Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1903-05-21
Short STORY
Of the Dav
FROM THE WINDOW.

his name-a good one, it must seem,
for a thoughtful, ambitious and high
minded young lawyer He was still
drawing on the old man back on the
farm for his weekly allowance of So,
and on his Imagination for encom
agement in the deep-set belief that
the law as not overdone as a pro-
fession and that he, A. Hamilton
Ponder, was destined to fill a high,
wide place III the legal and forensic
history of Chicago.
His Office was a Walled-Off corner
on the eighth floor Of the Blackstone
building and for it's 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 either the
necessity or the desirability of having
the office swept or garniShed Mr.
Ponder, who spent much of his time
walking around the loop district with
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
janitor.
But one bright autumn day, having
sub-consciously applied the end of
his dingy Prince Albert to the grimy
window, he was both pleased and fas-
cinated with the cheerful though mar
row prospect which this small out
look offered him. He stared for
awhile across the street at the clear
and glittering windows of the we'll
kept building opposite. Then, with
vague warnings and a sense of his
own loneliness, he began to "size up
several sprightly stenographers who,
perched upon chairs at many office
windows, seemed to be wallOping
enough briefs out of enough type
writer's to reassure the most iiscon-
solate and briefless tyro in the pro-
fession. From contemplation OF the
vast possibilities indicated by this
industry on the part of so many
stenographers, he drifted-naturally
L think-into a study of their per-
sOnalities.
This line of investigation led his
eyes as well as his mind from the
farthest and most remote windows of
the opposite building to the window
directly opposite his own, and here,
he decided, sat the flower Of his flock.
the ideal lawyers stenographer-per-
maps, who knows, the personification
OF all his romantic dreams.
Her hair was brown, or was it red :?
His window was yet quite murky. but
he preferred to call it red, because he
was fresh from the country and
didn't know the prevailing styles.
She wore fluffy white waist with
little bifurcated paper cones about
her nimble wrists-probably to keep
her sleeves from soiling Her shapely
white hands literally flew over the
keyboard. Sometimes when the MAJ,
in the adjoining Office came in to die
tate a letter or a long document
Ponder could see her turn her face
toward her employer, and wondered
IN a vaguely jealous way if she were
smiling at him. Often in pauses of
her work she would turn her eyes
outward and upward as if looking at
the sky, and the young lawyer. un-
observed, gazing through the dim
window Of his squalid office, saw that
she was very pretty, and that her
eyes were very large and soulful.
After that, by stealthy, assaults, he
managed to keep the window fairly
clean, and often he caught himself
Vainly hoping that she would see
MN, that she would divine the utter
loneliness of his sad lot and
Well, he didn't exactly hope that
she'd smile at him, but he was con-
sclous OF a yearning fancy that she
might let fall upon his pale. anxious
face some CLEAN of pity, some glance
OF interest, some sweet but shadow
animation that she knew he was
there and pitied him. Of course she
didn't, but the hope sustained him.
kept him indoors, and at last became
a mild but strangely fascinating
mania with him. He endowed her
with every conceivable excellence: he
began to fancy that her employer was
tyrant and longed for the day when
he himself could afford a stenogra-
pher He planned how he could get
her away from her old place: planned
the manner in which he would treat
her, and, in vague but exalted dav
dreams, let himself into an elaborate
romance in which she was the pre-
siding genius, and guiding star. and
from which there was only one mode
of exit-matrimony
One day, arriving at his dismal
hole an hour late, Ponder saw his
divinity in tears. At least her usual
ly white and patrician nose seemed tc
be more ruddy-or was it bIue?-thar
usual. 'The wretch" growled Pom
der to himself, and shook his fist al
the back of the man in the opposite
office. 'The villain has been rude &c
her! If l only had him by the
throat!" And all that day Ponder
watched till he was convinced at last
that the fair creature in the Office or
the eighth floor opposite was mystic