Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1899 — BROKE DOWN THE GATE. [ARTICLE]

BROKE DOWN THE GATE.

The Owner of It Willing to Have Other Things Smashed, Too. "When Sir Richard Burton was British consul at Damascus, his wife, Lady Isabel, found that a large wooden gate, in the garden next hers, swung continuously on its hinges, and that It was keeping one of her guests, an English official, awake at night. The garden belonged to an old woman and Lady Burton asked her to have the. gate fastened, but she sent back word that It was impossible. It had been broken for years, and she had no money to repair it, So the English lady took the law Into her own hands. That night her guest slept well, and at breakfast he asked gratefully how she had managed about the gate. “If you look out of the window,” said she, “you will see it in the courtyard. I had it pulled down at sunset.# • He drew a long face of official rebuke. “Oh!” said he, “but yqu really must not treat people like that! Suppose they knew of these things at home?” “Suppose they did,” echoed she, laughingly. After her guest’s departure she ordered the gate to be mended and replaced at her own expense, and the next time she went out, the little old woman next door ran after her, crying: “O thou light of my eyes, thou sunbeam! Come and sit by the brook in my garden, and honor me by drinking coffee, and Allah grant that thou mayest break something else of mine, and live forever!”