The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1881-01-22

and then keep on down town. But be.
| fore this impulse can take shape in action
his conscience pricks him. He knows
perfectly well that the plumber will not
! haps for days, and in the meantime the
! wife of his bosom will be exposed to the
fury of the cook-and he remembers how
the cook tlourished the rolling pin in her
ungovernable rage. aud he shudders. Sc
he summons to his aid all that is in him
of heroism and goes back to his habita.
ton, fired by the high resolve to stop tie
aking roof or perish in the glorious at
tempt. Short though his absence has
been. it has sutliced Tar the cook to pass
from sullen defiance to open mutiny. She
has declared that no self-respecting
woman can abide in a kitchen that is rap
| idly becoming culinary bath tub. and
not stroke of work of work will she do
until the hydraulic nuisance is abated.
| This is time for deeds, not for words.
lie does not attempt to argue with the
cook; he goes down cellar for the coal
shovel and then sets ont for the back
building roof-clad in his ulster, bearing
the shovel as it were banner, and muir
muring words which are more earnest yet
less applicable than excelsior. The way
to the back roof is through little win
dow, approached by step ladder, on the
landing Of the third story stairs. He
gets through this window with difficulty.
| The roof outside is a glare of ice and
snow-nor is his equanimity increased by
the flood Of caution and advice turned
upon him by the wife of his bosom, who
has mounted the step-ladder and is
peering out at him through the little
window; and charming pretty picture
she makes framed in this wise, although
he is in too ugly a frame of mind to say
so. Then he begins to bang away at the
ice with the shovel-not making much
impression on the ice, but blistering his
hands in little while and give himself
two or three telling whacks on the toes.
He is not naturally clumsy man, but a
man bundled up in an ulster and working
with shovel on the slippe REST sort of a
slippery roof cannot very well be any
thing else. The climacteric catastrophe
comes of a Sudden and with rush. He
cannot tell just how it happened, but lie
believes that lie slipped somehow and as
he slipped got his legs tangled up with
| the handle of the shovel. After that he
remembers bowling over the edge of the
roof down with bump on the roof OF
the back kitching, then sliding rapidly
over this to the grape arbor. and thence
with crash down into a heap of snow
into the back yard-while throughout his
entire descent the despairing scream OF
the wife of his bosom, uttered as she sees
him begin to decline and fall, rings in
his ears.
When he has been gathered up and
taken into the house and felt all over and
found to be unbroken, things do not seem
to be as bad as they looked when his
performance in the line of lofty tumbline
began. Moreover. his suffering in hel
behalf has humanized the cook and she
consents to stay and get dinner; this
proves that the cook is good soul. for
as subsequent investigation by the plumb.
er shows-hc has cut number of holes
through the tin with the shovel and the
cap-stone comes to be laid upon the mon.
ument of his miseries he declares solemn.
" that he will henceforth and forever let
leaky roofs alone.