The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-04-19

| sengers half to death with my I'M
portance. Yes sir.
why should 1 feel gloomy-ain't
l rowing 'em across just the same|
"Old RipIey's" Lifelong vigil.
"Old Ripley" was another Staten
Island waterfront man with a his
tory and a fortune He had blue
blood, besides, for he was descended
from one of the old Huegenot families
that settled on the island in the young
years of America-a family of noble
lineage.
He was the last of his family, be-
cause, 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 uncon-
querable desire to be near the place
where the betrothed of his young
manhood lost her life while attempt
| ing to cross the Arthur Kill during a
squat
From that day "Old Ripley ne
| elected his business in New York and
! took to hanging around the wharf of
the little suburb where his fiancee had
! embarked to her death. His friends,
unable to make him forget, desisted
after while land 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
together, 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 Rip
ley" ever permitted himself, he in
| dulged in whenever he was able to
scrape up enough money to hire
! boat for an hour or two, or was sue
! cessful in pleading with some of his
I acQuaintances Tor 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 haring out in all
! directions.
"Old Ripley's end was in keeping
with his life. He rolled off the wharf
on which he was sleeping one sum-
mer's night. They picked up his body
several days later over on the oppo-
site shore, and the old mans river
front acquaintance, 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.
StOiacaIIy Waiting to BE Drowned.
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, cannot, die
any other way. His reason for his
/ belief he states simply enough, in a
matter-offact way:
THE men of my family have been
river men ever since they settled here
/, in the latter 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-grandfather 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 Mo-
nongahela, as the boat was about en-
tering 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 capsiz-
ed during a storm a piece down the
river, and their bodies were found a
, week later.
Now, I'm the only one of my fam
! lily left, and the Ohio is waiting for
me. 1t will get me some day just as
= SURE dS 4 III ldlklnB 10 you ana IleU,
maybe. it'll be contented.
why don't 1 leave the river?
can't. It's got it's hold on me. And
what good would it do if l did try
something else? I'd come back to the
river some day, because l couldn't
, stay away; and then I'd be no better
off. No; the river is bound to take
me when it wants me; it knows that,
! and l know it. But I'm not letting
! /
out that we've got to die in some
way or another. and mine will be by
going in the way my father did, and
his fathers father before him.
Wealthy LongshOreman.
The average longshoreman is not
! looked up to as a man who would
have much romance in his life,- but
! certain longshoreman in Philadelphia
| has had varied adventures all over
the world.
BY his own admission he has
served in the British army, has seen
! fighting in South American revolu
! ton, has campaigned with the French
! in Africa, and knows something of
German army life. His statements are
; not uncertainty proved by his knowl-
edge of foreign military matters and
/ his ability to speak half a dozen Ian
guages. And two long scars that dis
figure his face, and look as if they
Were made by swords. furnish further
evidence of the good faith of his
words.
Though a longshoreman, with a
daily wage of something under 81, he
lives, not in one of the waterfront
boarding houses that his fellow-work-
ers haunt, but in a second-rate hotel
! in the central part of the city. where
the rates for rooms alone equal his
! earnings. He has been staying there