The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1878-08-10
How Dayton, o., Reporter Scooped
His Contemporaries.


list. Louis Republican,
There was picnic at Eby's Grove, on
the river bank near Dayton, Ohio, one
day. just before clearinghouse time
some of the young gentlemen of the
party wandered down the river side,
away from the picnic grounds. In Sc
cluded nook of shade on the margin of
ripping water, friDged by bushes and
wild blooms, they discovered a pile of
female clothing. They looked into the
river for signs of life or death, but saw
nothing. One of the party said that it
was romantic place for suicide.
A reporter of the party noted the
suicide" took down all the surround
ings. rummaged among the clothes,
found there were several sets or suits of
them, little and big. In one of the
pockets love-letter was found written
by Hail." he will never see her more.
The clothing was tenderly bundled up
and taken to the picnic camp, stuffed
under buggy seat, and the party started
home feeling very sad. 1t did not occur
to them that it was a little strange a
young lady and two or three little girls
should commit suicide all at once.
1t was perhaps "Julia" and all her
little sisters who had thus plunged into
eternity, and they naturally wanted to
keep together. 1t was a very sad case
disappointed love perhaps-and on
the theory of suicide the love-letter
would be good thing for the account
The clothes were taken to the police
station. An officer thought there were
too many of them to sustain the suicide
theory, but he didn't know exactly what
sort of freak big girl and two or
three little ones might take in roman
tic spot by the water, where the plunge
was cool and inviting on warm sum-
mer day. But the reporter was satisfied
that he had good thing, that the fell
lows on the other paper knew nothing
of, so he made the best of it, having re-
quested the captain of the police to keep
"shady" until further developments.
The affable captain promised, and the
sensationalist went to the Office to
write up the mystery of the pile of
clothes by the river. and probable sui
eide of "Julia" for love, as the printed
love-letter from "Hal," included in the
account would suggest. He got ahead
of the other papers, literally :" scooped
'em" next morning, with the sensation
of the picnic. The clothes were to be
on exhibition at the police Office that
day. The account was read evidently,
for early in the morning an angry father
came raging into the police quarters de-
manding the name of the man who took
those clothes.
There was no use in going through the
form of identification, for there could
be but one such incident in a day, and
he knew of that one. He told how it
was. His daughter had taken walk
on the river bank with two or three
little neighbor girls, and the place being
secluded and the temperature warm and
the water inviting, they concluded to
take bath. They went in. Soon they
heard voices in the woods and hid them
selves in the bushes. They huddled to-
gether as quiet as mice until the in
truding young man had come and gone
gone with their clothes.
Naturally they could make no alarm.
They were in fix. The only thing in
the world they could do was to remain
quietly where they were until after
dark, and then steal to their homes in
the kindly shadows of night. Darkness
never was so grateful to them, and it
happened to be dark stormy night.
WE'LL, they managed to sneak in and
under cover all night, and met nobody.
as the storm had driven all within doors.
Lucky little girls. The angry father told
his story to the sympathizing policeman,
and it was a rational explanation of the
mystery of the pile of clothes and the
supposed suicides. There was a general
correction in the papers. The reporter
who SO innocently blundered is now
chiefly concerned in knowing who Hap
is, and keeping ont of his way if he is
overweighted.
THEY have got, not Bridgeport, out in
Nevada, but the Reveille says there is a
bug in Nevada known as the stink
bug" A gentleman of this city,
while on his way to make a call ON a
friend few evenings since, accidentally