Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1892-09-01


p. m bh OhDhh.
ae..-..------------.-------- ~
Now George Peters was very, very
methodical person for so young man.
When letter got into Peters hands it
went through a certain routine and the
answer departed from him to the copy
ing book, and from the copying book to
the envelope, letter and all, with inclos
ures marked, went into the letter box
with regularity that nothing but the
office clock could emulate; and even
that, the clerks said, was not as regular
as Peters, for they claimed it was always
fast in the morning and mighty slow in
pointing to 6 o'clock.
1t is little wonder, then, thct Peters
stood high in the confidence of old man
Bentham. Bentham was Bentham Broth
ers & Co. There were no brothers and
no company-that was merely the firm
name-it was all Bentham. Perhaps
there was once a company, but that is
all ancient history, anyhow, and has
nothing to do with this strictly modern
story. And it did not interfere with the
fact that old Bentham's name was
lovely thing to have at the bottom of a
large check.
The clerks never speculated on the
probable effect of love on Peters, because
it never occurred to them that such a
thing as Peters falling in love was witfS
in the bounds of possibility. Love, they
argued, was not an article that can be
docketed and ticketed and referred back
for further information, and entered in
the day book and posted on the debit or
credit side of a ledger, so what on earth
could Peters do with it if he had 1t.
Manfestly nothing. If they had known
as much about human nature as you or
they would have surmised that when
Peters did fall it was time to stand from
under.
And who should Peters fall in love
with but the very woman of all others
whom he ought never have given
thought to-in other words, pretty little
Miss Sadie Bentham, if you please. 1t
made Peters himself cold when he
thought of it, for he knew he had just
as much chance of getting the moon or
the laureateship as the consent OF old
man Bentham. The clerks always said
that it was Miss Sadie who fell in love
with Peters, principally, | suppose, be-
cause she should have known better,
and think myself there is something
to be said for that view of the matter.
Anyhow, she came to her fathers
place of business very often and ap
parently very unnecessarily, but the old
man was always pleased to see her, no
matter how busy he happened to be. AT
first she rarely looked at Peters, but
when she did flash one of those quick
glances of hers at him poor Peters
thought he had the fever and ague. He
understood the symptoms later on.
l don't know how things came to a
climax; neither do the clerks, for that
matter, although they pretend to. Be-
sides they are divided in their opinions,
so 1 think their collective surmises
amount to but very little. johnson
claims that it was done over the tele
phone, while Farman says she came to
the office one day when her father was
not there and proposed to Peters on the
spot. One thing the clerks are unani-
nous about, and that is that Peters, left
to himself, would never have had the
courage. Still, teo much attention must
not be paid to what clerk say. What
can they know about it? They are in
another room.
Peters knew that he had no right to
think about that girl during business
hours. He was paid to think about the
old man and his affairs, which were not
nearly so interesting. But Peters was
conscientious, aud he tried to do his
duty Nevertheless the chances are that
unconsciously little Miss Sadie occupied
some small portion of his mind that
should have been given up to the con-
Germs of Bentham Bros. & Co, and her
presence where she had not the slight
est business to be threw the rest of his
mental machinery out of gear.
1t is very generally admitted now that
the sprightly Miss Sadie managed the
whole affair. No one who knew Peters
would ever have given him the credit OF
proposing an elopement, or "accuse him
of it," as johnson puts it. She claimed
that while she could manage her father
all right enough up to certain point,
yet in this particular matter she pre-
ferred to negotiate with him after mar
riage rather than before. She had a
great deal of the old mans shrewdness
had Sadie. He used to say he would
not like to have her as an opponent on a
wheat deal.
Then the clerks say-but hang the
cIerksl What do they know about it?
AS Farman trnly remarked, casting a
gloom over the rest as he spoke: "You
may say what you like about Peters, bnt
you can't get over the unwholesome fact
that none of us has got her."
The gallingness of this undoubted
truth was that each of the clerks thought
himself better looking man than Pc
| ters.
Well,to come to the awful point where
Peters's methodicalness nearly upset the
applicant. The elopement was all set
tied, Peters quaking most of the time,
and he was to write her letter giving
an account of how arrangements were
progressing. 1t will hardly be credited
and yet it is possible enough when you
think what a machine methodical man
gets to be--that Peters wrote this epistle
to his girl on his desk and put it in the
pile of letters that were to be copied into
the old mans letter book! The Office
boy picked up the heap at exactly the
usual hour, took them to the copying
press, wet the thin leaves, and squeezed
them in; the love letter next to the one
beginning:
DE .R SIR: Yours of the 23d received and con-
| tents noted.
Peters got the corner-t TUNED letters,
still damp, and put them all in their
right envelopes and Sadie got hers in due
time, but did not know enough about
business correspondence to know that
her first love letter was written in copy
ing ink and had been through the press.
Next day when old man Bentham was