The Toledo chronicle. [volume] (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1873-1924, 1878-05-23

49, "AAAS ohEc&S W0tNAA bAC OCus
Sleep on. and dream. We blessed pairi
My prayers shall guard We night and day;
Ye guard me 30, We make me pray
Ye make my happy life a prayer.
h. q. 5todddrd, In RuraI New Yorker.
RUTH'S COMPOSITION.
In a shabby little house, in o shabby
little street, call it a street simply
out of compliment, it being in reality
only an alley that had started out to be
a street and finding itself too narrow
by half had stopped at the end of two
blocks and never gone any further
lived a shabby old man, called by his
neighbors "Mr. Waste Paper" and by
the rude boys and girls of the neighbor-
hood "Old Miser'' and ssQueer Eyes"
He bought and sold waste paper, and
all the four rooms in his house-he was
the only m in the street that occupied
awhole house and was looked upon
with great respect on that account; in
fact, | think if he had only rented a
0 or two like the rest of the inhab-
itants he would have been "Waste
Paper john" instead of "Mr. Waste
Paper"-were almost filed with it.
One, indeed, the largest, was filled to
the very ceiling. only a narrow path
way being left in the center like a small
valley between two steep mountains.
A deep drift like snow lay upon the
floors of two of the other roOms, and
hundreds of books from which the COW
ers had departed forever, old magazines,
used up ledgers, torn handbills and cir
~culars, were stacked along the walls,
and in the fourth room, where the old
man ate and slept, all the furniture,
with the exception of a tiny stove, a
gridiron, a saucepan and q tea-kettle,
was made of paper. Ottomans formed
out of newspapers laid neatly one upon
the other, a bed built of some twenty
large bundles of coarse brown paper,
with an old "Webster's Unabridged''
for a pillow; a table made by placing
six big account books on the floor, six
more on the top of them, and so on
until enough had been used. All Leg
less, of course, but serving MI. Waste
Paper as well as though they had any
number of legs.
You V saw such a queer place in
your life, and never heard such a CON
tinual rustling and cracking as the
furniture kept up, and very likely Won
never met such a very odd old man.
One shoulder was a little higher and
one leg a little shorter than the other.
and he had one black eve and one blue
one. And when he was eood-natured
he looked at you with the blue one. and
when he was cross he looked at Won
with the black one. and I don't think
there could ever have been two more
expressive ewes in the whole world
one could look SO cross and the other
so kind.
Well, nobody in Sam street-tbat il
what thew called the ambitious alley.
after old Sam Junkman. who built the
first house there fifty wears apo-knew
ANYTHING about Mr.. Waste Paper. ex-
cept that he had lived in that four-
roomed house for the last ten wears
and that the only person he was at all
friendly with was Mrs. Doll, the kid
glove cleaner. who lived next door. and
who boiled the water for his teao on
summer evenings, when he had no fire
at home.
Mrs. Dolls children, Amos and
Cherry, liked the old man very well. for
he used often to give them pretty pict-
ures which he cut from the picture-pa-
pers which fell into his possession, and
more rarely a penny or two; but the
other Sam-street children called him
old miser," because he gave them
nothing and because they heard their
fathers and mothers say, "Waste
Paper has a good sum of money in
some bank or other you may bet. for
he's been buying and selling for ten
years and never had a days sickness,
and wearing the same old clothes, sum-
mer and winter, and not a chick or a
child, or a dog or a cat to look after,
and never asking anybody to have a
drop of beer or a pipe of 'baccy. He's
a reg lar old miser, that's what he ISL
But the old man paid no attention to
the rude boys and girls, except to turn
his black eye on them once in a while
when they became too annoying, but
passed his time when at home reading
something from his stock in trade, or,
with eyes h~alf-closed, in deep thought
about what no one but himself ever
knew, when one bright. warm May day,
he came slowly into his living-room
from the street, carrying a heavy bag
his shoulder.
He placed the bag upon a paper OF
toman, sat down on the paper bed be-
side the paper table, wiped his face
with q paper handkerchief. and then
opened the bag and tumbled the con-
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