The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1901-07-11
] Equal to the Emergency ;
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H NEVER took any socialistic fads
to my BOSOM" said the Mount
Pleasant man with the sun-peeled
nose, until last Sunday, in Atlantic
City. Then it struck me that it would
be a mighty fine thing if the United
States government owned and oper-
,ated the telegraph lines, so that con-
gress could pass a law making pro-
vision for the transmission of money
by wire on Sundays as well as on week
days. Just why the telegraph COM
panies decline to use the wires on
Sunday for the relief of broke persons
at distant points from their headquar-
tiers is something that 1 can't under
stand. A man is as liable to stack up
against financial insolvency on Sunday
as on any other day of the week, isn't
he? And yet, for some ineXplicable
reason, the telegraph companies won't
wire money on Sundays, and if Baron
Rothschild were to wake up in Des
Moines on a Sunday morning and find
himself without enough funds in his
clothes to get him through the day,
he'd have to try his luck at touching
the Des Moines citizens for enough
coin to last him until the following
morning, for he couldn't get sou
markee by telegraph, no matter how
hot he makes the wires.
This rule of the telegraph compa-
mics gave me pretty warm day of it
last Sunday at Atlantic City. l went
down there alone on the previous Fri
day. My wife was not able to accom-
pany me, because she was entertaining
q lot of her relatives from the west,
and she had already put in three
weeks at the seasnore, anyhow, earlier
In the summer.
II was floating around on the
board walk on Saturday night with a
dot of Washington chaps l met down
at Atlantic, when in the neighborhood
of ten o'clock | put my hand in my
breast pocket TO get my wallet in or
der to pay for a round of-er-sar-
saparilla. The wallet wasn't there. I
did the liveliest hunt through all the
rest of my clothes that you ever saw.
but the wallet was gone. had either
dropped it, or it had been deity re-
moved from my inside pocket as I
threaded through the crowd on one of
the piers. There was about $50 in the
wallet, and the Washington chaps
with whom I'd been drifting around
had seen me skin a bill out of it only
about Is minutes before. But it was
absent, all right. My Washington
friends wanted to lend me money, but
I'm not much on the borrow, except
in the most extreme cases, and so I
left the crowd, went to my hotel and
wired my wife in Washington to tele-
graph me $50 the first thing on Sun
day morning. l didn't know then that
telegraph companies refuse to trans
init money on Sundays. l went to bed
in the serene belief that I'd find in
my letter box downstairs on the fol-
lowing morning a notification from
one of the telegraph companies that
so large, iron dollars were awaiting
my demand for same with proper iden-
fification.
Instead of that found telegram
from my wife to this effect:
"'Can't wire money on Sunday. VIII
try other means
"'She can't wire money on Sunday.
hey" l growled to myself We'll.
she's become pretty religious. all of
a sudden, and it was some time be-
fore the fact began to dawn upon me
that it wasn't any newly-formed re-
1igious scruples on my wife's part. but
a rule of the telegraph companies that
made it impossible for her to wire me
money on Sunday. I was informed
that this was the case when I made
inquiry upon the matter at the hotel
telegraph office. l was red-hot and
tuning. I was fat broke in Atlantic
City on Sunday. Moreover, / had to
be back i'll Washington on the follow
ing morning, and l hadn't bought a
round-trip ticket, and there was nv
hotel bill to be settled. I'm afraid
that / ate my mustache and breathed
many su,phurous things with refer
ence to telegraph companies when all
of this flashed over me.
My wife says in her dispatch that
she'll try ether MEANS reflected, as
sulked around the hotel veranda aft
81 breakfast. i wonder what those