The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1878-07-03

Their records shall instruct, with heartfelt moan,
Their sons to combat with LIES Ills alone.
Nations, who strove to waste each others lands,
Turn swords to ploughshares for their common
hands.
Oh, misery! before that day can come,
Wsr-nends may thrust their fan in many home
HALF AN HOUR OF AGONY.
MIR, THUMBLEDIRK's TERRIBLE PREDICA-
Yesterday afternoon Mr.. Jasper
Thumbledirk, who is fo~rty-three years
old and unmarried, dashed into our
sanctum and evolved a remark, the in
tensity of which fairly made our blood
curdle. And when he completed the
remark, which vas neither very long
nor remarkably complicated, he picked
up a dictionary, hurled it at the proof
reader with great asperity, and before
that good natured and greatly abused
angel of the editorial staff could recover
from his emotion and get his umbrella
MI. Thumbledirk was gone. He dashed
out Of the door, missed IKE stairway and
stepped down the elevator, falling a dis
lance of three stories, but he was too
mad and excited to get hurt, and we
heard him rushing away down the alley,
yelling and swearing till he wa out Of
sight and hearing. As he is usually q
yery severe man, of habitual reserve,
very particular and guarded in his Ian
gusge, we were amazed not only at his
words, for which his excited manner af-
forded not the slightest explanation.
During the day, however, we became
possessed of certain facts which may
give the reader some clew to the causes
OF this worthy and respectable iazen's
violent and disrespectful manner and
language:
It appears that about two o'clock in
the afternoon, Mr.. Thumbledirk drop
ped in at the Union depot to ask some
questions relative to the arrival and de-
parture of trains, and while passing
through the ladies' waiting room, he
was accosted by a lady acquaintance who
was going east on the 7. P. Il W. at
alf-past two. She wished to go up
town to make some little purchases, but
didn't want to take her baby out in the
rain. Would Mr.. Thumbledirk please
hold it for her until she came back
She wouldn't be gone more than five
minutes, and little Ernest was just as
good as an angel, and beside, he was
sound asleep.
Mr.. Thumbledirk, with a strange hut-
ter of his feelings, lied, and said he
would be only too delighted. Then he
took the baby, and the ticket agent, who
has two, knew by the manner in which the
man took the baby and looked anxiously
from one end OF it to the other to see
which end the head was on, that he had
v handled a human baby before in
all his life, and promptly closed his win
dows to shut out the trouble that he
knew was on the v of an eruption.
Mr.. Thumbledirk is a very tall, dig
ni6ed man. He was rather annoyed as
the mother disappeared through the
door to observe that all the women in
the waiting-room we're intently re-
earding him with various expressions,
curiosity predominating. He sat down
and bent his arms at the elbows until
they resembledin shape two letters VS.,
with the baby lying neck and heels in
the angle at the elbows, and he looked,
and he felt that he looked, like the hide
GUS pictures of Moloch in the old Sun
dsy-school book.
MI. Thumbledirk felt keenly that he
was an object of curiosity and lily re-
pressed mirth to the women around him.
Now q dignifed man does not enjoy be-
ing a laughing stock for any body, and
it Is especially humilisting for him to feel
that he appears ridiculous in the eyes Of
, women. This feeling is intensified when
the man is a bachelor, and knows he is
q little awkward and Ill at ease in the
presence of women, anyhow. So, as he
gazed upon the face of the quiet, sleep
ing infant, he made an insane effort to
appear perfectly easy, and to create
the impression that he was al old mar
ried man, and the father of twenty-si1
children, he disengaged n ARM, and
chucked the baby under the chin.
About such a chuck that you always
feel like giving q boy with a ''putty
blower" or a "pea shooter" It knocked
the little rosebud OF q mouth shut so
quick and close the baby couldn't catch
its breath for three minutes, and MI.
Thumbledirk thought, with a strange,
terrible sinking of the heart, that it was
Just possible he might have overdone
the thing. A short, young womsn IN a
kilt skirt and a pretty face, sitting di-
rectly opposite him, said, "Oh!' in a
mild kind of a shrek, and then giggled;
a tall, incwoman IN a black bombazine
dress and q gray shawl, and an angular
woman in q calico dress and a sun bon
net, gasped, "Why!' in q startled duet,
q fat woman with q small herd of child
rem and q market basket, shouted,
"Welll" and then Immediately clapped
her plump hands over her mouth as
though the exclamation had been startl-
ed from her, and a tall, raw-boned
woman who wore horned spectacles and
talked bass, said, "The poor lambp' In
such sepulchral tones that everybody
else laughed, and Nj. Thumbledirk,
VIII: didn't Just exactly know whether
she meant him or the baby, blushed
scarlet Auu lclt LID 1aSC SAoW oo hoo eAoe
he smelt his hair. And his soul was
filed with such gloomy forebodings that
all the future looked dark to him.
The baby opened it's blue eyes wider
than any man who never owned a baby
would have believed it possible, and
stared at Mr.. Thumbledirk with an ex'
preston of alarm, and q general lack Of
confidence that BODIED a distressing want
of Harmony in all further proceedings.
MI. Thumbledirk viewing Il. ese signs Of
carelessness with inward alarm, con-
ceived the happy idea that the baby
needed a change of position. So he
stood it upon itsfeet.
It is unnecessary to tell any mothe,
of a family that by the execution of this
apparently very simple movement, the
unhappy man had every thread of tina
baby's clothes underits arms and aroune
its neck in an instant. A general bu
suppressed giggle went around tn
room.