs of •the malformation were sent abroad at the request of eminent siu'geons. The operation has been successfully performed only three times, once each in Paris, London and Philadelphia.

R. Breckinridge, of Rosenburg, Ore. has been seriously ill, caused by opening the vault of a deceased person. He was in such a position that the gases from the coffin struck him in the face. Shortly after he was taken with a fever that for a time baffled the skill of the attending physicians, but he was at last accounts likely to recover,