Omaha daily bee., 1903-04-19

family Of noble lineage.
He was the last Of his family. because,
he said, "love Of the water keeps me from
all other loves" But it is told on the
island by those who knew "Old Ripley
that his love of the water was inspired
by an unconquerable desire to be near the
place where the betrothed of his young
manhood lost her life while attempting to
cross the Arthur Kill during a squall.
From that day "Old Ripley neglected
his business in New York and took to
hanging around the wharf of the little
suburb where his fancee had embarked to
her death. His friends, unable to make
him forget, desisted after a while, and then
Old Ripley swiftly sank to the level in
which he stayed for nearly thirty years. He
did odd jobs to keep body and soul to-
gether, but always near the water. He slept
summer and winter as close to the water
as he could get. And when he was neither
working nor sleeping, he could be found
gazing out over the Kill, where the girl
and her brother had drowned.
The only pleasure that "Old Ripley ever
permitted himself, he INDUCED in whenever
he was able to scrape up enough money to
hire a boat for an hour or two, or was
successful in pleading with some Of his ac-
quaintances for the loan of one. Then he
would pull out into the Kill and furiously
row up and down until worn out, when he
would leisurely make the land and stink off
to the nearest saloon. his uncut hair and
long, bristling beard laring out in all di-
r~ections.
"Old Ripley's'' end was in keeping with
his life. He rolled off the wharf on which
he was sleeping one summers night. They
picked up his body several days later over
49, L. --A-sNA 49, - a. 4 w..-H.
river front acquaintanees, who were con-
versant with his romance, vowed that the
body went ashore at the place where his
sweetheart was making for when her boat
capsized.
There is a river man in Pittsburg who
has been waiting for half of mans allotted
span Of years to be drowned in the Ohio.
He believes implicitly that he will not, can
not, die any other way. His reason for his
belief he states simply enough, in a matter
of-fact way:
The men of my family have been river
men ever since they settled here in the lat
ter part of the eighteenth century. They've
all loved the water; they've all lived by It,
and they've all died in it. My great-grand-
father and one of his sons sank with a raft
off Cincinnati. My grandfather was
drowned, along with his wife and two
daughters, in an explosion on the Monon-
gahela, as the boat was about entering the
Ohio. l saw my father knocked senseless
off a coal barge during a fight and he never
rose above the ohio's surface. Three years
ago my brother and a cousin were capsized
during a storm a piece down the river, and
their bodies were found a week later.
Now I'm the only one of my family left,
and the Ohio is waiting for me. 1t will
get me some day just as sure as I'm talking
to you; and then, maybe, it'll be contented.
why don't l leave the river? l can't.
It's got its hold on me. And what good
would it do il l did try something else?
I'd come back to the river som day, be-
cause / couldn't stay away, and then I'd
be no better of. No., the river is bound 10
take me when it wants me; il knows that,
and I know it. But I'm not letting that
spoil my good times. I figure IL out that
we've all got to die in some Way or an
other, and mine will be by going in the way
my father did, and his fathers father be-
fore him."
The average longshoreman Is not looked
up to as a man who would have much ro-
nance in his life. but a certain longshore-
man in Philadelphia has had varied adven-
lures all over the world.
BY his own admissions he has served in
the British army, has seen fighting in South
American revolutions, has eampatgned with
the French IN Africa, and knows something
of German army life. His statements are
not uncertainty proved by his knowledge
of foreign military matters and his ability
to speak half a dozen languages. And two
long scars that disfigure his face and look
as IL they were made by swords, furnish
further evidence of the good faith of hi;
words.
Though a longshoreman, with a dali,
wage Of something under 81, he lives, MOI
in one of the waterfront boarding houses
that his fellow-workers haunt, but in
seeond-rate hotel in the central part of the
city, where the rates for rooms alone eqla
his earnings. He has been staying therr
for ten years. and whenever he pays hi
bin IL is by check.