The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-08-20
THE sAMARITANS.
BY c. B. LEWIS.


 Miss Duella Mims, as her cards read, was an elocutionist, and quite willing to help others over the same road. for pay. So long as her ambition was kept within bounds and her prices were not too steep her native town of 5000 inhabitants supplied fair num- Der of pupils, and the local press now and then referred to her in a way that was pleasing.
 One unfortunate day Miss Mims de- cided that cocutIon such as hers should have no limits. The village boy who fell into the frog pond decided that If 1t was good for him 1t ought to be good for the whole United States. Miss Mims reasoned after the same fashion. She collected her bills, packed her trunk, aud set out for the metropolis, and never was young woman more sanguine.
 In a week she was surprised. Tn a month she was tired. In two months she had decided to drop elocution and look for a place as typist and steno- grapher. Her mind was fully made up on this point; and yet she could not let go of elocution with a bang. She must part from it by degrees and make the parting less painful
 Miss Mims sat at the open window of her boarding house and dallied with 
 she went over three or four of her choicest gems. and then brought out 'aThe Wanderer.
 She had always made a hit In this. It was about a lovely girl who left her village home for a great city, and after using up all her money and pawning everything that her uncle would ad- vance on she committed suicide. and the landlady found her dead when she went to collect her weeks rent In ad- vance.
 In elocuting this pathetic appeal Miss Mims had to simulate discouragement sorrow, grief, appeal, resignation and several other things calculated to arouse human intefest and she had an audience without Knowing it.
 On the floor above was a young man who had been in the boarding house almost as long as she had, but they had not been introduced and had taken very little interest in each other, He was the audience on thIs night. Miss Mims' voice hoated up to him. and he listened and became interested. Grad ualIy he found hls sympathies aroused. From what he could make out she was clean discouraged and ready for the deadly fumes of charcoal She was even hungry for food at that moment, and there was no one in the great city to whom she could turn.
 The young man was deeply affected. Here was a case right under his nose where sympathy and cash were re- quIred, and only that evening he had lodged the Iandlady when he came in. He was perturbed and upset for few minutes, but finally reasoned 1t out that if the poor girl stuck to her pro- gram and died 1t would save her being disappointed Tn love in the future.
 When long silence had followed her fearful appeal to Heaven, he brought out a manuscript and began to read 1t aloud He was no elocutionist. He might have been one had he not be- came a dramatist at an early age. The manuscript in his hands was a play written by himself. It is needless to give it a name. but 1t may be said to have been pathetic. It had hero, and the hero went through trouble enough to swamp e canal boat within i've miles of Troy. He kept hoping. but 1t was no use. As soon as he came in sight of a good thing it vanished. He hung on and hung on, until the Beef Trust made it's last raise. and then he starved to death with the same dignity that he had lived.
 What the dramatist was reading was the soliloquy of the hero when he had