Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1906 — Winning Lois [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Winning Lois

By FRANK H. SWEET

“What's that? How did I come to give my consent? Well, I don’t know as I ever did. It was one of the things that just come about—happen, you know, as if ’twas made to be so. I never did have much use for white hands and store clothes and a soft voice. Seemed to me they went mostly with card sharps and men who wa’n’t willing to work, and Lois felt the same. Her great idea in a man was courage, ready to risk life and all for anything that seemed right, especially If a wjman was in it, and to us that kind of a man had big brown hands and broad back and loud voice, and he always

wore rough clothes, which showed he wa’n't afraid to work and never thought about how he looked. "So when Jim Furness saw her from a parlor car window one day and threw his baggage off and lost his ticket just through a crazy idea of winning her Lois turned him down so quick that I didn't have a chance to say a word, mad as I was v You know how Lois is when she's stirred up like this. She just looks and turns away, and there’s no need for her nor anybody else to say a word. “Well, with other folks that would have ended it, but Jim he just turned round and got a job tiring on a local engine that helped pull freight up our side of the divide. You see, he seemed to understand by instinct that Lois and I believed in work and didn’t care for dressed tip effect. But, pshaw! You know how it is with Jim. Put him on the dirtiest job going and his bands will stay white and soft like a girl's, and the roughest clothes ever was have —a~way of hanging on hl m like They were tailor made, ami, as to his voice, if you turned ids engine end over and down the mountain, wheg it got to the bottom Jim's voice, if he had any left, would be ns soft and drawling as ever. “We saw a good deal of Jim now, for, with me as station agent and our living rooms upstairs, Lois and 1 were sort of climbs witii everything on the railroad. Maybe that was what started Jim to getting bls job so quick and having it so lie could switch back and forth in front of the station every few hours and stay in our town over night. Maybe he figured that just being a railroad man would be a sort of recommendation. "But if so it didn't seem to help him much. There were big. strapping engineers on the road who had done tilings, risked life and looked square at death without winking, and there were conductors and section bosses and one local superintendent and a passenger agent who liked Lois and who would have been glad for her to have liked them, and nearly all had done things. You see, our section right along here is a tough piece of road, and all the employees who have been on it a few years and are not killed have stories to tell. Now I—but Lois hates personal talk that touches on brag, so it doesn't matter. "Rut, as I was saying, pretty much the whole road liked Lois, and Lois, she liked the wnole road as a whole, but wouldn’t single out any one in particular, And, as for Jim, she scorned him oianily, and he knew it. "Now, I didn't like Jim myself, ho of course 1 couldn't feel the pity for him that I would for anybody else. But, pshaw! If lie felt it he never showed by any signs. lie just came and took his scorn and joked and laughed and made us laugh and then came back for more scorn the very next time his engine pulled In. Now’, I ask candidly what can you do with a fellow like that? The others laughed at him, and he laughed with them. Then after n while some of the more rough ones, thinking him soft and good natured and without backlwne, went a lUtle too tar, and his white tingers closed together like steel springs, and more than one of them had to lay off for repairs. But Jim didn't seem to bold any grudges. He laughed and talked to those who treate«t him the worst until they h:»l . to laugh and talk back, and then the

first anybody knew they were all the best of friends. “But the strangest part, of course, was about Lois. Jim never did a sin* gle brave thing so far as I know, risk bis life in saving a train of passengers or anything like that, and he spent a lot of money in helping people in one way and another—a good deal more than bls salary could possibly amount to—and either of these things was enough to keep Lois scornful. She had no use at all for a man unless he was brave and no use for one who wasn't absolutely honest, and of course spending more than one earned would seem to have only one meaning. “However, Jim kept right on in his quiet, good natured way until he had made the railroad men his friends, and even Lois and I began to look forward to his spending an evening, things went off so swinging and pleasant-like. “No, 1 don’t know as he ever did ask me In so many words for my consent or even if be asked Lois. It all came about as if ’twas made to be so, minister and all, and it wa’n’t until alter they were married and gone to his home that we found out he was one of the biggest owners of the railroad, with more money than he could throw away. That first time he saw Lois he was just from college and gone into partnership with his father and was taking an observation trip over their road. “His father like it? Seemed so. Anyway he’s never said or looked a word against Jt when I’ve been there, and he’s juirt as proud of Lois as Jim himself. And Lois, why, up there the city Is just full of society queens, as they call them, and Lois leads the whole lot—takes to it naturally, they say, just like she’s always took to everything. I go up once .a year," and they all treat me like a king, and Jim, especially if he’s got some big nabob visiting, as he generally has, buttonholes me and tells that story about—but Lois hates personal talk that touches on brag, so it doesn’t matter. You see, she might hear."

“HE JUST CAME AND TOOK HIS SCORN AND JOKED AND LAUGHED."