Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1902 — BABY SENT AS BAGGAGE. [ARTICLE]

BABY SENT AS BAGGAGE.

Placed on Monon Train In Telescope and Deserted by Its Unknown Mother. Curled up snugly and contentedly in a small, new telescope, wrapped carefully in soft, new blankets, dressed in dainty, pretty and elaborately trimmed baby clothes and covered warmly with a white cashmere shawl, a two-days-old baby girl was found by Brakeman Charles Hooper on the seat of a, day coach of the Monon train from Louisville, which arrived in Chicago at 7:35 o’clock Saturday morning. In the lid of the telescope, which was strapped and buckled firmly, was cut a small hole immediately above the baby’s face. Under the straps were two scraps of paper, evidently torn from a small notebook. On one side of one of the scraps was written the sentence: “Be kind to her and treat her good. Some day you will be rewarded.” On the reverse side was scribbled: “Born Thursday, November 6,1902.” On the other paper was written: “Oh, Lord, is there no help for the widow’s son, a Mason’s child?” On the reverse side of this paper was the name, “Gertrude Lola,” and the reiterated plea, “Be good to her.” When Brakeman Hooper first noticed the telescope containing the baby his train was just pulling out of Englewood. Thinking that it was the baggage of some person who would call for it at the Chicago station he gave it no further attention. At the Chicago depot, however, when all the passengers had left the train, he noticed the telescope still lying on the seat, and picked it up to carry it to the lost and found room of the General Superintendent of the road. When a clerk arrived to open the office he found Hooper shaking with fear, and sitting with the valise on his knees. “There is something "wrong here,” , he said in an awed voice to the clerk and together they opened the box. When the lid was lifted gently off there lay Gertrude Lola smiling contentedly out upon the world with her blue eyes wide open and her little hands sparring at the world in general with gay abandon. In a few minutes an officer and a matron arrived and carried little Gertrude Lola away, but not before she had won the hearts of the entire office force and started considerable rivalry over which of the employes should have her for adoption. T. B. Dates, of 395 Thirty sixth street, one of the clerks in the office of the General Superintendent, is generally acknowledged to have spoken first, however, and to have the superior claim through the fact that his own baby girl died in her infancy, and the couple have since been looking for a girl baby to adopt. When Mr. and Mrs. Dates saw little Gertrude Lola they decided to take the child home, and as soon as the necessary formalities of adoption can be concluded little Gertrude Lola will become Gertrude Lola Dates.