The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-12-26
Come Just to See.
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245 Main Street, Salt Lake City.
$40 Twenty-ifth Street, Ogden.
Stores 100 in Number
Prices Away Under.

winter.
Il don't think much of wire tips, my
SELF" said the state wire man, land
the worst throw down ever had / got
this spring at Philadelphia l had
man 1 knew there working on my wire,
and he sent a message one night: Lii
liam K is a good thing; get in with
both feet ! had been thinking about
Lillian K myself, so 1 went and soaked
my watch and hunted up Shylock
and rounded up altogether about Sl5.
Then / lined out for pool room. The
race was due in about half an hour
and Lillian K was up in the entries all
right, but there were no odds against
her.
Offered His Own Odds.
$50 1 says to the man at the desk.
whats the odds on Lillian K?' He
looked at me like ne was too tender
hearted to rob a come-on and pitched
me over a blank ticket and says care
less like, Make out your own odds. I'll
take 'em any way you fix it.
THAT was too much of jolt for me,
and told him to hold on to the ticket
for minute while 1 went out to see a
man. l went out and took a drink and
tried to figure whether the man was
four flushing or whether 1 looked any
greener than 1 felt. Then 1 came back
and tried to get my roll out of my
ally 1 sat around and watched the re-
port come N. and put me on the black
list of Lillian K didn't win at 200 to l,
and the only man on 1T was a little
bump-backed shoe pirate. with his box
under his arm and dollar in dimes,
nickels and coppers."
Horses are all right for hoodoo on
the wire" said the young operator,
but they don't finish 'one, two-three'
with women. 1t was a woman made me
quit a good job down in Damascus last
spring, because 1 didn't have the nerve
to stay in the same town with her
Damascus was a nice little railroad
town down in south Ohio, and / had a
nice soft six-day job in the little jerk
water office there, with one other oper-
ator. We were pretty hot things in
society. One night we floated in to see
a nice family we knew up town, and
there we were introduced to Miss CAL
lahan from Cincinnati. Well, she
wasn't so old, but she was fair half as
ugly as any other six women I ever
saw. But after while there was some
singing and she did spiel at the piano,
and she could sing like bird. That
took my partner right off the bat, and
afterwards, 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?' I was sitting with my
chin in my hand and 1 taps back
against my cheek, She's pretty clear
in the pipes, but the face would crack
stove lids.' The freckled-face 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 finger like she was opening a
key and wire back at me in Phillips
code, If you think it, why don't you
say it out loud?'"
Docked Sixty-nine Hours.
81 haven't much use for women op-
orators myself" said the poolroom OPP
orator, but I sure did see one of them |
get even with herself while l 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 somewhere in the |
swamp lands of Arkansas to take the !
place of man that got fired for cuss- |
ing the division superintendent over the |
wire under the impression that he was |
a green office boy fooling with the key. |
Everybody was sore on the woman, of |
course and everybody was looking for |
her to make break counting her mes
Sages. There had been a good deal of |
trouble in the office over having mes
sages checked wrong, and the order |
was posted that the operator making
a mistake thereafter would be locked |
an hour for each word that was wrong.
We'll, this blamed woman was slow
er than. molasses in March, but she
was dead careful and she wouldn't /
make a mistake in checking to please
anybody. Finally one day there was
of about ten words came
in from Omaha, notice of a bank
meeting or something of
hot <-sr, II
nine different addresses. This Arkansas
swamp angel happened to take it and
she likewise happened to make a mis-
take in counting the words And as
the same mistake was naturally in all
the messages she was locked sixty nine
hours, and when I left there in the fall
she was still working it OUT
When the Nile Froze Over.
"Oh, you can always figure on get
ting even one way or another" re-
marked the press operator. 81 laid for
the telegraph editor of the morning pa
per down in Jacksonville nearly year
before got him. 1 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 was
wrong or not. / stood it till
the night of the 31st of March, and then
| thought I'd try taking fall out of
him. 1t was along toward 3 in the
before the report closed up
for the night, so when 1 got go good
night on the report composed little
telegraph news myself. 1 wrote about
200 words from Alexandria, Egypt.
with a LIST of April date line on it. say
ing that the Nile was frozen over from
Cairo to the first cataract, and that
there was great suffering in the sur
country. 1 threw in a little
pir-orrr11 nri1l detail q |
House relief fund being started in Lon
don and let her go to the telegraph ed
ltor. Blamed if he didn't let it get past
him in the hurry of going to press and
It appeared next morning on the front
page of the paper. The managing ed
tor 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 copy. The
editor came near getting fired