The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-04-19

about we're 'a blizzard fight Thfet
 feet deep on the level here, did you
 say? And eight and ten feet high in
 some of the drifts? Why, out where
 this blizzard I'm a-talkn' about hap
 pened the kids wouldn't count any
 three feet deep on the level enough tc
 make snowballs out of It was out in
 Duluth, Mnn. this one were, back in
 S4, and there wasn't a two-story
 shack in the town that wasn't covered
 over the roof with snoW-not drlfted
 snow, you mind, but just snow on the | level. The drift snow was scandal
 ous. You know Duluth is great on
 wheat, and the whole water front there
 is lined with grain elevators. We'll
 sirs, two of these elevators were piled
 up to the fifth floors with snow, and
 nobody thought there was anything
 wonderful about it. Nobody had much
 chance to think about anything, any
 how, except to dig themselves out. It
 took two solid months for the whole
 town to get dug out, but the folks
 went about it systematically, at 1t
 were, and relieved suffering where they
 thought it was likely to be the worst. | Now, gents I were the chairman of
 the committee that dug themselves out
 of their houses first after that bliz-
 gard had spent itself, and, while you're
 tallSin' about awful cases of hardship
 that you all saw in this here town of Washington during your little tWo-by-
 four blizzard, I'll just have to go you I one or two better, and I'll begin at the
 case of a snowed-in newspaper office, at that.
 "It was a twice-a-week newspaper | that hadn't been runnin' very long, and | the whole outfit was run and printed in a little one-room, one-story shack about block outside the outskirts of the town, It took four people to get the paper out-the proprietor and ed- itor, whose name I won't mention, be- cause he's now the owner of whole line of steamers on the lakes, and re- spectable; the two fellows that did the printin' and pressn' Cor whatever you call stamping the types on the paper), who never did amount to anythin and don't now, so their names don't count, and the printers devil. Now. this here printers devil figures in the story of rescue I'm a-goin' to tell you a big lot, but I can't tell you his name, be- cause he, too, has got next to himself during the interval, so to speak, andll be along here to Congress one of these days
 When the blizzard began to bliz all four of these poor unfortunates were workn' away in their little one-story, one-room shack, a-gettin' out their paper. After it had showed four days there was a pile of snow about twelve feet high right on top of the roof of that shack, and those four unfor- tunates were the first people thought about when we of the dig-out commit tee got to work on our heroic mission of mercy, as you folks call it.
 This here printers devil that I'm telin' you about-a kid then about 13 years old-had been an orphan most all of his life, and he lived with his aunt. We knew that she'd be most crazy about that boy and that's one of the reasons why we start ed first to dig that poor little joint of newspaper office out of the drifts. The aunt's house bein protected like, wasn't set in the snow so deep as some of the other houses, and before our heroic committee, gents, had more than got together, along comes that prin- CTS devil aunt, a weepin' and a-wailin' an a-beggin' us to make haste and get her beloved printers devil boy out of his prison. We tried to drive her home, but she insisted on going along with us when we started for the snowed-in newspaper shack, with shov- els and brave hearts, to get those four poor unfortunates out of their immi- nent peril.
 Well, we got pathway cleared after eight hours hard work. and by the big mountain of snow ahead we knew we were only about fifty feet away from the buldin' where the Duluth Morning Kazoo was thunk out written, printed and distributed. When we got within thirty feet we were all awfully shocked to hear faint cries from the snow like this:
 "Auntie Auntie!'
 "Well, sirs. that poor printers devil boys aunt like to have gone crazy l she was so anxious to have us work faster We figured it out that all the other three had died from the cold and exposure, and that just this poor lttle kid was left. And the way we worked certainly was a caution. The cries of 'auntie! auntie! were only re- peated a couple of more times, and we were afraid the kid had just died while | we were slowly but surely workin' toward the newspaper shanty. Finally | we got the last shovelful of snow | away from the door, burst the door open with our shoulders, took just one | look at the scene within that room and then"
 Whole bunch O you. includin' the aunt, keeled over eh?" inquired one of | the listeners.
 Well, not exactly that was the re- ply. Not one of the four paid the slightest bit of attention to us. They just went on with their game"
 "Oh the four were still alive, then, and cavorting around like crazy men, just to keep from freezing to death" asked another of the listeners.
 Not much were they oavortin' around,' replied the big, loose-framed man. "They were a-playin' draw poker to beat the> band, and from the size of the stacks of coin before each of them that printers devil had about seventh -eights of the money"
 How, then, do you account of his agonizin cries of auntie! auntie?' was the inquiry of another of the hear ITS.