The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1893-09-10


The Terrible Penalty OF Teaching an
Once Boy Shorthand.
When Albert Cookingham. private sec
rotary TO General Manager c. j. Smith. OF
the Oregon improvement Company, looked
at his mail yesterday morning he thought
he must have given as mortal offense 10
the anarchists as III. c. Frick, the car OF
Russia and other potentates and capitalists
Of the old and new worlds. He found q
package strongly resembling bomb from
which be heard ticking like that OF the
ciock-work bomb throwers use to count off
the seconds before the machine is 70 ex-
piode and blow the victim to perditicn or
paradise.
Yet Mr.. Cookingham could not say that
he had not been fairly warned. for two
days before he had received letter signed
"Miss Alice Steel, secretary of the Type
writer's Union,' which said: "I under
stand that you are teaching shorthand.
As you are not member OF the union this
is against the rules A word to the wise
is sufficient" This evidently alluded to
the fact that. in the kindness of his heart,
Mr.. Cookingham was teaching shorthand
TO Lowell Friggins, the company's mes
senger boy. He did not attach much i'm
portance 70 this missive. but when he re-
ceived the mysterious package yesterday
he began to look serious and handled it
gingeriy. for pictures of the Haymarket
massacre and the blowing up of Gear
Alexander II. of Russia foated through
his Imagination.
The brown paper in which the
thing was wrapped was adorned
with . skull and cross bones and
the legend: "Death to all scabs; tonight
Mt you die" He tore off piece of paper
from the end of the long. round package
and, sure enough, there was the deadly
clockwork with fuse attached, running
through wooden plug in the end of
piece of gas pipe. He tore off the paper
from the other end and found that end of
the pipe also tightly plugged. He hastily
cut the fuse between the clockwork and
the bomb anu then went in search
of expert advice. He bethought
him that Superintendent Corey
of the coal mines. was familiar with ex-
plosives and called him in. Mr.. Corey ex-
amined the thing curiousiy. then laid 1t
down as gently as if it had been his wife's
Sunday bonnet and left: he did not want
to meddie with the pesky thing.
All this time the boy who was the inno-
cent cause of all this trouble was suffering
the pangs of remorse. He tearfnlly ex-
claimed that he did not want to learn
shorthand if Mr.. Buckingham was
going to be bios n to smithereens for it
and. when reminded that he might there
by secure promotion, he wept and said he
did not want it in that way.
Finally, when everybody on the third
floor OF the Burke building had been
worked up into fever of anxiety and
suspense and many Of them had contrived
to find urgent business down street which
would occupy them an indefinite length
of time, some reckless daredevil. who
fears not anarchists and their Internal ma
chimes, pulled out one of the wooden
plugs and revealed that the pipe contained
nothing but yellow tallow. such as is used
on railroads. Then Mr.. Cookingham
heaved such deep sigh of relief that
Judge Burke, on the next floor above,
thought there had been an earthquake
aud observed the time. The other wit
nesses of the discovery laughed, with .
vain attempt to appear as though they
had known it was a bogus bomb, but the
laugh was hollow mockery.