Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1888-10-03
ENTIRELY REFORMED.
How an Elephant Was Instrumental In
Redeening n Drunkard.


One of the strangest stories of drunk
ards reformation is told in the Philadelphia
Times. William H, prosperous trades
man of Eastern Pennsylvania, lost his
property through unforeseen business
troubles, and, leaving his young family.
went west to retrieve his fortune; but dis
couraged by want of success, he took to
drink, and finally became a degraded
loafer. iHe drifted eastward again, and was
seen in Troy, n. ", hanging around LIQUOR
saloons. He had lost his manhood. and
even his very name (having long been
ashamed to be called by it), and men knew
him as ''The Worm of the Still"
Once, soon after the arrival of a circus
and menagerie combination to exhibit in
the city, the drunkard saw one Of the keep
ers purchase pailful of whisky for sick
elephant, and sneaked after him to the
circus tent, following the impulse of his
raging thirst.
down before Betsy the sick elephant.
and she drank about half of it, The intelli'
gent brute knew it was medicine, and did
not propose to take more of it than she
thought she needed. The bucket still half
full OF liquor, was left standing near her,
and the keepers attention was called ayay
for moment
Hardly was his back turned when a
bloated, red face was poked through under
the canvas, and its pair of watery ewes
were fastened greedily upon the bucket.
Betsy fixed her keen little eyes ON the in
truder, stopped swaying to and fro. and
waited to see what he would do.
he did not notice her. The fascination of
the whisky blinded him to every thing else
The bucket was beyond his reach. He
drew himself under the tent until he could
clutch it. The instant that he did SO, Betsy
flung her powerful trunk around his waist
and whirled him up in the air
She did not mean HIM any harm, but he
was tampering with her medicine, and she
would not stand that So he had barely
time TO give one wild shrek OF terror, when
she tossed him thirty feet away, where he
struck against one of the ponderous wheels
of lion cage, fell to the earth with one leg
broken, and three fractured ribs. She did
not attempt TO follow and hurt him, for she
had no malice. He was carried away on "A
stretcher TO the hospital
The rest of the story is a pathetic
romance. The wretched mans recovery
was so slow that fifteen weeks passed be-
fore he could walk on crutches: but IN that
long time the thorough hospital treatment
had cleansed all the liquor out Of him, and
he had begun 10 look something like his
former self
One day, when party Of ladies visited
the hospital, distributing flowers and read
ing matter to the patients, one Of them. a
handsome but sad-faced young woman.
stopped by his chair, and gazed at him as if
strangely startled.
Father" she SAID, '.you don't remember
me. am your daughter Mary,
1t was twelve years since she had seen
him, but she knew him.
Sne had him conveyed 70 her home as
soon as possible, where, in time, he was re-
stored 70 health, found good employment
anu began new life Of sobriety and in
dustry, which continued to the last.
dis adventure with the elephant. 80 near.
y fatal TO him, proved the means Of bis en-
tire reformation.