The Ohio Democrat. (Logan, O. [Ohio]) 1886-1906, 1886-09-25
GOOD AND BAD OMENS.
An Old Soldiers War Experience
With Them.

An Old Soldiers War Experience
With Them.
We all know that sailors believe in
omens, and shape their lives as
far as possible so as to get
the benefit of good ones and
escape the bad, but never knew that
soldiers were equally superstitious-
that is, never knew it till two or three
winters ago, when 1 was ''snowed in"
at little town in Iowa called Storm
Prairie. The adventure may not be
worth mentioning, except as evidence
that the human mind is awed by strange
in signs and portents just as sailors do.
Storm Prairie is well named. 1t lies in
the center of the blizzard region. When
got up that morning, and looked out
of the tavern window, l saw that the
storm on the prairie was raving mad.
You could actually see the wind, or
rather winds, for there were eight or
ten of them together, racing, wrestling,
Jumping and dancing over the prairie
in supernatural revelry. You could
literally see them take hold of one an
other and waltz. The music, mostly in
weird and plaintive minor key, was
furnished by an aolian harp of mill
ion strings-a hundred miles or so of
timber that fringed the Des Moines
liver in the distance. The staccato em-
phasis made by the jostling of the winds
against each other was like the firing
of guns. never attended such an eX-
citing concert and ball as that, neither
before nor since.
Naturalists maintain that only pigs
can see the wind, but people who have
travelled through Iowa and Nebraska in
the blizzard season will tell you that
men can see it Just as we'll as pigs.
When the mercury gets down to about
thirty-six below, us it was that morn
ing, you can see the wind palmer than
at any other time. The storm l speak
of has become historic among travelling
men.
am travelling man myself. I whirl
around this globe for a Chicago house,
and that is how was corraled at Storm
us L
was on my regular voyage, outward
bound. After d hearty breakfast, good
ham, fresh eggs, reliable butter and
sure-enough cream, went over to the
railroad station to get the latitude and
longitude. and to take an observation.
The station agent, who was also tele-
graph operator, told me that the storm
was general throughout the Northwest,
hat oil ~
nitely postponed The philosophy of
our craft is this: When it blows to let it
blow, and when it SHOWS to let it snow.
The telegraph was working yet, and,
sending home what few orders I had
and the information that l was showed
in at Storm Prairie, went back to the
tavern to look after my inalienable right
to life, liberty and the pursuit of hap
pness." /"
When got back found half-a-dozen
fellow-citizens already in possession of
the available assets of the bar-room
stove. 1t was a big stove, red-hot in
places, and those red spots served as
targets for the citizens to spit at as they
smoked their pipes and compared this
blizzard with the blizzard of '76, or ~,
or so, or whenever it was, while one
white-bearded patriarch sneered con-
temptuously at them all. They were
mere zephyrs, he said, compared with the
blizzard Of 1856, "when we had to chop
whis y with a hatchet. same as ice."
The whole front of the stove was pre-
empted by that venerable figure, who
might be sixty-two years old, or there
abouts. He was large. ruddy, and
very solid man, with fearless face and
a clear eye. He said ''thar'' and cyan
der" and "right smart" He also creek
oned" and "allowed." They called
him Major, which thought was one of
those honorary titles so generously be-
slowed in the Western country; but in
that suspicion was wrong, for the old
man had actually been Major in the
army during the war. He embraced the
ved-hot stove with his legs in very
affectionate way, and they extended
quite distance down the right and left
sides of it. He was the richest man in
the country, as afterward learned, hav-
ing taken up a ''claim' in the early
day, which was now big stock farm, a
splendid grove Of timber, a awater-power.
. saw-mill, grist-mill. and town prop
erty. He was also vice-president OF the
First National bank of Storm Prairie.
The Majors name was Joseph Nee.
According TO his own autobiography.
revised and corrected, he was born and
raised in lnjianny, in what he called
''the brush" Schools were few. and
the school torn short in the brush when
he was boy. The only desirable thing
that the major lacked was ''eddication. "
A little, . very little reading and writ
ing was all the ''larnin that ever fell
TO Joe. Sensitive on this point, he used
TO offset the disadvantage rs we'll as he
could BY pretending to possess natural
qualities Of high order, such as hard
sense, physical strength, wrestling
power great memory, skill with the
rifle. or the axe, or the soythe. He was
blacksmith by trade, and because he