Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 152, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1911 — LUCINDA’S EXPERIENCE [ARTICLE]

LUCINDA’S EXPERIENCE

"Isn’t it funny," said Lucinda, ‘how folks get caught onto each other in the street? Why, 1 suppose four hundred such things must happen every day, and they might happen to anybody in the most unexpected way. «- “Why, only this morning I saw two young Wtemen walking along together, talking and chattering and very much engaged over what they were talking about and never giving a thought to anything happening and then the first thing you know one of them was brought up. as my brother Claude would say, all standing. . ‘‘This girl had on a shoulder cape that was trimmed-all around its edge with half circle loops of silk cord., and as the two girls walked along talking, tbe wind got under this cape and blew it out and one of those loops somehow caught on a button of the coat of a man who was passing them coming from the opposite, direction.

' "Really it didn't seem that there was one chance in a million that it would happen so; but that’s what did happen, and it stopped the girl right away, or she stopped the minute she began to feel the tug. Of course it stopped the man too, and then he and she went to work to get the loop off the button. “You might think that this would be a simple, easy thing to do. but it wasn’t. Astonishing how things can get twisted up sometimes; and it seemed as if that silk loop must have got twisted around that button at least fourteen times. “And now the girl that had got caught and the man stood there and tried to untwist it. The other girl when she saw what had happened walked on a few steps and waited, and I thought that was a wise thing for her to do, because if she had waited she could not have done any good, and standing there by her friend she would have made three of them halted there together and so have helped to attract a crowd. “So the girt and the man stood there and struggled with the loop and the button. First she tried'and failed—l guess she was a little nervous over it, as I should think anybody would have been—and then they both worked over it at the same time, but that didn’t do; and then she let go and the man took hold, and he looked to see first just how the loop was caught around, and then he untwisted it in a jiffy and set himself and the girl free. Then he lifted his hat and went on his way and the girl hurried on and rejoined her waiting companion. “Quite an experience, that, wasn’t it? But such things are happening all the time;-1 saw another Just like It, only different, just yesterday afternoon.

“There was a man and his wife walkln along together in something of a hurry, the man carrying a suit case— I guess they were going 'to catch a train—and coming from the other direction along the same sidewalk was a little girl about ten or twelve years old with her hair In a braid hanging down her back. And how in the world this could have happened I don’t know, but as this man and this little girl were passing she swished her braid around —-she just happened to, you know—and it caught on a button of bis coat and stopped him. “His wife hadn’t seen this, didn’t know anything about It, and she kept right along, but she missed him In • minute, and when she looked around after him there he was standing back there on the sidewalk with that little girl beside him. He had set his suit case down on the walk, and now he was bending over and apparently very much Interested in something, and when she had got back to where be was she saw that what he was trying to do was to get that little girl’s braid clear of one of the buttons of bis coat. “He got it clear finally, and then the little girl shook her braid and looked up at him and laughed, and he looked down on her and smiled, and then he picked up his suit case and hurried ou. “Now, really, wasn’t it curious that tbe little girl's braid should get caught so, when you’d had hard work to fasten it around that button so that It would stay If you had tried to? But don’t people get caught in all sorts of odd ways? Catch their umbrellas In people's hats and clothes? Don’t women get their veils caught on other women’s hats and hat pins? Don't people get caught to each other In all sorts of ways? “I tell you. girls, you never can tell what’s going to happen.”—New York Sun.