Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1891-10-02
CROOKED JOE"
HY MARY A. p. srANsBURY.

A.
A great railway depot may not be the
best school for a boy, yet poor little Joe
Bryan had scarcely known any other.
He could not remember when the long
wait;ng-room, with their tiled floors and
dreary rows of stationary settees, and
crowds of hurrying people, were not
quite as familiar to him and more hcme-
like than his mothers small, bare house,
which lie knew as little more than place
for eating and sleeping.
At an age when any ordinary baby
might have been frightened into convul-
sions by the shrek of locomotive, Joe,
securely fastened in his cab, would stare
for hours through the great window, un'
disturbed by the incessant rush and roar
of arriving and departing trains.
He had been only six months old
when the dreadful accident happened
which, at one fell stroke, made him
fatherless and transformed him from a
strong, well-developed infant, to a pitt
full creature, which even death refused
to take.
The older yard men told the story even
yet-how young Michael Bryan, as
straight and manly fellow as ever left
his green, old, native island for the bet
ter chances Of the new world this side
the sea, came whistling out of the round
house that morning and stepped hastily
from before an incoming locomotive,
neither seeing nor hearing another rush
ing up the parallel track. His mates
cried out to him-too late Nobody
who saw it would ever forget the look
of agony which distorted his handsome
face in that one horrible instant. when
he recognized his doom, or the perpen-
dicular leap into the air, from which he
fell back beneath the crunching wheels.
In the excitement and CONSERVATION Of
the time no messenger had been sent in
advance to prepare the poor young wife
for her trouble, and she stood in the
doorway with her baby growing in her
arms, when the stout bearers paused at
her gate with their mangled burden. She
uttered terrible cry and fell fainting-
the chiId's tender back striking the sharp
edge of the door stone.
"What pity that it was not killed
outright !" said everybody but the mother.
She herself always insisted that only her
constant watching over the little, flick
ering life kept her from going in the
first dreadful months of her beresye
meat.
The officers of the railway company
were kind to poor Mary Bryan. They
paid the expenses of the burial, aud after
little Joe had slowly msnded, employed
her about the depot to scrub the floors
and keep the glass and woodwork bright
and neat.
When Joe was seven years old his
mother sent him to school. He went pa
tiently, day after day, making no com
plant but she awoke suddenly one night
to find him sobbing his heart out on the
pillow beside her. Only by dint of
long coaxing was she able to find out the
cause of his grief. Some of the rOugher
boys-more thoughtless than cruel, let
us hope-had called him "Humpy," and
asked if be carried bag OF meal on his
back.
Mary Aame1 with the fierce anger of
motherhood.
"Ycu shan't go another dayl" she de-
cIared. "The ruffiansl | won't have
my darlin' put upon by the likes of
theml"
So Joe's schooling had come to an un-
timely end. Yet, meagre as was bis stock
of book learning, the development Of
his mind far outstripped the growth of
his ssunted and deformed body. Every
body liked the patient little fellow, tug