The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1902-11-28
From the Eighth
Story Window


Alexander Hamilton Ponder was his
name-a good one, it must seem, for
a thoughtful, ambitious and high
minded young lawyer. He was still
drawing Oh the old man back on the
farm for his weekly allowance of SO,
and on his imagination for encourage
ment In the deep set belief that the
law was not overdone as profession
and that the, A. Hamilton Ponder, was
destined to fiji high, wide place in
the legal and forensic history of Chi
cago.
His Office was a walled-off corner on
the eighth floor Of the Blackstone
Building, and for its use he paid with
desultory services as copyist, messen-.
ger boy, correspondent and assist
ant" to an elderly attorney of great
fame and no wealth, who seldom Wis
tied his chambers, and never, under
any conditions, considered the neces-
sity or the desirability OF having the
Offices swept or garnished. Mr.. Pom
der, who spent much of his time walk
ing around the loop district with
load of calf-bound books under his
arm for appearance sake" often felt
like washing the windows himself,
but having a high and due regard for
professional dignity, was loath to ap-
pear in public in the capacity of jan
itor
But one bright autumn day, having
e,,h hnr ,ul,y hn pf
dingy Prince Albert to the grimy win
dow, he was both pleased and fascinat-
ed with the cheerful though narrow
prospect which this small outlook af-
forded him. He stared forawhile across
the street at the clear and glitter
ing windows of the we'll kept building
opposite. Then with vague yearnings
and a sense of his own loneliness, ha
began to size up several sprighty
tenographers who, perched upon chars
at many Office windows, seemed to be
walloping enough briefs out of
enough typewriters to reassure the
most disconsolate and briefless tyro in
the profession. From contemplation
of the vast possibilities indicated by
this industry on the part of so many
stenographers, he drifted-naturally l
think-into study of their personali-
ties.
This line of investigation led his
eyes as well as his mind from the
farthest and most remote windows of
the opposite Office building to the win
dow directly opposite his own, and
here, he decided, sat the flower of the
flock, the ideal lawyers stenographer
perhaps, who knows, the personiflca-
tion of all his romantic dreams.
Her hair was brown, or was 1t red
His window was yet quite murky. hrt
he preferred to call it red, because
ne was fresh from the country and
didn't know the prevailing styles.
She wore fluffy white waist with lit
tie bifurcated paper cones about her
nimble wrists-probabiy to keep her
sleeves from soiling. Her shapelv
white hands literally flew over the
Keyboard. Sometimes when the man
In the adjoining office came in tc
dictate a letter or long document
Ponder could see her turn her face to-
ward her employer and wondered in n
vaguely jealous way IL she were smil-
ing at him. Often in pauses of her
WORK she would turn her eyes outward
and upward as If looking at the sky
ana the young lawyer, unobserved.
gazing through the dim window of his
squalid office, saw that she was very
pretty, and that her eyes were large
and soulful After that, by stealthy
assaults. he managed to keep his win
dow fairly clean, and often be caught
himself vainly hoping that she would
see him, that she would divine tbo
utter loneliness of his sad lot and
Well. he didn't exactly hone that
she'd smile at him, but he was con-
'scious OF yearning fancy that she
might let fall upon his pale, anxious
face some CLEAN OF pity, some glance
OF interest, some sweet but shadowy
fntimation that she knew he was
there and pitied him. OF course shs
didn't, but the hope sustained him
kept him indoors, and at last be-
came mild but strangely fascinating
mania with him. He endowed her,
with every conceivable excellence; he
began to fancy that her employer was
a tyrant and longed for the day when
he himself could afford stenographer
He planned how he would get her
away from her old place; planned the
manner in which he would treat her,
and, in vague but exalted day dreams,
let himself into the presiding genius,
the guiding star, and from which there
was only one mode of exit--matri-
mony
One day, arriving at his dismal hole