Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 January 1910 — AN EVER-PRESENT DANGER. [ARTICLE]

AN EVER-PRESENT DANGER.

Mrs. Campbell had listened to her neighbor’s plaint without any special evidence of sympathy. “He’s an unselfish man and kind as ever lived,” the neighbor ended, “but when we go off traveling he does mortify me, asking so many questions. Folks all know we come from a little country place, just by the things he asks.” “ ’Tisn’t so bad as having a man that won’t ask anything, nor let you!” said Mrs. Campbell, her round eyes staring half-resentfully at a crayon portrait of her husband as she spoke. “It’s only just by chance that we got the right car coming back from Boston.” “Dear me, how’d you lose track of it?” asked the neighbor, “We didn’t—but we might have for all William, that’s what I’m saying!” And Mrs. Campbell tapped the floor impatiently. x “We came along the track, without a mite of time to spare, and when we saw a car that said Saltville on it, among other names, I was for getting straight into it, as there was such a. crowd. But William, he hitched me right along by the elbow, and up onto to the platform of the car in front of that one, “ This’ll be better,’ he said, ‘nearer the Btatlon when we get there.’

“ ‘But the placard’s away up front,’ I told him, 'and you haven’t seen it. How do you know where this car goes? It may not go near Saltville.’ “But all the time he was bearing me right on ahead of him, and pressed me into a seat, without a word, me beseeching him to go out and ask if we were in a car that would take us home, but he wouldn't stir. He only kind of set his jaw and said he knew by his common sense’ that we were all right.” "Well, of course —” began the neighbor.

“Of course I wouldn’t be here talking to you if we hadn’t been,” interrupted Mrs. Campbell. “But what I do know is that some day William will be carried out to Dakota or some such, when he’s calculating on his common sense to get him to Saltville, and makes up his mind not to ask a single question. “You don’t know what I’ve borne from William, good as he is!”