Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 200, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1915 — VISITOR WHOM ALL DREAD [ARTICLE]

VISITOR WHOM ALL DREAD

Frenchwomen Afixlousiy Watch Course Taken By “Man Who Announces the Dead.”

I was talking to the conci&rge one afternoon, and I noticed that somehow she,didn’t seem to be so interested as usual. Her eyes were, on a man who was coming up the street. He turned in at the epicerie, and she seemed still more, absent minded, watching that door until presently he emerged. Finally, as he passed us on the other side of the street, she came out of her abstraction. “Do you see that man over there?” she asked me. “I hope he never comes in here.” He seemed to be merely an ordinary man —an ordinary Frenchman; that is, with the usual little mastacjxe and curly beard and longtoed shoes. “Why?” I asked. . “H© is a clerk at the mafrle,” she answered, still watching him. “See those envelopes in his hand? Do you know what they are?” * No, I didn’t, of course, know what they were. He might be mailing letters, I thought. “He goes all over 'the arrpndissement,” she said; and then her voice dropped. “He is the man who announces the dead.” I looked at him again just as he turned the corner. Oh, he was no ordinary man now! There were the lit* tie mustache and curly beard that 1 would never, never forget. And all the way to the Folies Bergeres it kept running through my head —the man who announces the dead! —Estelle Loomis in the Century Magazine.