The Saint Paul globe., 1897-09-27

tune, and kodakers take snap shots at
her as she goes by, and she likes it.
Mrs. Doty tells her own story about
her experience in Vehicles:
I'VE did not go to church, when 1
was a girl, in a bicycle built for two.
In those days we used to ride on
saddle built for two. The man sat on
the seat of the saddle and the woman
perched herself on a pillion behind
him. l have ridden hundreds of miles
in that way
''Then after while they got to run
ming stage coaches. Everybody rode in
stage coaches. They ran through our
section of the country, and 1 made
many a long journey in them.
Il was twenty-nine years old when
the Erie canal went through, and after
that 1 rode a great many times on the
canal-boats. Some of them that they
called the passenger packets were very
nice-nice furniture and good beds to
sleep in. If you were not in hurry
and people then, it seems to me, never
were so much in a hurry as they are
noWadays-it was very pleasant way
to travel. 1t was much better than
the jolting, swaying stage coaches. 1
remember lots Of peaceful pleasant
boats Gliding quietly along in the
moonlight, with the farm houses and
the fields slipping by-all so restful
and silent. 1t was very nice. Yes, bet
ter than the bicycle, l am afraid.
"Well, next came the steamboats, and
the steam cars and horse cars, and last
OF all the trolley cars, and 1 have rid
den in them all, But I did draw the
line at balloons. L have never been up
in a balloon.
''Now, with all that don't you think
I earned the right to ride the bicycle?
1 do: so 1 learned But I will let you
into a secret about the bicycle. I don't
like it. 1t is too uncertain a gig. 1
don't ride so very much only now and
then.
And here is something you can tell
people. You can say you have seen two
centuries. This wheel L have here had
run over a century, SO there are two
centuries for you
Mrs. Doty vas three years old when George
Washington died, and she would easily have
remembered him had she ever seen him, for
in a misty way the wonderful old lady re-
calls little events away back in that dim time
of her childhood.
And here is another thing" she said in
that connection: George Washington never
saw a model of 1897 bicycle but he might
have seen such a person who would live to
ride one if he had only thought to come
and take look at me when was toddling
around in short dresses. But he didn't do
it, that is what George missed
The delightful old soups brown eyes
twinkled with the light of her own humor
which still glows brightly enough in her heart
to put to the blush many a surly and soured
person twice her age in temperament, yet half
a century younger in years.
1t is bewildering to think of all the events
and generations of men that have come and
gone while this old lady's life glided on its
peaceful channel. 1t brings what we get into
the habit of thinking of as the remote past
very startlingly close to US. The presidents Of
the United States from Washington to Nc
Kinley-she has lived in the administration
Last year" she said, speaking of this and
Of all the presidents she remembers, 81
knitted a little purse and my sgreat-grandson
sent it to President Mckinley The president
sent me beautiful letter, so gentle and
friendly, and thanking me SOS delcately for
my foolish little present, that it. made me love
him. And Mrs. Mckinley sent me beauti-
full pair of slippers which she knitted her.
self. l hear she has very poor health, poor
lady"
Men well on towards sixty years of age
were as old when the war of the rebellion
broke out as was Mrs. Dety when the Battle
of Waterloo was fought She was a newly
married woman then, nineteen years OF age.
But she has little to say of fthat dramatic
event in European history. Her mind had
been too recently occupied with the turmoil
of war right here in our own America to
bother very much about how people were
butchering one another across the sea-and it
was very long way across the sea in those
days. The steam-propelled ship a long
lifetime away in the future. The germ out of
which it grew had not even sprouted in the
inventive mind of man when Deborah Doty
was young woman. 1t knocked two months
all to pieces to get over the distance then
which the transatlantic ferry now covers in
a little better than five days.
So, with the roar of the guns of 1872 still
ominous in her ears, the crash of Waterloo,
with st. Helena looming out of the mist of