Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1894 — SAVED! [ARTICLE]

SAVED!

Rescue of a Bicycle Girl Who Had Not Learned How to Stop. Chicago News. " The shades of night were getting in their work, and the peace of a righteous community was filtering through the atmosphere. Brown and Jones were enjoying their last cigars and conversing on stocks; there is nothing frivolous or flighty about Brown and Jones. Suddenly there came a swish of feminine skirts, a skurry of a bicycle, and through the darkened air a shrill wail faltered: “Oh, won’t you please help me?” Then a bicycle at full tilt sped across the street crossing, 4 and Brown and Jones stared at each other aghast. — “O-o-ooh!” half cried the voice of the disappearing rider. “What in thunder does she want help about?” gasped Joues. “She wasn’t tipping over,” said Brown. “Her wheel was all right.” “No one was pursuing—” “Help!” floated back to the crossing. With one wild gush of alarm two cigars were flung to destruction and two reputable citizens went shinning down Lake avenue. Never since their college days have Jones and Brown made a running record like the one credited to that night’s performance, with a movable goal for an object. One block, two blocks, two and a half, and then the fleeing wheel with its sobbing rider came in view.

With an extraordinary spurt Brown and Jones caught up, grabbed the handle bars.and stopped the wild progress of the modern Flying Dutchman. “What began Jones. “How ,” gasped Brown, who was stout and unpleasantly conscious of something ridiculous in the whole proceeding. “Oh,’’quavered the feminine rider, who was not young and not fair; “oh, how can I ever thank you! Oh, my goodness, what a scare! I can ride, you know, just learned, but I can t turn round, and I can’t mount, and I can’t stop my wheel, and I was getting farther away from borne every minute, and, oh, dear, what would I have done if ” Jones coughed- In her excitement the distressed lady was imposing against his shirt front. It was a fresh shirt-front, and her act" disturbed him.

“Shall we get you started for home?” queried Brown, who always had presence of mind. “Oh, if you would,” said the distressed lady, and then the two reputable citizens put her on her wheel, turned it around, pushed her half a iblock and saw her disappear in the (darkness, leaving a trail of inarticulate gasps, thanks, protests and exclamations in her wake. Silenee fell over Lake avenue. Brown and Jones stuffed their handkerchiefs into their collars and looked at each other meditatively. Suddenly Brown went into convulsions. He grabbed Jones’s arm. “Etow,” he stuttered, “how, I say, is that fool woman going to stop when she does get home?” Then they sat down on the curbstone to recover and incidentally to calculate whether the woman who hadn’t learned how to make the wheel stop going round would eventually reach the North Pole or be drowned in Lake Superior. “And yet,” Brown says scornfully when he tells the adventure, “yet some misguided mortals claim that women have sense enough to -vote and decide the-fate:of-thg-~inr~ tion, Humph!” The yay he say 3 “humph” makes theliearer wither right away—if the hearer is a woman. Man makes the conscience oftener than conscience makes the man. We are shaped by our yesterdays. When Cupid meets a woman he smiles and sits down.