Lakeland Evening Telegram Newspaper, April 24, 1914, Page 8

PAGE BIGHT f you want your Shirts and Collars Laundered the VERY BEST Send them to the Lakelana Steam Laundry || oo Weare better equipped than qver for giving you high class Laundry work, Phone 130 T T 20 o) T LR L SRS Beware o the beauty that's only paint deep. Performances, not promises, measure the worth of an automobile. “Beauty is as beauty does,” and the Ford car has a rec- ord unmatched in the world’s history. By that record you should judge it. Five hundred dollars is the new price of the Ford runabouts; the touring car is five fifty; the town car seven fifty—all f. o. b. Detroit, complete with equipment. Get catalog and partxculars from Lakeland Automobile &fl—' Supply Co. Lakeland, Fla. ’ For the Graduate We suggest gifts of books, Fountains Pens, Station- ery in fancy boxes Gradu- Ihe Book Store We frame’ Diplomas. SIDEWALKS n Having had many years’ experience in all kinds of cement ana brick work, I respectfully solicit part of the paving that is to ba done in Lakeland. All work GUARANTEED ONE YEAR As an evidence of geod faith I will allow the property owner to retain 10 per cent of the amo unt of their bill for that time, pro- viding they will agree to pay the retainer with 8 per cent per an- num at the end of the guarant ee periog if the work shows no in- Jurlous defects caused by defe ctive material or workmanship? D. CROCKETT ®. 0. Address, Box 451 Res., 501 North Iowa Avenue. \ MAYES GROCERY CO. PR “Reduce the cost of living,” our motto for nineteen fourteen Will sell staple groceries, hay, feed, Wilson-Toomer Fertilizers, all kinds of shipping crates and baskets, and seed potatoes, etc., at reduced prices: Mayes Grocery Co. LAKELAND, FLORIDA o Goseifecfriiosfoce oo oo Bl et o LLIT SR RN RATER TR C ROy EVENING TELEGRAM, LAKELAND, FLA., APRIL 24, 1914, PINK LINEN FROCK By DOROTHY DIX. “Wha-a-at,” cried the Angel, who had backed the new musical extrava- _ganza, “The Queen of the Cannibal Isles,” “Loraine Lorance going to leave the stage in the midst of the big- gest Broadway success in years? Is she crazy, or what?” “She is a woman,” replied the man. ager, succinctly, as if that explained everything. He glanced around the little office whose walls were literally covered with the photographs of actresses—prima donnas, tragedy queens, eccentric old women in com- edy parts, dashing soubrettes, wistful eyed engelues—and sighed. He had had much experience of the ways of women. “Such a voice,” went on the Angel, goomily reminiscent, “always made me think of birds singing in a golden dawn, or-er-er-something like that, you know, it was so full of the joy of living. Then her galety and humor— so spontaneous, so fresh, and that lit- tle way she had, so deamurely wicked, by George, it was about the most fetching thing I ever saw.” “It takes a saint to play the devil,” commented the manager, grimly. “And ‘. think of her being fool enough tu throw everything up right now,” continued the Angel, “why, she's got success—it’s in her very hand.” “Well,” observed the manager, “ff, when Heaven gives a woman tempera- ment, it would also endow her with a little reason, it .would have saved me from becoming bald so early in life, and would have made the show busi- ness a safer and more agreeable occw pation.” ; “What does she say? inquired the Angel. The manager fished a letter out from under & pile on his desk, and be- gun to read aloud: “Sorry she can't renew her contract with us, but she is going to leave the stage. Hopes it won't disappoint us, and that we will have no trouble in finding a substitute for her in ‘The Queen,” but she's found out that there's something bet- ter than the tinsel of the stage, and ‘more worth striving for than fame and money—" ‘“ Jish she'd tip me off to what it is,” put in the Angel, parenthetically. “In short,” continued the manager, summarizing the lengthy letter, “she has determined to leave the stage, and stay at home with hubby—you know that in real life she is Mrs, James Benton—and darn his socks and cook his dinners.” “Where is she?” asked the Angel. “Oh,” responded the manager, “at some little iron mine down in Ala- bama, where her husband is manager for a company. It's a gay metropolis that consists of a company store, with the post office in one corner, and an interesting population of a thousand negro and Itallan laborers, with perhaps two other men beside her husband who wear collars and speaks English, and@ where the excit- ing event of the day is the change of shifts, when the day laborers go oft and the night hands come on. At least that is the alluring description that ‘Miss Lorance’ gave me of the place when she explained how she came to leave her happy home for New York and comic opera.” “She won’f stay there,” exclaimed the Angel, bringing his fist down on the desk with a thump. “Good God, think of a woman like that being buried alive in such a hole. She'll be back in two months begging for her old part, and we will make her pay for giving us this attack of heart failure.” “Don’t count on her too much,” warned the manager, “she's a woman, ! you know.” While the two men in the little Broadway office were settling her fate, the woman of whom they spoke was standing on a great pile of slag, send- ing her voice out in a roulade of song that silenced, for very shame, the mocking birds in the nearby olean- ders. At last, wearied, she stopped, and turning to the great ugly bulldog that crouched at her feet she cried whimsically: “What, Tige, not a round of ap- plause? Don't you know, sir, that was my big Broadway hit, and was good for three curtain calls every night?” But the faithful dumb ani. mal only licked her hand by way of reply, and with something like a sob she caught her fingers in his collar and started homeward. It was all so typical of her fate, she told herself. She had wanted fame, and glitter and glare, and she had gotten only dumb devotion. Five years before she had married Jim Benton, who had taken her from an uncongenial home, where a shrew- ish and vulgar stepmother had made life well-nigh unbearable for the girl, whose nature was as highly strung and sensitive as a violin. She had loved, as well as her unawakened heart could, the big, silent, strong man, who yearned over her with ceaseless tenderness, and for awhile | she had been happy enough fn the Mt-| (/o 4 " Ajapama the most glorlous tle cottage at the mines where they | had gone to live. By and by, however, she begun to grow restless, to feel the stirring within her of unguessed forces and powers and to know, as genius must always know, that it must find expression or die. She was intensely, vibrantly alive, and she had never lived. She wanted gre determined by its character— to know, to feel, to see, to measure, Herbert Spencer. her beauty against other women's, tol \ try the splendid power of her glorious voioe. and to sway men and women with it. She yearned and hungerod for the glitter of streets that were but names to her, and to be part of the wild tide of [life that sweeps through a great city. For a long time she fought against her desire, but in the end it conquered her. The deadly monotony of the life she led, the weary sameness of the faces she knew 8o well, the oft-told tales of places where nothing happens, got upon her nerves until she felt that she must either commit suicide or end life in a madhouse. Then, summoning her courage, she went to her husband and told him of her longings, her despair. “It isn’t that I don't love you,” she said, hurrying over the words that she knew wounded him like stones thrown by a cruel hand, “but there 18 something that tells me that I must g0 away to the life that is calling me, or I will die. You—jyou have seen the world, you have your work—but I—I have never been beyond these hills that smother me. I have nothing to remember—nothing but the days that are all alike. Let me go,” she walled, “let me go only for three years. It fsn't much out of a lifetime, and I will come back and be your slave the balance of my life.” For reply Jim Benton took the slender little figure in his arms and pressed it tight against his breast so that she might not see his face, but she could feel the beating of his heart, and once it seemed to her it almost stopped. At last, however, he found his voice. “Poor little girl,” he said, “poor lit fly and that T have eaged,” and then he let her go from him to the life she craved—freely, and ungrudgingly, and made the way easy for her feet, for the big silent man, keeping his faith- ful' watch over the trust confided to him, had powerful friends in the great city, who put liis wite in the way of realizing her ambition. From the first she was one of those destined to success. Her glorious beauty and her superb voice attracted attention at once, and added to this was a strange, illusive, intoxicating vitality—a sense of the joy of living that was almost madness—that swept her audiences into her mood, and caught and carried them along with her in an irresistible furor. Up and up she went by leaps and bounds in her profession of “The Queen of the Cannibal Isles.” She had, as the Angel had said to the manager, her little world at her feet. It was at this flood tide of her suc cess that she had turned her face homeward. The three years that she had asked for had expired, and not once in all that time had she seen her husband. Not once had he asked her to come back to him, or repined at the loneliness of his lot. Now she was going to the mines once more, and as the train bore her on and on to her destination, she strove in vain to pierce the veil that hid the future. Could she go back to the lonely mo- notony of that life? Was one man's devotion worth the adulation of a thousand? Had she the strength to cast the goblet of success away from her just when it was brimming to the full with all that's most alluring in life? She could not answer. She had not answered the question when she arrived' at the lonely sta. tion of the lonely little mining town. She had not written Jim that she was coming, and she made her way alone to the little cottage where he lived, and pushed the door softly open. The rooms were vacant, and she wandered from one to the other until she came to the one where her husband lived. There was his big desk, with his pa. pers and his little piles of ore to be tested—orderly, business-like as she remembered them, but over in one corner, hanging against a nail was something pink. She went over and loucl’xed it. It was a little pink linen gown that she used to wear before she went away, and that Jifh had liked to see her in. In a flash of intuition it came to her all that it meant—the lonely man, deserted, heart hungry, who had faithfully kept the little cast. off love, as the only thing he had left of the wife he had lost. The pathos of it cut her like a knife. She dropped down on her knees and buried her face In the folds of the dress, and when she got up her eyes were bright| with indescribable tenderness, and she ) knew that this had answered her ques- tion. A minute more and she had slipped off the Paris gown she wore, and put on the old pink frock, and then she heard Jim's step along the hall and she turned to greet him. _ “Loraine,” he cried, and staggered against the wall as if he had seen a ghost, but her strong young arms were about him, and her dear head on his breast. “Jim—Jim,” she sobbed, “I've come home at last. I know now that there is something better than fame and| glitter, and tinsel, and that the love! that can just be faithful is worth all the applause of all the audience on earth, but—" and she looked up fear- iessly in his eyes—“I am not sorry that I went. I had to try my wings, but they have brought me safely back to the home nest.” “I hear,” said the Angel to the man- ager, “that down at that little mining contralto voice in my memory is be- tle song birdl that was given wings and Hauling of All K:ué taanaasas it I 222t 2ttt b Large cool rooms may be rented with or witho MATANZAS HO PURNISHED WITH NEW FURNITUS PEPPEPPEPPLSLPIOELP IR IBIb & LR L T T T T THE SONG SHOP ¥ 909 Franklin Street. I Ko . TAMPA . . - FLORIDA%: SHEET MUSIC i MUSICAL SUPPLIES Mail Orders our Specealty ] | KOl SUPF Dike’sramil M:ss W.C.Williams Graduate NURSE and MASSEUSE Body, Facial and Scalp, and Swedish Vibratory Massage Treatment given at privatg homes. Electric vibratory and neces- sary appliances supplied. Agent for Swedish Electric Vibrator. Telephone 228 Red. Norris Every week by y | Red ( Phar PHONE The Store Accq 3: 206 East Oa.k é» LWYARNELL Suocessor to W. K. MoRae TRANSFER LINRS B G Go GG Bocoego o Prompt and Reasonable Servies Fousehold Moving s Epecialty Phones: Residence, 57 Green Office, 109 ¢ J. B. STREATER % Contractor and Build ¢ mving hag twenty-ome years’ experience in build tracting in Lakeland and ‘vicinity, I feel competent to best service in this line, If* contemplating buiiding, will to furnish estimates and alP information. All work g Phone 160 J. B. STHE . Security Abstract & Title C Bartow, Florida R. B. HUFFAKER, PRES:.....L. J. CLYATT, SE(] FRANK H. THOMPSON, VICE PRESH. W. SMITH, TR ABSTRACTS OF TITLES New and upto-date plant. Prompt service. Lakeland business left with our Vige President at City receive prompt and efficient attention. NM S B Pfp BB PSS RRPPPEHOPRHBRP rpa FIRST NATIONAL BA ¢ My Mints are Wor Every Day coining dollars. You ot to save a few of them, a would suggest that you s a Savings Account in Bank, where it will be and earn you interest. e s a a2 SRR g L L A L L L L L e S L L s ] 3 THE FAIRY SHOEMAKE A Regular Play in Two Acts by Tiny Tots of Miss Stelnme Kindergarten School Auditorium Theébtre Wednceday, April 29th, at 8:15. Prices, 15¢, 25¢, and 35¢. { Look At My Window | HAVE A FULL LINE OF BABY ing used to hush a baby to sleep.”\ “I told you she was a woman,” re- plied the manager. (Copyright, 1914, by Dally Story Pub. Co.) National Goodness. A nation's institutions and beliefs RS R E T T T L L L L R R L L L DOLL PUMPS, BLACK AND WHITE AND ALL KINDS OF COLONlfiL ‘ PUMPS. ... s Clough Shoe Company LAM THE SHOE MaN Laad 2 d i