Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1894 — Tim’s Kit. [ARTICLE]

Tim’s Kit.

It surprised the shiners and new* boys around the postoffice the other day to see “Limpy Tim” come among them in a quiet wavi and to hear him say: “Boys, I want to sell my kit. Here’s two brushes, a hull box of blacking, a good stout box, and the outfit for two shillins.’ ” “Coin’ away, Tim?” queried one. “Not ’zactly, boys; but I want a quarter the awfullest kind just now." “Goin’ on a ’scursion?” asked another. “Not to-day; but I must have a shilling,” he answered. One of the lads passed over the change and took the kit, and Tim walked straight to the counting-room of the daily paper, put down the money, and said: “I guess I kin write, if you’ll give me a pencil.” With' slow-moving fingers he wrote a death notice. It went into the paper almost as he wrote it, bnt yoa may Hoi have seen it. He wrote: “Died—Litul Ted, of scarlet fever; aged three years. Funeral to-morrow, gone up to Heven: left one bruther.” “ Was it your brother.'* asked tho cashier. Tim tried to brace up, but he couldn’t. The big tears came up, his chin quivered, and he pointed to the notice on the counter, and gasped: “I—i had to sell my kit to do it, b—but he had his arms around my neck when he d —died.” He hurried away home; but the news went to the boys, and they gathered in a group and talked. Tim had not been home an hour before a barefoot boy left the kit on the doorstep, and in the box was a bouquet of flowers which had been purchased in Ihe market by pennies contributed by tho crowd of ragged but big-hearted urchins.