Hopkinsville Kentuckian. [volume] (Hopkinsville, Ky.) 1889-1918, 1901-01-18

coats az local Ie4itufaulu rev liSH'
ago. says tue New Orleans Times
Democrat, recalled queerstory toa
| old lawyer who was dining at the 9th
! er side OF the ROOM zone evening j.
the early '70s, hesaid, ga garcon hu
Irying through a crowded cafe not, fa
! from here Knocked down two hats
| that had been hanging above a couple
of overcoats on a wall rack lle
picked them up and restored them to
the pegs, and by that simple act con-
1 demned a very estimable gentleman
to four years ofaeute mental torment
and started another individual, con-
siderably less estimable. cna road that
led eventually to a snsiev's grave.
The funny part about linsas that the
garcon didn't know ,iihfs man from
Adams house cat L he had been
told, later on, of The trouble he
caused he would probably have had
stroke of apoplexy. | remember
being told that he was rather fat
Il am something Of a student Of
causation." continued the old lawyer,
"and j have frequently amused my
self by tracing ont the extraordinary
consequences Of some apparently
trivial incident. il is nearly always
the shifting Of pebble that brings
down the ayalanches of social life, and
in this case but ! viii briefly sketch
the facts and you may draw your own
conclusion The fat garcon. as
matter Of course, hung the hats over
the wrong garments, and a few min
utes afterward a young fellow who
had just finished his dinner got up
and walked oil with another man S
overcoat. BY an odd coincidence it
was so much like his own that he
wore il for week without discover
ing the change Then one day he felt
in the inside pocket and pulled out
several letters that were strange to
him. | think ] could repeat their
contents, even now, from memory,
but there are professional reasons why |
] cannot be very explicit. Suffice ii
to say that they put him in possession
of certain facts, partly of CONNER
cial and partly of personal nature,
that spelled absolute ruin for the man
whom they concerned. AS ] have al |
ready limited, the young person who
stumbled into this information was
not very estimable character, but he |
had plenty of nerve and shrewdness,
and he began at once to plan how he |
could turn his discovery into cash.
Meanwhile the other fellow, who was
a quiet, middle-aged business man, |
had failed to observe that he was wear
ing somebody else's coat. | may say |
night here that he never found it out,
md died IN ignorance of fact that |
might have saved him an infinite deal |
IF Worry.
The Young man with the incrim-
mating letters was afraid to act per-
'OnalIy, because he was in rather
-icklish position himself, owing to nu-
nerous shady transactions in the past,
and his victim might easily have
turned upon him. SO he made tool
Of a miserable old drunkard who had
once been a shyster lawyer, and they |
proceeded to put on the screws, The
man had missed the letters,
of course, but he hadn't the faintest |
idea of how he lost them, and mag
ined they had been stolen out of his
coat at his office; and that theory, by |
the way, resulted in the abrupt dis
charge of several entirely innocent |
and unsuspecting employees. When
the ex-shyster approached him he
promptly flew into panic and paid
the first installment of blackmail al
most without protest. What fol
lowed was somewhat commonplace"
said the old lawyer, musingly, "and ] |
will merely skeletonize it. In year
or SO the ex-shyster succumbed to
prosperity, complicated with jim
jams, and the man with the letters
had to get new catspaw. He picked
up queer character who had been
sort OF horse doctor and alI-around
fakir. This fellow knew nothing Of
The facts, but merely acted as go-be-
tween, and used to appear atinteryals.
with aeard on which a certainamount
would be scrawled inpencil Itseems
incredible, but this went on for three
solid years. Then one day the victim