Evening Star Newspaper, April 26, 1925, Page 74

THE SUNDAY STAR, THE RABBLE ROUSE BY BOOTH TARKINGTON. The Old Political Boss Tells the Story of the Two Rivals. A HE other night, quet 1o the ¢ Hon. Milt Lefiing, when 1 got to telling what 1 really knew about him, and the gen- tlemen I was talking to said I just absolutely had to write it all up and get it multigraphed and give each a copy, why, 1 was pretty well stumped till 1 thought of dictating the thing to my stenographer, so that's the way I'm going about it However, I think my friends will find the details of the peculiar facts the same as I told them when we were sitting around smoking on the mez- zanine floor of the hotel, after the banquet to the Hon. Milt Now, to philosophize a minute at the start. It's begun to strike me lately that the stary of the rise of Milt Le is the story of the moving of our country in a contrary direc- tion, as it were; and by that I mean it seems to me our country has been moving downward in certain ways, ad of up, as we all used to think going to move in all ways. young people won't understand his, of course. Young people nearly always think the times of their own Youth are ‘way in advance of the times that have just gone before. Times they don’t really know any- thing about at all, of course. I bet my wife'’s best hat that if you could have talked to the young peo ple that were ing out of college when the Roman Empire was crack- ing all to pieces they'd have told you 1 Papa. and mammas were moss- backs—atrs that the past generation lived in a#fully backward times, com- pared to their own. I'm 64 years old and I've been in politics, bne way or another. 43 of those vears, so0, naturally 1 knew Milt Lefiing when he started, because he's still a_comparatively young man. Right at the start we saw he was to give us trouble; he wouldn't like anybody else, the regular nd work up from the ranks, Milt! Al his life he's been hand for the short to su —no plodding for him! nd of all the men I ever knew tha e what's called “the gift of gab” Milton Leffing is .certainly the gifted est. Boys that went to school with him say he was born w that he was an orator, particul: he didn’t take any prizes for speech- making. No, sir: the fellow that took «ll the big prizes in oratory university in Milt Leffing was George Brooks—Ceorge Thom: Brooks—he and Milt were classmates. Pretty much everybody in th has heard George Brooks speak then and knows what a erator he is; and, wh more important, the in of the State know w he is, too. George Brooks isn't h a talent for speaking: he's a hard worker, a scholar, and he thinks for himself. As everybody knows, George Brooks has always been both able and upright, and when you add that he looked what he was, why, no wonder everybody thought he'd be governor or United States Senator by the time he was 40—and who knows what after that! In those days Milt Leffing wasn't considered to be any- body at_all alongside Georg Thomas Brooks. M LT was arour and gettir vle a couple of was in law school elected to the Le ticket the vea prackice in h was the year rsie home from Europe. and about 15 our most promising young bachelors (and all the widowers) started right in to marry her. She Truett Petti bone’s granddaughter. the only kin that old rascal had left to him, and everybody knows Pettibone’s paints The Pettibone Works iz one of the biggest industries in the whole State toda but nobody ever cused either George Brooks or Milt Leffing of be- ing after Josie on that account 1 used to pass old man Pettibone’s big house on my way home from the office every afternoon about 5 o'clock, d T certainly saw a few symptou of Josie’'s being a “‘popu girl Some days it looked as if even Petti- Lone’s big front porch couldn't hold the boys, there'd be so many of ‘em. d moonlight nights in our neigh horhood—T only lived three doors from there—well I say, on a moonlight night in Summer it wasn't any use 10 g0 to bed and try to sleep—not until after 11 o'clock, anyhow. still, she was a mighty nice sort of irl, and it was easy to see why there were so many WAnting her. course, a plant like old man Pe bone's made a mighty fine setting for such a jewel, and a lot of money be hind a girl does show her off to ad vantage: but I think there'd have been almost as many suitors if she hadn't had a cent. And I certainly felt sorry for George Brooks when he saw he wasn't going to get her. 1 met him one afternoon as I was Foing by there. He was coming out of their big wrought-ron front gate, and he walked along with me, becau he lived just up above me a little way, on the same street, though I don't think he wanted to be with anybody Just then. He was looking mighty solemn and a little pale. “Well, George,” 1 you're making neadway in vonder “T'm afraid not.” he told me, and T asked him if it was Milton Leffing he lebrated not elligent people a fine man merely a man * n % d selling insurance cquainted with peo- vears while George but they both got ture on the same George began to Tha te ather's office. said, “I hope A after the ban-| was afraid of. and | of ! wanted to or net. | nation. | their | to have it! | seeds “I guess I'd be afraid oung Milt in your place, George,” “I'd be afraid he'd talk him, whether she They say he can talk a coon down from a tree!” But George shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. “I'm afraid neither of us has much chanc “What's the trouble?” I asked him. “If Milt can't talk her into it 1 should think you'd have a pretty clear field. I don't see who else would stand in your way around here.” “That’s the trowble,” he told me. It isn’t any one from around here.” And I could see that Josie had just let him know there wasn't any chance for him, because she was going to marry some out-of-town man. He was an usher at Josie's wedding; but Milt Leffing went out of town, and they said he was mighty upset. Josie married a Frenchman she’d met abroad; a professor of some sort he was, named Leclerc, and she went over there to live, and stayed there. After the wedding, George Brooks and Mili Leffing went around with the young people the same as ever, but I never heard that either of them showed particular interest in any of the girls 1 told him. her into taking % ® % OW, as it bappened, when George had been twice in the Legislature, and made a good record there, he was the man we old-timers at headquar- ters picked to run for Congress to succeed fat Joe Eli Smith, who had been our district’s representative for twelve years, and never did a thing in Washington except eat oysters at Harvey’s until he couldn’t walk. Milton Leffing had the nerve to come out against him for the nomi- He didn’t have a chance on earth—in fact, everybody of intelli- gence in the whole State considered that he covered himself so absolutely with ridicule that he’d never be able to hold his head up again. His speeches were just a scream, as the girls say, and the newspapers had so much fun with them that what he called his “‘campaign” got to be a joke all over the country Milt was a “mixer” from the start. After he got out of college he made it his business to know everybody in town, especially the riffraff—and there’s an awful lot of riffraff in a city of 230,000, which was about our pobulation then. Milt mixed around with them, and with respectable work ingmen, 100; he mixed around with ist everybody, and he picked up a kind of roughneck talk that he could use when he wanted to. Milt could co right up to that sort and talk rouse-guys” stuff with the best or worst of them, and when he spoke to an audience of that sort he'd slip in a few expressions of their own dialect. ind of a man, you see. “Boys,” he'd say, “are you going to send me to Congress or are you going to send that cold-blooded, kid-gloved little gilt-edged, calling-card, Thomas Brooks that lives up there on the North Side and has to have his pants pressed by a nurse every morn. ing before he crawls out of the hay? Honest, boys, if you send him to Con- gress. he'll spend half his time getting his little kid gloves washed in gaso- ne and the other half he’ll put in trying to teach the sergeantat-arms to_turkey trot. “Just you g0 up to his house and holler or whistle for him. or give him the high sign the way you would a neighbor—why, he'd send some sway- backed English dead-eye in a solid old livery out and tell you to go on home and stop being naugh naughty: or else he'd have a couple of bulls shoo you away from his part of town. You better put the jinx on that pair of pink kid gloves, boy and I'll see that you get yours ou of it. There’s a lot of you boys, for instance, that like to have little gar- dens in your back vards. You reckon | that slick haired walkingeane would | ever send you any seeds? You send me to Congress and I'll show all the giltedge calling cards and crooked goldfish that this is a poor man's count You send me to Congress and I'll show the bulls that you boys got a right to shoot craps on the | courthouse steps right on Sunday morning if you feel like it! You send me to Congress and you and me to- ether will put a hot crimp in this Government’s handing all that dough to Wall Street. You send me to Con- gress and I'll see that what they got left goes to the people that ought Boys, I'll begin with the You send me to Congress, and T'll see that every man in this audi- ence that wants seeds gets a barrel of ‘em!” That was Milt Leffing in his first campaign for <ongress, gentlemen. Of course, as he knew perfectly well, George Brooks mnever called himself “G. Thomas Brooks™ in his life, but what seemed most ridiculous about the speech was Milt's offering seeds to that bunch of city riffraff. The newspapers called him the barrel-of- seeds candidate and 1 did hope the name would stick to him, but T guess now I was wrong to hope so, because I've come to believe it might do him more good than harm. Tt did him more good than harm even then. so far as the people he made that speech to were councerned, because it's an actual fact that the *“old twelfth ward” has been solid for him from that day to this. _They liked his mising them a barrel, you see, whether they could use it or not. It made ‘em think he was| Of course, he didn't have a ghost of a show at the nominating convention; we put George Brooks in a-flying and and if you'd been there you'd hardly have moticed that Milt Leffing was running. 1 met him on the sidewalk the next morning and he laughed about it, but, “You wait!” he said. “I'm going to make the whole bunch of you look like mossbacks before I'm through. I'm starting slow,” he said, “but when I get really going it'll take WELL. George Brooks made a fine record during his three years in Congress—not a showy ome, but no- body of .intelligence doubted that he was going to stay—at least until we sent him up higher—and that's why we got a tolerable sized shock when we found we had a real fight on our hands to keep him there. 3 You see, & good deal of water had flowed under the bridge in George's time in Congress. 1 should say so We used to have a nice sized city here, just about right for a fellow to feel comfortable in and be able to say ‘he knew practically everybody that was anybody, and then, before we actually realized what was happening. we found we were living in a me. tropolis where sometimes you would- n't think you knew anybody at all, the place had got so big! There were parts of it where you could bardly hear your own language spoken. You ‘can hardly blame an old-timer for feeling as if the country was “going craz .1 happened to say so to Milt Leffing onhe day, meeting him in the lobby of the Safety Deposit, where 1 keep my undersized box. “You bet it is!" he said, and he laughed as though he thought I was a right comic old man. “It's going just as crazy es it knows how: it's running away lke a crazy bronco and it's going to need some mighty smart people to ride it. The trouble with you is, you can't keep your feet in the stirrups and you're getting uneasy about your seat in the saddle. Look out, Uncle Ben!" that so!” I said. he went on laughing right in my face. “Did you notice how much 1 gained your little pet, Georgie Brooks, last time I came out against him?"’ “Oh, you gained two or three,” I told him. “It didn't exactly scare us, though, Miltie,” 1 told him. he said. “Wait till Watch me handle this proved primary syste yalk right over you. { Uncle Ben'” next im I'm going to 1 t0ld you once knows the way Milt went into that | campaign to get the nomination away | from George Brooks. His “barrel-of seeds” speech was mild—it was just nothing at all—compared to what he went around promising the *people” now. 1 went to hear him once, and part of what he said went about Mke this: get wise? Ain’t you tired yet of hav you in Washington? ~Honest, folks, I should think vou'd rather have a good busy cockroach down there for you, because a cockroach would any- how do something; at least he'd move around sprier! Don't you ever get tired of letting that crooked miltion- aire push ride you? Now, the latest thing I hear they're talking about is putting up the gas rate, the tele. phone rate, and street car They're going to make the people and the poor man pay all this on top of the freight rates and the passenger fares the railroad crooks are already charging; and, just to make your life pleasanter, the coal profiteers are raising the price of coal about $1 a month. And you poor fish sit here and let ‘em do it to you! “What are you paying for a beef- steak? 1 mean if you been lucky enough to see a beefsteak since G Thomas Brooks went to Washington to help the packers and profiteers run the Government. What's the reason these corporation millionaires tell you they got to put up the price of every- thing a poor man needs? They say it’s because wages are so high! The Rockefellers and Astors and G. ‘Thomas Brookses won't be able to keep their pants creased unless they raise prices on you and lower your wages Somebody might have to get along with one butler to peel an orange every Tues- day for him on the yacht! A a pity now! “Listen, boys! Send G. Thommy Brooks back to Congress again, and vou'll get the same old deal you've always had. My gad! Haven't you got that into your beans by this time? I came here tonight to tell you what 1 stand for if you send me to Wash ington to work for you. aires say the workingman is getting too much wages. All right, I stand for putting those wages higher! The millionaires say their high prices are too low. All right, I stand for put- ting them lower! Yes, and then some! They want to raise your street car fare from a nickel to 7 cents; 1 stand for higher pay for the motormen and conductors, and a 3-cent fare! Now answer me: Do you want it? He got a roar out of them on that and I suppose I was about the only person there that thought of the ridic- ulousness of a candidate for the nomination to Congress promising to reduce street car fares in a city out- side the District of Columbia. There wasn't any doubt of it; he'd WiLLARD B VAUGN You bet it's so!” he told me nnd! would and the day's about due. | Well, most evervbody around here | “Ain't you dead ones ever going to | ing a pair of creased pants represent | fares. | less gold-liveried English | 't that | The million- | begun to worry the ‘“organization” a good deal. For one thing, he got the most enormous publicity; he was 80 outrageous that everybody talked about him and everything he said or did was “news” for the newspapers. They were all against him, but he was such good copy 'they couldn't help from playing him up on the front page. And another advantage he had, he worked the “underdog” sym- pathy to a standstill. He posed a&s the one single flgure struggling for the helpless “masses” against a horde of powerful scoundrels who were try- ing to run the “steam rolier” over him. No doubt that got many votes, but what brought him the most support was his promises. He promised the whole United Statesito everybody that voted for him and to the crowd of heelers that he'd worked up into & kind of “opposition organtzation.” Well, along toward the day of the primary, we took a count of noses, and it scared us. Personally speak- ing, it scared me worse as a patriot. | If he could put it over our people like {that, what sort of people were we getting to be? |~ Another thing in his faver was that | he had the “wet” element behind him, and hadn't hurt himself with the drys.” He simply kept off the sub. ject and let his friends whisper to both sides, whereas George Brooks had come out square and taken the position that prohjbition was now a part of the Consfitution and there. fore must be aBsolutely enforced, which got the “wets"” against him, of course. They worked hard, so hard, in fact, that it was really an issue— the issue—and then we saw that Milt Leffing had to be forced into declaring himself openly. If he went to the “drys” he'd lose most of the “wets,” who'd be sore, of course, after all the whispering; and if he went to the “wets” there were enough “drys” to meke it pretty sure he'd be beaten. We decided to wait for a speech he was booked to make at Eaglesfield, a little town miles from here, and then we'd pin him down. AT NOw. n re’s where the queer part comes in 0Old Truett Pettibone had died, back in 191 and a trust company and a board of directors was running the works for Josie. Her hushand got killed just before the armistice, and one day that Winter I {heard she was coming back to live there again, for a while, anyway, and then T heard she’'d arrived, and was settling herself in the house; but I didn’t see her until one afternoon as 1 was going by there 1 took a notion to go in and present my respects. We talked about how the town had changed and about who had married, who among the young people she'd known, and then I mentioned kind of | pointedly that George Brooks wasn't | married yi 1 “He's the finest young man in the | United States today, Josie,” I told her. !“He's having a career that makes all his old friends mighty proud of him. He didn't let on what he was going through at vour wedding: he took his medicine like a man; bu he never got over it,” T told her. He's never looked at any girl since. Well, she seemed to be kind of sur- prised—I don't mean about George, but T suppose she wasn't used to any body's comnig right out at her with | things like that. Still, she laughed and said she'd seen George and thought he was looking very well. “Yes,” T told her. *‘Washington life agrees with him. They say it's a mighty mnice climate. I should think rou'd like to spend some time there ourself, Josie.” Then she surprised me; she came right out with it flatter than I ha “Not as the wife of a Congressman, she said. And she laughed again. | don’t think 1'd like it at all? “Weil, you mightn't have to do much of that,” told her, and I laughed, too, because she kept on laughing. “George is liable to go & good deal higher than the House of Representatives.” Tsn't that charmin; she said. ana just then George Brooks himself walked in. And he hadn't been there three minutes when Milt Leffing showed up, too! What's more, I saw | right away they'd both of them been there often before. 1 was just going to get out and | leave her and George alone, but when Milt came in I decided to stay a li tie longer. “It seems like old time: 1 said. “I mean it seems like old times seeing you three young people | together. Do you take any interest in American politics, Josie?" 1 asked her. “Do you think y naturalization papers and vote? Our two friends here are both candidates. Oh, ves, I know,” she said, laugh | ing, but both George Brooks and Milt Lefiing got kind of red. fiss Josie,” I told her., “vou cer tainly ought to go and hear some of the speeches. They'd interest you a whole Jot.” I told her. “Especially some of Milt's Oh, no,” he came back at me. “I've never been an orator; George has al- ways been the orator. I only talk to the people.” “Yes, 1 should say you do!" I said, and then I turned to Josie again. “You mustn't miss hearing Milt,” I told her. “He's going to make a great speech at Eaglesfield about a week from now, and you could mo tor over there for it.” Milt said he was afraid she'd be bored if she went, and he gave me a | hardish look that showed he under- | stood what T was up to. If he didn't make one of his usual tirades the crowd would be disappointed, while if he did, why, Josie was an_intelligent woman, and she'd certainly know what to think of him. Besides, it was Eaglesfield where we were going to heckle him into a corner, though, of course, he didn’t know that. * X Kk X PRETT\' soon Milt began telling stories about some of the rough- neck workers of his twelfth ward, and I'll have to say this for him—he knew how to tell a story, and he made Josie laugh more than I guess she'd probably laughed since before the war. The truth is, I laughed once or twice myself; I couldn’t help it; but I didn’t intend to sit there and see him do it all, with poor Goerge never saying a word, so I waited till Milt was about in the middle of one of his stories and then I got up, pre- tending I didn't notice he was talk- ing, and said I'd have to go. “‘Good- afternoon,” I said, and I walked to the doorway. “Be sure you don't miss that Eaglesfield speech of our friend here, Josie. I think it'll be quite a re\" lation!” I told her. “You better T shal she called after me, and when 1 was getting my hat in the hall George Brooks came out and got his, too. “You go back there!” I whispered to him, but he shook his head, and when we got out on the sidewalk 1 went for him. “What the dickens you want to give him a clear field for?” I asked him. “What in thunder you want to u’ll take our | D. 0, APRIL “But, my goodness!” I told him. You can talk to her, can’t vou?" Not when he’s there. He's got a of making it impossibie, because he ‘either keeps talking about me or else he tells her funny stories one after the other, the way he did to day."” “Don't you know the most dan- gerous thing in the world is to let the other fellow keep a woman laugh ing?” I asked him. lspecially a widow!” I told him. “You better stop hin “Stop him!" says George. knows how to stop Milt Leffing” “Oh, I don't think it's that bad,” I said. “I think we're going to get him stopped politically at Eaglesfield. If he can talk himself out of what we got fixed for him there I'll eat the soldiers’ monument!” And in my opinion, if that lady we just saw ever hears one of his mob-rule speeches shelll never. let him in the house again. And I'm going to see that she does hear him, too, George. I'm tolerably sure she'll go over to Eagles field. Don't you want Yourself?” No,” he said. “I won't go. If I did I couldn't pretend it wouldn't be in the hope of ruining him with her.” “That's so,” I told him, as 1 turned in at my own gate. “I kind of wish sometimes you did know how to pi tend better, George." Well, as it turned out, T was the one that went with her myself Everybody in Eaglesfield had jam med in somehow and brought along the children and babi. “Gentlemen and ladies.” the chair- man told us, “we have heard all these candidates for minor offices that came here to invite our suffrages. We will now listen to one who desires a more important function, that of our Rep resentative in Washington. Wherever our sympathies may lay, gentiemen and ladies, the reputation of the gen tleman about to address us assures us we shall certainly be entertained in hearing them. 1 take =reat pleasure in introducing the Hon. Milton Leffing. Well, about half the crowd to rheer and holler so loud you couldn't cannon if it had been shot off in there, but in a little while they quiet ed down and T bent over Josie and said, * whatever yon will think!” She nodded and leaned forward; and she looked right excited. “The Hon. Milton Leffing!" says the chairman, shouting; and 1 saw the man that had been making signs to me stand up and look all around Everybody else was looking around, too. Isn't Mr. the chairman. Then was when I got it right in the face. A man with a new ready-made suit on and the size tag still sewed to his coat walked up on the platform “Who began “Leffing! Leffing:" Leffing present?” asks HE recent dle West, terrible in one of the mos ish and whimsical It buried people in grimly comic vays where they would remain alive tornado in the Mid- one of the most history, was also horribly freak: | & line of a hundred or so and whirled it fantastically end over end across s. leaving it hanging rakishly from a tree. porch, the street and hung by his coat to the top of a telephone pole. A beautiful house had its entire front removed in about a minute and a half, and when the darkness cleared a dead horse lay in the once charming drawing room! It would seem that only some enor- mously powerful pagan god with a strange sense of humor could have conceived these pranks The storm’s whole behavior, indeed, was like that of some insane clown giving way to his weird caprices. It skipped about over the stricken region like a_drunken dancer, leaving agony and death wherever it touched the earth. With what sounded like roars of horrid delight it leaped across the Mississippi River about two miles west of Gorham, Tll. Almost fmme- diately 90 persons lay dead, and 200 more struggled, maimed and bleeding. in the debris of what had been their homes. Then the crazy giant bounded ten miles to the east, to Murphysboro, in- explicably ignoring the intervening country, leaving it untouched. It pounced upon Murphysboro, a town of 13,000 and dealt fearful chas- tisement to almost exactly half the homes in the town. Then 1t dodged Carbondale and whirled Northwest to De Soto. This village it practically obliterated. Only 500 people lived there, of whom 118 were killed outright, and 200 were injured. Wherever the monster went it left examples of its vicious whimsicality. A calling card belonging to the Rev. H. W. Abbott was lying on the book- case in his study. The day after the storm he received a telephone call let Milt Leffing run you out like that 2 1 can't stand him,” George said. “I can’t speak to that fellow with any civility, and, of course, I can't speak to him any other way before a lady, o all I can do is not to speak at all. know bow that makes me look!" “WHISKED FROM THE FRONT PORCH OF HIS HOME TO THE TOP OF A TELEPHONE POLE" to take her| have heard a | Now, listen to him and think | It selected one flivver from | | One man was whisked off his front | 26, '1925—PART 5 and spoke to the chairman andithen to the crowd “l1 greatly regret to announce that a message received by long distance phone conveys the information that a sudden attack of acute indigestion has necessitated Mr. Lefing to remain confined to his room under the care of a medical man. He will not be able to address us this evening.” ‘“The quitter! I said, and I said it out loud. I epologized to Josie on the way {home for dragging her out on such u night—64 miles'—for nothing on earth. She was friendly enough 1o make light of 1t, but I felt about as silly as a man can; and 1 caught & horrible cold, too. I was in bed with it for 10 days. | PGS ‘lB"T here's the queer part of it | day 1 got out again and down to my office T had to 0. K. some very | private accounts, and one of them was for a taxicab that our people had | hired to 4 {the primaries. The driver® brought {his bill himself—an old nighthawlk driver I'd known a long whie, and he owned his car. His name W Jeb something-or-other. |7 “T reckon At Leffing'd never get | many dry votes if they knew aout | his drinking,” Jeb said, among other things. “Why, he was tighter that I |ever saw him the very night he wi to make that big speech. That's wht he never got there.” “How do vou know “Why, because.” Jeb * . “because | thought he was going ther | “Come off"" T told him. “I can prove it,” he told me “Prove it then,; I asked him. sure!” he said. “It was like this: It came on dark early that evening and you know how cold it was. | was in Jge Leminski’s nice war boot-leggin' parlors just about dark, with my machine parked around the | corner, when Milt come in there. He was just about ossified; he could just barely navigate and make himself understood. He come up to me and he say ‘Git me into your taxi, Jeb, and take me 1o Eaglesfield; I got a speech to make there’ ‘You better »t make no speech tonight,” I says. | ‘You'll fall on your face” ‘No, I w he s ‘I make some of my | best Speeches jest when I'm soberin’ | up. T know what I'm doin’,” he say E FLIVVER CLIMBED A TREE.” ' from a man 210 miles away who said he had picked up the card in front of his_house. A check for $800 had been lying beside the card. It had not been touched. The tax receipts of the town of Murphysboro were sportively pilfered by the wind and deposited 50 miles away. A barber shop chair was found standing upright in a field near West Frankfort. There was no barber shop . Apparently the chair transported for miles through the air. A grain elevator was moved intact to the middle of a road 40 feet away from its normal site. * ok %k H. PHILLIPS, of Princeton, Ind., sat in his office talking to a big colored man. “Guess it's going to storm, Jim," said Phillips, noticing the darkness of the sky. A minute later Phillips felt himself lifted with his office fur- miture up inte the alr and hurled out The | ul voters to the polls for| he told me to take him there and he\ 11 a7 ‘You git me in your taxi and I'll sleep | most of the way there and wake up | ready to make the speech of my life. | 1 got to make a special effort tonight, he says, ‘and after jest one more big drink we'll start,’ he savs. So he had the big onme, and it looked to me as though it pretty near finished him, but 1 got him out and into my car, and he went to sleep before 1 could git the door shut! Well, I started for | Eaglesfield. but when we got out in { the country T thought I was goin’ to | freeze. We was headed east and the | wind come from the north fit to blow us over. My car's open at the sides | of the driver's seat, and I didn’t have no_protection ut all. That rain was half snow and sleet, and by the time | we got off the paved road, I decided | Mt didn't actually need to make 1 speech at Eaglesfieid that night! | T turned right around and come to that bum restaurant of Mi Columbia avenue. I went in and got | warm, and then I went back and| looked in the door of the cab without | opening it. The glass was | near covered with snow, but T could | “sen him in there, and it looked to me as he had one eyve about half open | So T put both hands on the side of | the car and rocked it and shook it | as hard as I could, to make him think | I was still goin’, and he closed his | eyes and went on sleepir {and so 1 went back in kept warm until 1 thought | g0 out and rock the car again rocked it awhile and then 1 opened the door. He kind of half woke up, but didn't open his eves. * “What's the matter?’ he sav glesfield yet, are we | says. ‘We're jest at Hills | . half way. I'll have to charge $10 more to go on to Eagles-| | fledd” Well, he reached me out a flew five-doliar bills without ope and 1 went back in Miller ‘We “About 9 o'clock. when I reck | SiscnimvAE ot et st spee { I had Atiller call up the hall at Eagle: | field and say their big speaker had acute fndigestion. Milt woke u about N0 minutes after that an come in the restaurant as bright : a daisy.' He thought it wx place in ‘1laglesfield, and w know why J badn't taken him to the hall, Well. I stalled because I was afraid he'd me when he found out how s some nted to| thing into the mud. The n knew, mud had compfetely buried him He thought it was the end But he dug himself out and found he was ab- | solutely unharmed, 'The nesro he found under a pile of'soft coal, also | unharmed. | Another man in the same town was saved by the Kitchen table. He was hurled underneath it, the house fell on top of him, but the table kept the | | fallen roof from crushing’ him | Somewhat similar mercy {was shown | to a woman in bed with a'baby only a few days old. The house crashed | down, but the timbers fell #n such a| way that they provided a shedter, and | mother and child were not touched | by the showers of falling beams and plaster | W Lemley was seated ini.a res. | taurant, eating. The roof went iff the | restaurant first, then the four sides were whisked away. He was left sit- | ting at the table with his food in front of him. But he'd lost his appe tite. | The family of John Cummings)of De Soto were all in their home when the storm struck. They felt the house | rise from its foundations, twirl com pletely around and settle down ou | the ground ten or fifteen vards from | its former site. The house was nott damaged, nor was the family. \ What became of Deputy Sheriff George Boland is still a mystery. When last seen his body was 50 feet in the air, disappearing to the east ward in a cloud of wreckage. Jesse Pankey of Hotco drove his car into a garage when he saw the storm coming. As he stepped out of the automobile it rose up through the roof and disappeared with his wife and children in it. He was also seized by the prankish wind and carried five blocks, alighting unhurt. His wife and children were later found in a freshly plowed fleld, only slightly harmed. A nude baby nine months old was found half buried in the swamp mud near West Frankfort. It had been there for two nights. Restoratives were applied, and it Is apparently none the worse for the adventure. ® K A WOMAN was found screaming for help. She pointed to the ruins nearby. Rescue workers un- covered a baby buggy in which was the woman’s son, five days old. He was uninjured. The home of a farmer was com- pletely demolished and tossed into the air, with the exception of the corner of the bedroom where he and his wife slept. That was untouched. One woman was imprisoned under a live stove. She was rescued, but she will wear for the rest of her life the trademark of the stove's maker which was etched on her face. One little girl was struck a blow in the face which placed an eye where her left ear should be. And the ef- fect of the blow on her brain was so curious that her hands and arms turned out while her feet turmed in. A physician was able to remove the pressure, and her limbs are nor: tt he | | says pretty | $ | makes them | ones all | quet MILT SAID HE WAS AFRAID ED BE BORED IF SHE WENT, AND HE GAVE ME A LOOK THAT;SHOWED HE UN- DERSTOOD, were; but he didn't. He i minute, and the he broke laughing. goodness, Jeb! ‘I believe you've done more for me than I knew how to do for self’ So he give me another five dollar bill and I drove him home. You can see how it was; if it hadn't been for me he'd a’ made that speech at Eaglesfield.’ “Yes, Jeb,” been for you, might have happe TU AT w for J lieved Leffi But in the re ver is so all-fired e couldn't have hold of this people” we we! W to ride K they're he's thelr any difference ises he St on us He that a chance to th from George 1 the servative and sensible gentlemen I dictating this for were at the barn the other to celebra T or—isn’t that that matter, I Milt's election as a proof of i was there myseif. There’s one more thing my thinking it over has made he conclude: T don't believe we could have stopped h with Josie Pettibone Leclerc, eit Women are hard to cc AN'L Pre about the e an C n_ about the people nd how she did fool me about nting to be the wife of a Congress se she didn't say tha: Everybody saw how locked in the ladies that banquet, and how balcony at | proud she looked of her husband, the governor, when he made his speech of thanks (Coprright. 1925.) Strange Sense of Humor Shown By Tornado in the Middle West a hev a One po own_ home air into the On the way ing except face is permanentl: 1 was plucked from her 1d_whirled through the 1ins of another house - stitch of her cloth "kings was blo off. Except f ul bruises, I she was not injured ien there was the old woman whose yvard a new autc was tossed The a did it?” some one sald hat's not mine,” she had a sedan. It's gone came from I don't know it's a pretty good trade.” T t a few nado’s freakish practical joke are thousar of others w one can ever know except t monster who broke the shackles which ordinarily bind him and, for once, indulged his wickedly sard. whims, replied. “T s other where, but of the i ch pagan e Tarnish-Resisting Silver. NEW kind silver has of ta -resisting been developed by ritish silver manufacturing com- pany. The material, which is 92'5 per cent silver alloy, has been put to practical test by the manufacture of articles from it and the results have been reported to the Silver Trade Technical Society. The new alloy is said to stand up to the heat necessary fo soldering and to keep shape while being heated. It will bear more hest than standard silver and will allow of a considerable amount of manipu- Iation without developing any defecf. Britésh housewives are following the experiments with interest in the hape that egg and fruit stained silverware will soon be problems of the past. nis a B “PHILLIPS MOVED OUT SUD-" DENLY, WITH HIS OFFICE FURNITURE.