Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 125, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1912 — Page 2

A BROKEN IDOL.

“Has the paymaster spoke yet?” One grimy giant stoking the furnace for the castings asked the question of another. The other, a taciturn Scotsman, grunted out a curt reply In the negative, and. opening th furnace door with his pole, flooded the place with light. - It was Friday night. The clock In the front shop pointed tc the quarter before five. In another ten minutes or so the men engaged, at' the engineering works of John H. Ransom & Co., would be paid off for the week. The money was already neatly done up in little paper bags with the name of the firm on them, and, stacked in little rows in the office. Sandy MacTavish, having temporarily finished with the furnace, caught his “mate” in the act of getting into his coat. He looked at ,him in silent fury and burst into Scotch expletive. “Ay, dinna work a minut ower lang. A loon like you has michtie important beesness outside the shop. It wants ten minutes to the ‘oor. If those bits o’ piping are not staked—” The boy fled from him in dismay. The bits of piping measured six feet in length and more, and he was due to play the cornet in a church band at six o’clock. He refused to touch the piping, and Sandy swore at him more lustily than before. Another man walking through the casting shed laughed as he listened to it all. It was Sandy’s way of licking the boys into shape. Ronald Leslie, foreman fitter at Ransom’s came and stood" beside the furnace, too. “What’s the row, Sandy?” he said. -- “Ronald, my lad,” said the old man, “it’s the old story; the young lads are not worth their salt. It’s come in late if you can, go away early, sleep in the cupboard or on the roof whenever you think the, old man’s back, is turned. Is that the way to keep your job, I d like to know?” “Your job!” said Donald, with a shrug. “What’s your job worth when you’ve kept it? Thirty-eight shillings a week won’t keep a man out of the workhouse when he’s old. Your job! The job that takes all your waking time, that gives you no leisure to think, that—” “That winna let you sit down and spend your days fiddlin’ wi’ a toy that has nae mair sense in it than my pole.” Leslie did not speak. Instead, he stared into the heart of the furnace. It may have been that he saw the realization of his dream there. . “The idea’s good,” he said, “and it I could patent it —” “And if you could get ony firm to take it up and work it foi you. Ye canna do it, Ronald Leslie. And why? The thing’s ben tried before, man. You’ve got brains in your head. Canna you see that you’re throwin’ away time and money, t and brakin’ a woman’s heart?” “It’s not only thirty-eight shillings a week you’re throwin’ away, Ronald, mind you that.” Sandy went to claim his money, and Ronald Leslie went out into the darkness of the night and swung himself on to an electric car which would take him to his home in Walton, where most of Ransom’s men lived. Usually the time occupied by his jlourney wasglven“over to Ms 1 nven-" tion, but to-night a new thought chased the other, “Breaking a woman’s heart?” What absurc nonsense! Why, Maggie was just as eager as himself. There would be na need to stint the housekeeping when his idea was taken up and every ship in Liverpool carried Leslie’s steering gear. The car drew up with a jerk. Ronald walked up the street to his home >—a little house, one of a row of other little houses, each the replica of the other. Ronald Leslie let himself in with his latch-key, and groped in the gloom of the narrow, unlighted hall. The Leslies’ house had a kitchen and a front parlor. Both were usually lighted up before the return of the head of the family. Ronald stumbled toward the kitchen in the dark That also was unlighted except for one solitary candle on the dresser. A Woman who hushed a fretful child in her arms did look up as her husband came in. This, too, was unusual- Maggie Leslie always met her lad on threshold of his home. “What’s the matter?” said Ronald. “Why isn’t the gas lighted?” “We haven’t paid the rate,” said Maggie in a dull voice. “They’ve cut it off." To do her justice, she tried hard to keep reproach out of her voice. Ronald was a good husband, and she was as proud of his invention—the great invention sat was going to do such wonder# —as he was himself. But when you’ve two children who want shelter and food and fire, and when you see money being spent on lifeless, inanimate piece of steel and iron, when your dress is worn beyond recognition, and when your jacket is too shabby to go out, how can ybu help saying “things” then? - “Perhaps you won’t mind getting your own tea,” said Maggie, “There’s some bacon in the cupboard It’s all I’ve got.” : Ronald kicked off bis boots, and palled a chair to the fire and looked' at the boy asleep on his wife’s knee. “What’s the matter with Laddie?” he said. "I don’t know,”' said Maggie. “He's beeor feverish Pd take him to the doctor if I eouid.” f> k They looked at each other. They

were young. They had loved each other dearly, but something bad come between them! It was the thing that occupied the table In the front parlor, and at which Ronald vyorked in all his leisure. Ronald was going away for the week-end to see some ship owner in Glasgow about his gear. If he paid tbe water-rate-be wouldn’t have enough for hls journeys and for the twelfth time he told himself that It was hls great chance. Maggie pleaded mutely with him, and pleaded In vain. _“The shop is shut to-morrow,” he said, “we’ve got a day off. I’m going to Glasgow by the midnight train ” II , A woman fought the rebellion In her heart. What was a man’s ambi--tion to her—of what the use the fortune that might come to them some day when her child lay dying? Laddie was worse. The doctor who had been hastily summoned had declared it to be pneumonia, and bad said he had been called in too late. The boy panted on bis pillows, eased only when his mother carried him, wrapped in blankets, up and down the room. He was a dear burden; but he was two years old, and Margaret Leslie was worn with watching and with the incessant toll of her own household work. “Help me not to hate him,” she murmured; “help me not to blame him for this!” Ronald’s visit to Glasgow had been as usual, a futile effort. The shipowner had accorded him a five minutes’ —interview, and had told him that his idea was no good. He had come raging against the stupidity of men with money. The grumble was au old one. For once Margaret had met it with indifference, almost with disdain. This idea of his that he was a genius! with an invention that would revolutionize the world of ships driven by steam was the curse of their lives. He came in from his work now and stood at the door of the room, still in his brown overalls, wearing his fitter’s cap on his head. “Better?” he asked. There was anxiety in his voice. "Worse,” she answered. "We can’t keep him. My boy must go! Her eyes were fearless; there would be plenty of time to cry later on. <> Leslie came over to her and touched her hand. She flung It off. Rising, she faced him, holding the child against her heart. “You don’t care!” she said. "WLat are we to you, him and me, In comparison with (that thing downstairs? It’s a devil, that thing; it’s turning a good man Into a brute. Oh, I don’t want to say It, but it’s true! You have forgotten to love me—your wife; you have let your child die!” Laddie stirred in her arms; she carried him to the bed and laid him there, watching the gray shadows creep over his face. Sobs rent her. The child, beloved by them both, had been sacrificed to an idea Leslie stared at her like a man in a dream, and then, as if he had no right there, he turned and left thqpi, creeping as noiselessly as he could down the stairs. The street in which the Leslies lived wasbatHyilghted? Ronald come out of his house staggering under the burden in his arms, ft was heavy, the thing he carried, weighted with the load of a man’s lost years, an idol to whtch love and dutj had been sacrificed —the false god of a man’s Imagined genius—swept from the pedestal at last. Ronald Leslie walked to the piece of waste ground near the brickfields, where the sound, of his hammer would not be heard; He looked at It lying at his feet. Where was the fortune it should have brought? Where, even, was the weekly wage that he had earned for >ears now? Buried there—that useless, silent toy, the model of the engine that shoald,, have revolutionized the world, representing ten of *.ne best years of a man’s life “Lie there,” he said, "unburied and forgotten! Let me not think of the lies ,\ou have whispered to me, of the false .promises that have beckone<] me along a road 1 had no right to tread Only the fool never repents of his folly!” He stood a moment in the darkness. and light capie to him It was a new and different Ronald Leslie who entered the house on his return. He climbed the stairs again; the light was still burning in the little front room, a woman still knelt beside the bed. It was all so still and quiet that he hesitated, stricken with a new fear. Had the Angel of Death touched, the door-post even while he had been away? Entering, he lifted his wife from the ground. Hls voice was tender when he spoke. “Margaret!” he said, “Meg! My wife!” It was the little tender na’me of their courting days. Maggie’s arms stole round his neck; he .felt the tears, on her cheeks as she pressed her face to his. '‘He is better, 1 she whlspered. Her voice broke in a sob. “He fell asleep soon after you left. Ronald, forgive me*-®!! I said.’,’ Dear human love—that is a man’s reward here for every lost hope and dead ambition. Ronald Leslie comfort ed the sobbing woman In hls arms "I have smashed it,' he told her.« “Maggie, you will never see tbe thing you hated so fiercely and so well. I’ve smashed it; it was no good. I’ve been a fool!” She looked up at him; he could see that her Tegret was deeper than his own. „ "Oh, Ronald,” she said, ’lt was tbe treasure of the world to you I" “God has been good to me,” he said. “The treasure of the world is hare!’’—London Answers.

THE GRADUATING CLASS OF 1912

RUTH PARKISON

GRACE WAYMIRE

NELL SAWIN

Miss ADALINE H. BARNETT

C. R. DEAN, Principal

COPE HANLEY

JENNIE COMER

EDWARD PARKISON

JOHN GROOM

VIRGIL ROBINSON

BERNICE RHOADS

JOE REEVE

LOIS MEADER

ETHEL DAVIS

MAE CLARK

ESTHER PADGITT