New-York tribune., 1901-04-28
MADE BY A PILE DRIVER.

INTO A SUCCESSFUL DRAMATIsT.


coast within easy distance of San Francisco.
On the strength of a double barreled name. a
strongly marked English accent and an endur-
slg thirst he demanded that California in gen.
oral. and that city in particular, should arrange
Sor such stated salary should keep that thirst
Reasonably assuaged. He had certainly been a
rolling stone and had gathered little moss, even
though living by his wits. Into his composition
there did enter the smallest modicum OF
ordinary prudence: in fact he the most
cheerful incompetent that could be imagined.
Yet it was solely due to this lack of prudence
that he I that others pursued in
vain.
BY the exercise of what he was pleased to call
great economy and self-denal he had saved UP
the price of a suit of clothes. of which he stood
greatly in need; in reality, he did succeed in
ing up about So himself-he borrowed the re-
mainder in small sums from his acquaintances.
With this unwonted sum of money, the price of
a whole suit of clothes at once he set out gayly
for the clothing store. Any other with
shabby clothing and the price of might
have been trusted to rehabilitate himself. But
not with this genius
on his way to the tailor he srolled by an auc-
tion sale of all sorts Of scrap and junk. Not
having any business at all at this or any other
auction sale. nothing would content him but to
approach the sale a spectator, then as bid
der, and at last with the pride of purse he be-
came purchaser. OF all the old junk in that
scrap heap he selected a wornout pile driver as
the one bright particular object which to set
his affections. The only explanation conceiv-
able is that the gambling fever hit him hard
when he found that Jake Pantoskey was bidding
against him by five-cent rises. He never ex-
planned it at all; he said he always had felt that
he'd much rather have pile driver than a suit
Of clothes any day in the week and now he had
one and ii was a great bargain.
Well. the possession Of that pile driver which
to any reasonable man would have been an eIe-
phant his hands seemed to work wonders
with Powys- Wood. His first care was to find a
place 10 keep ii. and for that he was obliged to
rent "A vacant lot. The idea that he should pay
anything, much less pay rent, came as a start
ling surprise to everybody But il braced him up
and he paid his with strict regularity. Then
he got into the way OF pottering around the pile
driver with hammer and bits of board and
before long he had patched il up until it would
drive piles, which is. Of course the chief end of
all pile drivers. Nobody was invited 10 see any
piles driven, but the owner declared that it was
practicable.
Mere repairs of this nature did not limit the
attention which Powys-Wood bestowed upon his
pile driver. He s0ah@d the timbers in oil to pre-
serve them from tb) ravages of the weather
The moral result ujon himself was Immediately
apparent. He knocked off drink for the first
time in his life. His osily explanation was that
so long as the pile Ifiver drank up raw oil at
the rate that it's dried timbers called for if wa
out of the question for the owner To drink
whiskey AS between oil for the pile driver and
whiSkey for the owner, he thought il was tho
part Of prudence to look after his Investment |
This sudden SOLDERING up could have been neither |
pleasant nor easy but whenever the longing for
drink came upon him he was able to hold it in
check by going down to the pile driver and ,fv |
ing it a few high balls of linseed The fellows |
used to chaf him with mock syrnpatby over b;s |
SAD plight in having Il wayward pile driver ad !
dicted to oleagnOus jags. But it did not mako
any difference with Powys- Wood; he went
straight ahead and allowed the mild Influence
of the pile driver to work his reformation
so much for the moral effect of the pile driver
Its material effect no less marked wba,
he was not Oiling his pile driver or tinkerjpp
some part Of its gear to run more smoothly
Powys-W Wood found time TO cave play abo,t
this blessed old mechanical device. It was about
the time that the drama beginning to be
elevated through the accessories of boiler ebons
and sawmills. He not only wrote the plav but
he caught the manager He brought him down
now restored to the beauty of fictitious voutb
and looking reasonably presentable for sucb
piece OF wood and iron. With this machine of