Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 February 1913 — THE STORMY PETREL. [ARTICLE]

THE STORMY PETREL.

By Winifred Black. “I don’t know whether the Stormy Petrel filet because there is going to .be a storm or whether there is a storm because the Stormy Petrel flies,” said an old fisherman to me one 'day. “I wish I could figure it >out” I have been wondering whether a certain woman I know makes trouble fWkffever she goes, or whether she' has tile strange faculty of finding out ali- the trouble there Is wherever she loes go. I call her the Stormy Petrel. She has been a Stormy Petrel ever since I knew her. When she was a little girl In Sunday School, you could, always tell which one of the girls In the class was “mad at teacher.” The Stormy Petrel was always very intimate with her. When the little girl who was “mad at teacher” got into a better humor, the Stormy Petrel’s friendship cooled, and she found some one else with whom to "sympathize.” When she went to boarding school, all you had to do to know which one 3f the girls had a quarrel with some ather girl was to -watch the Stormy Petrel. She was ulways the bosom friend of one of the bitter-hearted enemies.

The Stormy Petrel is a grown woman now, a club woman and a society woman. I met her down town shopping with a certain well-known club woman the other day. "Look out, my friend.” I thought! when I looked at the club woman. “There is going to he a storm somewnere in your vicinity.”. Two days afterward I heard that the woman I saw with the Stormy Petrel was going to resign from her club. Whenever the society woman ia having a row about some one she didn't invite or some one who didn’t invite her, there is the StoFmy Petrel right in the midst of ail the excitement. I wonder if she does it on purpose, or if she cannot help it. Whichever it is. I know one thing—ls I should see the Stormy Petrel beginning to fly In my direction, I would take the first east wind to foreign parts.