Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 October 1892 — A Stcry Without a Moral. [ARTICLE]

A Stcry Without a Moral.

St Louin Globi-Democrat. ‘‘During tho lute unpleasantness stories were rife about the lives of young soldiers being saved by a mother's Bible worn over the heart," said Don Bellamy, the only surviving private of the lost cause. “Perhaps the stories were all true; I don’t know. But Ido know that a pack of greasy playing oards once kept me from going hence with a Yankee lead mine located in my anatomy. 7 j “It was during the tirst day’s fighting at Shiloh. 1 bud succeeded iu winning every cent my messmates bad at the little game of drawpoker, and had filod the pasteboards away in my inside breast pocket for future usefulness. Wo were crowding Grant's columns back to the river, and they were fighting with that uglv sullenness characteristic of a bulldog that knows he’s whipped, but won’t surrender, when I was lifted off my feels thrown a dozen yards, and landed with my head in a clump of bushes. I thought sure that a aix-pouud shot hud gone through me, and lay there wondering why the dickens l didn’t die. In a few 1 minutes 1 felt better and proceeded to investigate. There was a ragged holo In my coat and vest, but none in my hide. The bullet had bored into the pack of cards and stopped against the knave of spades. I wrote u|T the story two or three years ago and sent it to a religious weekly, but it was declined with thanks. I was once called upon to address a Sunday school. I told how I had been miraculously preserved, and now when I meet the superintendent we maintain aa uproarious alienee aa we pass by." t