The weekly Thibodaux sentinel and journal of the 8th Senatorial District. [volume] (Thibodaux, Lna. [i.e. La.]) 1875-1898, 1893-03-11

known any other. He could not re-
member when the long waiting-rooms,
with their tiled floors and dreary rows
of stationary settees and crowds of
hurrying people, were not quite as IA
miliar to him and more homelike than
his mothers small, bare house, which
he knew as little more than a place for
eating and sleeping.
AT an age when any ordinary baby
might have been frightened into con
vulsions by the shrek of a locomotive,
Joe, securely fastened in his cab,
would stare for hours through the
great window undisturbed by the in
cessant rush and roar of arriving and
departing trains.
He had been only six mouths old
when the dreadful accident happened
which at one fell stroke made him
fatherless and transformed him from a
strong, we'll developed infant to a pitt
full creature, which even death refused
to take.
The old yardmen tell the story even
yet-how young Michael Bryan, as
straight and manly a fellow as ever
left his green, old, native island for the
better chances of the new world this
side of the sea, came whistling out of
the ~roundhouse that morning and
stepped hastily from before an incom-
ing locomotive, neither seeing nor
hearing another rushing up the paral-
lei 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 recog-
nized his doom, or the perpendicular
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 a terri
BILE cry and fell fainting-the child's
tender back striking the sharp edge of
the door stone.
What a pity that it was not killed
outright" said everybody but the
mother. She herself always insisted
hat only her constant watching over
the little Pickering life kept her from
gong mad in the first dreadful months
of her bereavement.
The officers of the railway company
were kind to poor Mary Bryan. They
paid the expenses of the burial, and
after little Joe had slowly mended en-
ployed her about the depot to scrub
the floor and keep the glass and wood
work bright and neat.
When Joe was seven years old his
mother sent him to school. He went
patiently day after day, making no
complaint, but she awoke suddenly one |
night to find him sobbing on the pill |
low beside her. Only by dint of long |
~coaxing vas 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 he carried a bag of meal on
his back.
Mary famed with the fe rec anger of
motherhood.
"You shan't go another day." she de-
clared. The ruffiansi 1 won't have |
my darlin' put upon by the likes of
them!"
So Joe's schooling had come to an |
untimely end. Yet, meager as was his |
stock of book learning, the develop |
ment of his mind far outstripped the |
growth of his stunted and deformed
body. Everybody liked the patient
little fellow Juggling m%anfully at his
mothers heavy water buckets and
running willingly to every call of the
station men. At twelve years old he
had picked up no small amount of in
formation. especially on railroad top