Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1893 — HIS HARD LUCK. [ARTICLE]

HIS HARD LUCK.

A Valuable Ice Mine that Had a Hoodoo In It Somewhere. The man with the negligee shirt was talking of hard luck, says the Buffalo Express. “It’s just this way,” he said; “when things get to going against you there’s no stopping them. Luck and hard luck run in streaks with every man, and when things get to coming your way there’s no stopping them any more than there is when they get to going against you. “As an illustration, let me tell you of an experience I had. About three years ago I began to have hard luck. I lost everything 1 had one way or another, and got Into all sorts of trouble. Finally I landed in Richmond, Va., stone broke, without a friend to whom I could apply for aid aud nothing ahead of me hut a turn on the roads as a tramp. I could get nothing to do in Richmond, and I started out to tramp up North. “It was as hot as Tophet. I tramped along day after day, sleeping on j the ground and stealing what I had to eat, which was not much, let me j assure you. One day I struck Stony Creek, which is in a wild part of the State. I followed up along the creek until I reached Stone mountain, and there I made a discovery. I found an ice mine. It was fully an acre in exteflt, and the ice was as clear as crystal. I realized what the find meant, and after taking my bearings carefully I made my way back to > Richmond.

“It didn’t take me long to get some capitalist interested in it, and we formed a stock company, with me as President, to work the ice the next summer. It looked as if I had a fortune in my grasp. “Early the next summer we started to work It, but my hard luck came toddling along and did me up. There wasn’t a month that summer when we didn’t have frost, aud there was absolutely no demand for ice. That left me stranded again in worse shape than before. ” “I don’t see why,” put in the doubting Thomas, who woie a broadbrimmed straw hat. “Why didn’t you wait aud work it the next summer?” “I told you I' was in hard luck, didn’t I?” asked the man with the negligee shirt, severely. “Well, I was. Although the summer was cold the winter was so warm that it melted, every blamed bit of the ice and left nothing but a pool of water there, which was of no earthly use to anybody. ”