Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 88, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 July 1909 — THE DOYEN'S STORY. [ARTICLE]

THE DOYEN'S STORY.

“A little learning Is a~ dangerous thing; - . ... Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.” Thtis quoted Burphy, doyen of the repeater corps. The great main room of the New York-Western Union office had stilled down as much as it ever does; the last of the beef ciphers were played; the cable loop had sent out ”30” to Newspaper Row, ahd all of the local and city wires were silent. In the corner near the south windows the Associated Press repeaters banked and rattled away still, with a sound like the drumming of hail on a tin roof, for down in Washington an ecclesiastical drumhead court-martial was holding an allnight session upon a higher critic who had dared to hint that the teachings of the Shorter Catechism were as foolishness compared with those of Darwin. I had been listening to the rhythmic swing of the coded Morse fleeting westward, while I watched the veteran nurse his set, admiring the skill with which he corrected the many variations in current caused by a violent thunder storm then sweeping over the Jersey meadows. Knowing that his remark would serve as a text for a story, I waited, while his hand went from helix screw to armature spring and from armature spring to local adjustment. The heads of the great corporation value that hand sufficiently to move them to keep its owner upon what is virtually a pension, that they may be able to lay claim to Its service to coax a president’s message out of the Jersey fog, or the beef ciphers from the clutches of the aurora. “I have no manner of use for the Presbyterian Shorter Catechism,” he began in his pleasant brogue, the which mere ink and paper can never reproduce, “but I will say that when it is nailed into folks when they are young It sticks. Prentiss might have known this, beiftg of an old Presbyterian family, but then he never did care to know anything, except how to have his own way. “He was depot laborer and freight handler for the Northwestern, Pennsylvania road when I went to Freeboro as operator and station agent i just after the big iron discoveries there in the late seventies —a big, hulking sort of a fellow with the soul of him all shriveled up with the hell | fire of evolution that fellow Darwin,” jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of Europe, “stirred up. He had a turn for reading and investigating odd things and attended a lecture on the ‘Ascent of Man’ or something like tkat about a week after the Presbyterians of Freeboro turned him down when he wanted the place of deacon. Being in a rage against his church at the time and, moreover, having a mind incapable of holding more than one good big idea at a time, he gave himself over entirely to the Adversary of Souls, may he never rest in peace. His change of heart killed his wife, who left him a daughter, Kitty, who was about 12 years old when the mother died. Before the mother went she succeeded in setting the girl’s faith on a firm foundation, and the father never made it loosen a peg with all his blasphemies, nor, to tell the truth, did he try very hard, for he loved the girl as much as he hated the church. He could yank boxes and barrels about with one hand, but that hand was always light and tender when it patted Kitty on the head when she brought his dinner to him at noontime. She had been keeping house for the old codger about seven yeai'k when I came to Freeboro, and was a fine girl—a fine girl she was. But no matter, a bald-headed old sinner like me mustn’t be thinking of the likes of her —she married a better man long ago. “Well, as I was saying, Kitty was a fine girl, and it didn't take Jack Malcolm long to find it out after he came down from Pittsburg to take charge of the books at the iron mines. Jack was a bright fellow, Who had picked up a bit of telegraphy, but found bookkeeping a better way of making a living. 1 “Prentiss and Jack were great friends at first, and'the boy ffilgfat have made his way into matrimony pretty easily, if he had not become mixed up in the big Presbyterian revival that swept over western Pennsylvania that year. But after he joined the church, Prentiss’'turned sour on him and then the young couple’s love making began to go hard. But young folks have ways of their own, and one day when Kitty brought her father’s dinner, Malcolm came into the depot with her and told the old fellow that he loved the girl and that they wanted to be married. I was in the office at the time and the three of them had the part of the depot used as a freight room t 0 themselves. Just what words were passed no one ever knew, but at last Jack came out, his face as white as chalk, but alone. About half an hour later Kitty came out, also with hes head in the air, walking as stiff as a major, for she had lots of her father’s spunk in her. Lastly, out came Prentiss, trundling a barrel of cement on his truck, and never a word did he jsay, only nursed his wrath and spits close Into- Ills withered heart.

"The text day was Saturday, and a close; "Sultry dhjr ft wj&--Bucb as bfclfr the Bine Rklge country can produce In intdillimme# Tfietil wife a aSHower hariSr, * just* enough *faifi falflhg to make thW air-ffioriP heavy and muggy stilly After the shower passed the great, black masses of clouds piled up all around the edges of the hills that wall Freeboro in, , and these were lit dp every few moments by flashes 6t lightning, each electrical discharge out on the >sky line' being followed by a crackling on the ; switchboard in the stuffy little depot office, which seemed at times fairly ablaze with the blue flames. We had no safety devices to care‘for the lightning in those days, and a severe thunder storm nearly always damaged either the instruments or switchboard. “During the morning a load of beams intended for the mines were shunted off upon the switch, which left the main line a little west of the depot. The single track to the mines crossed a creek on a trestle about half way over the meadows, and one of the beams jostled off the load while on the bridge, snapping the telegraph line as it fell, the wire being strung along the trestle on arms which extended outward from the ties.. One of the trainmen, noticing the accident, told Malcolm of It, and as Saturday waß a half holiday for those in the office, he got excused a bit early and started to repair the break, turning up at the station about 11:30. He saw me in the office and hailed me from the platform through the open window, asking me to disconnect the mine wire, as he was afraid to work on it while the lightning was coming in over the main line so sharply. After doing so, I lent him the office repair kit and a piece of wire to splice the break with, and he started off up the switch toward the trestle. “After Jack left the depot, having hunted up my dinner basket and, nothing to do for the moment, I taking a seat in the njain room near the benches, ate my midday repast. After this, feeling rather comfortable and easy, as one always does af(er an agreeable meal, I tilted my chair back against the wall and read a bit from a paper that I found lying on one of the benches. I could hear Prentiss going about his work as usual as he made ready for the coming of the 1 o’clock milk train. After the clang of the cans ceased I heard him wheel his truck against the front of the station. Then he opened the door and came in softly. I could see him plain enough but It was not the same Prentiss somehow, or at least the face was not the same —it looked like a devil’s. He came over to where I was, looked me over narrowly and then, turning quietly about, went toward the office door, which stood open. Through this he passed and closed it after him. Prentiss went right up to the switchboard and, taking down from behind It a diagram of the wiies I bad made for Jack, he first took every plug out of the board and then slowly and deliberately placed them in the line of holes directly opposite the binding post that held the mine wire, thus placing the entire main line in connection with it and converting it Into a veritable magnet, which would attract every bolt of lightning that hit the line for miles on either side of us.

“My vision seemed to reach its climax aa, after a last look at the diagram, he picked up the very plug I had taken from the board to disconnect the mine wire, and viciously jabbed it into its proper position, thus making the connection doubly sure. The floor of the depot seemed to open and he fell through and I slid after him, and we began to fall, fall, fall, as though over a precipice. We struck with a crash, I on top. I started toward the door, but paused as I heard a smothered groan from inside. Hastily stepping forward, I threw open the door and was horrified to find Prentiss stretched on the floor, holding his hands to his eyes. Bending over, I asked him what the trouble was, but received no reply, as he was unconscious. The doctor brought him around all right, but he never Baw again—there was a burn on the bull of his left thumb and a white fused streak across the bridge of his nose, fte said afterward that he went into the office to see me and that he was near the switchboard when a big flash came in." ’ ' “Well,” I asked, “did Maloolnf marry the girl?’’ “He did that,” he replied decisively, “and I was best man and kissed the bride. And they lived happily ever thereafter and boarded the old blind villain to the day of his death, free of charge.” •- “Don’t you consider that a hard name to call him, considering his mls? fortune?” “Well, I don’t know. You see, t found the plugs on the switchboard just as I saw them in my dream or whatever it was, and Prentiss had the one that we used to connect the mine wire clenched in his hand when I reached him.” “Did you tell any one about your dream?" 4~ “Not I. I knew the minute I saw him that he was past doing further harm, and that he would have to depend either upon the young people or charity for a living after that; so I held my peace.”—George Gilbert.