St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1878-03-01

man can be found, who is out OF en-
ployment, l would like his photograph
Harris, in american CultiUGtOr.
How a Story Grows by the Telling.
Mr. Burdette, writing in railroad car, to the
Burlington Hawkeye.l
As | write, an old lady in the opposite
seat interrupts me to ask me if | am
''going fur"
am, l unblushingly tell her, awful
''fur."
Where did come from7
Black Hills.
No? well | didn't look like it,
| explain that | have not been out
there mining or roughing it, but went
out to get the body of my brother, who
was a miner and been shot by the In
dams.
Oh-h-h with a wailing infection of
sympathy that makes me ashamed of
myself. But curiosity soon conquers
pity, and the old lady goes on probing
my lacerated heart.
"Did | git him ?"
Eyes, ma'am," very sOlemnly. 81
have him in the baggage-car."
A long pause, for mourntul reflection,
| suppose, and to give me chance to
nerve up and prepare for the next ques-
ton.
"Was he scalped 2"
"Yes," say, with a sigh, "scalped,
shot through the body with arrows, all
his fingers chopped off, his eyes gouged
out and his ears bored"
The old girls cup of horrors is full.
She leans back in her seat with a sigh
of grim satisfaction and questions me
no more.
Was it wrong to lie to the old lady
in this heartless manner7 Yes, think
it was not. In thus innOcently stuffing
my travelling acquaintance with fable
about a country | had never seen, a
brother l had never had, and Indians
that never were, l wrote for the old
lady thrilling chapter in her quiet
life. She would go to her quiet little
home and brighten its humdrum life by
telling her people how she met and
talked with a man who was going home
with the body of his brother, mangled
in the manner described.
Then, in the course of time, after
many repetitions of this narrative, she
would involuntarily and innocently
glide into the statement that she went
into the baggage-car with me and l
showed her the mangled, tortured body,
and she would mangle it more as the
narrative grew upon her. Then she
would, after little while, declare, and
in all innocence and truthfulRess and
belief in her own statement, that she
was on the train when it came through
the Black Hills, and, from the car win
dow, saw the Indians chasing the DOOM
ed man and perforating his body with
arrows, and dancing around him in
tiendish glee, while she begged the con-
ductor to get off and stop them, and
how he declined ON the flimsy ground
that he had a wife and nine children to
support, and no insurance either on the
top of his head or his life. Then, after
a few more rehearsals, arrows would fly
right in at the window where she was
sitting, and one or more passengers
would be killed. One arrow would pass
through her bonnet. The train would
be scene of the widest confusion and
carnage. And, at last, after the old
lady had been gathered to her mothers,
her grandchildren would tell their
grandchildren about their noble old
grandmother and their brave, gallant
grandfather who both fell by the hand
of Outnumbering savages, while defend
ing a railway train from the attack of a
band of Sioux Indians, under the COM
mand of Sitting Bull, whom their grand
father, just before he died, killed with
his own hand. And thus grand, thrill
ing page of family history will grow out
of my unaffected little romance to the
inquisitive old lady.