Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1899-11-04

HIS Glass Leg Broke.
| BOURNE second, Cascaretta third And that
| blamed OLD glass leg of his played cut On
! him in the stretch and he walked in dead
| lame, and all the operators / knew of
smoked pipes for the rest of the winter"
Hard Throw Down.
II don't think much of wire tips. my
self" said the state wire man. and the
| worst throw down l ever had / got this
spring from Philadelphia. 1 had man
| knew there working on my wire and he
| sent me a message one night, Lillian *
/ is good thing; get in with both feet
had been thinking about Lillian * myself
| so l went out and soaked my watch and
hunted up a ShylOck and rounded mp al
| together about SO. Then ! lined out for a
pool room. The race was due in about half
an hour and Lillian X was W in the entries
| all right, but there were no odds against
her
so 1 says to the man at the desk.
What's the odds Lillian X He look
ed at me like he was too tender heartCd TO
rob a come on and pitched me over blank
ticket and says careless like. Make out
your own odds. I'll take EN- any way you
fix it
That was too much of a jolt for me. a.'d
/ told him to hold on TO the ticket for O
minute while l went out to see a man 1
went out and took a drink and tried 10
figure whether the man was four flushing
or whether | looked any greener than
felt. Then 1 came back and tried to get
my roll out of my pocket but II wouldn't
come, and finally | sat around and watch
ed the report come in. and put me on
the black list if Lillian X didn't win at 200
to 1, and the only man on it was a little
humpbacked shoe pirate with his box uu-
der his arm and dollar in dimes, nickcls
and coppers.
Took Too Much for Granted.
Horses are all right for a hoodOo on
the wire said the young operator. but
they don't finish one, two, three with wo--
men. Ii was a woman made me quit good
job down in Damascus last spring because
l didn't have the nerve to stay in the same
town with her. Damascus was nice liJue
! railroad town down in south Ohio. and I
| had a nice soft siX-day job in the little jerk
water office there with one other opera gor.
We were pretty hot things In society. one
night foated in to see a nice family
We knew up town. and there we were in
troduced to a Miss Callahan from Cincin-
natl. Well. she WASH I 50 Old. hut she was
fair, half ugly any other six women
l ever saw. But after a while there WAS
some singing and she did spiel at the
piano, and she could sing like a bird. That
took my partner right of the bat. and
aftcrward, while We were sitting around
Ginning, he telegraphs me from across the
room on the arm Of his chair, Say, old
man, amt she a peaCherion? l was sit
ting with my chin In my hand AMI / taps
/ back against my cheek, She's pretty clear
stove lidsT The freckled-faced girl was
sitting with her hand resting out on the
table, and what do you think, If she didn't
make a switch motion with her little fTger
like she was opening a key and wire back
at me in Phillips code, If you think IL,
why don't you say it out loud?
She was a slick woman operator from
the Cincinnati office, come down to take
a vacancy in our shop. She went to work
the next week and / quit the week after.
L never have liked women operators since"
DOcked Sixty-Nine Hours.
II haven't much use for women operators
myself" said The pool room operator but
L sure did see one of 'em get even with
herself while 1 was working in Kansas
City just before the last strike. There
was trouble brewing in the office then and
it didn't help matters any when they
brought up woman from down some
where in the swamp lands of Arkansas TO
take the place Of a man that got fired for
cussing the division superintendent over
the wire under the impression he was a
green office boy fooling with the key. Ev-
erybody was sore the woman, of course,
and everybody was looking for her to make
a break counting her messages. There had
been a good deal of trouble in the Office
over having messages checked wrong and
the order was posted that the operator
making a mistake thereafter would be
docked an hour for each word that was
wrong.
We'll, this blamed woman was slower
than mo asses in March, but she was dead
careful and she wouldn't make a mistake
in checking to please anybody. Finally
one day there message of about ten
words came in from Omaha, a notice of a
bank stockholders meeting or something of
the sort, a single message for siXty-nine
different addresses. This Arkansas swamp
angel happened to take ii and she likewise
happened to make a mistake in counting
the words. And as the same mistake was
naturally in all the messages she was dock
ed siXty-nine hours, and when l left there
in the fall she was still working IL out.
when the Nile Froze Over.
''Oh, you can always figure on getting
even one way or another" remarked the
press operator Il laid for the telegraph
editor of the morning paper down in Jack
sonville nearly year before I got him.
was taking the A. p. report down there
and this bird with the blue pencil always
had some fault 10 find with It, whether
there anything wrong or not. l stood
il till the night of the 31st of March, and
then | thought I'd try taking a fall out of
him. 1t ong toward 3 in the morn
ing before the report closed up for the
nigh. so when I got go (good-nght) on
the report / composed a little telegraph
news myself. / wrote about 300 words
from Alexandria, Egypt, with a LIST of
April date line on il, saying that the Nile
was frozen over from Cairo to the first
cataract, and that there great suffer-
ing in the surrounding country. L threw in
a little circumstantial detail about a
Mansion House relief fund being started IN
London and let her go to the telegraph ed
itor Blamed if he didn't let il get past
him in the hurry of going to press and IL
appeared next morning on the front page
of the paper. The managing editor caught
IT on the mail edition. but by noon the next
day the papers that the office had not been
able to call in were selling for 10 cents a