Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 February 1909 — LUCINDA’S EXPERIENCES. [ARTICLE]

LUCINDA’S EXPERIENCES.

,-v •, - r: • . _ ' . She’s Always Finding Things, but Bhe Never Finds Anything Jt^aluable. “I’m the greatest one to find things that ever was,” said Lucinda, “but I never find anything valuable. Ana why do you suppose that la? “People must lose valuable things,, don’t ±hey? Why certainly, but it doesn’t seem to be my lot to find that sort. Other people find the valuable things and all that I get is what my brother Claude calls the junk. “And the way I find the brass things is astonishing. It’s mostly baby pins that I find, and I discover them on the car tracks, on the sidewalks and in the street; everywhere in fact. „ “I see something glistening under the edge of a fence and I pick it up, and it’s another baby pin. Beautifully carved, and all that, but worth nothing. “Sometimes the pins I find thus are new and bright, sometimes old and battered; but always they are worthless so far as actual value is concerned. Why do I never find a gold baby pin? I did find one once that a jeweller said was ten karat filled, the nearest I have ever come to it, but even that was of no money value. “Rings? Why, yes, I’ve found rings too. Sapphire rings and turquoise rings and emeralds, and once I found a diamond ring, but the precious stones in these rings were all of the same material, namely, glass, and like the rings In which they were set, of no value whatever. “And it has always been just the same with the various other miscellaneous items of jewelry I have found. The good things appear ali to -have been picked up before I come along and ail the brass goods left for me, and I certainly do find them. “And when it comes to finding money it’s Just the same. Somebody else appears to find all the money. Don’t you know how you read in the papers how somebody found a pocketbook containing seven hundred and eighty-two dollars and ten cents? And how somebody else found a pocketbook containing eleven thousand dollars, and things like that? But nothing like that ever. happened to me—somebody else always finds the big sums of money. “I never found any money but twice in my life, and once it was a cent. and once a dollar. The cent I kept; the dollar I was very glad to be able to give up within two minutes after I found it. “I was walking along a street when I found this dollar. I spied it ahead of me lying on the sidewalk, and when I had come to it and picked it up and found that it was a really and truly good dollar bill I laughed to myself gleefully, I couldn’t help it; I had finally found something of value —actual good money. And then I wondered where the dollar came from. “Walking on along the sidewalk ahead of me was a little girl carrying a pitcher, and of .course all I could see of her was her back, but she seemed to me a pleasant little girl and she seemed to be walking along cheerfully, And then all of a sudden she stopped short and seemed to get sort of stiff all over right in a jiffy, and then she turned around and started back toward where I was, and now she was crying and about as distressed a little girl as one could ever expect to see; and of course I knew what was the matter with her now, she had lost a dollar. “When she came along to where I, was I said to her, ‘What's tire matter, my dear?’ and she answered very tearfully and solemnly: “ ‘l’ve lost a dollar.’ “ ‘Well, don’t you worry any more over that, my dear,’ I said to her, ‘here it is.’ “And I handed it over to her; and my gracious! I’ve seen a few quick changes, but I never did see shadow succeeded by sunshine quite so suddenly as it was now on this little girl’s face; and I know thrt I got more fun out of giving the little girl back her dollar than I ever did out of any little thing in my life. “But really, now, why is it, do you suppose, that I find so much of that stuff that my brother Glaude calls (he junk but never anything of value?” —New York Sun.