The daily Alaskan., 1906-05-23
AMatrimonialSa Sand Bar

uel Bradshaw departed this hte anu It's trials and tribulatiOns it was Miss Mary Jones, splnster, who came over and took charge of things for three or four days. She had known the deacon and his wife for several years, and Il was reported that when the wife found herself dying she said to Mary:
 T am going to that better land. l am glad on my own account that am going, but sorry on Samuers. He will be left all alone, and how he will get his shirts washed, his cooking done and his bed made I don't know. You must be kind to him, Mary, and year or so after am gone should he ask you should he ask you"-
 But she got no further. After the funeral and as the weeks went by some folks interpreted this to mean that Miss Jones was to marry the dea- con if he asked her and others that she was only to oversee his house.
 For ten months the deacon himself gave no sign of how he personally in terpreted it. Then it was noticed that he began to walk home with Mary from church and prayer meeting and pay her other little attentions. She was living with a brother who was married, and by and by the deacon be- came a frequent caller. When a full year had gone by Uncle Joe Tracy, who was known to be pillar of goodness as we'll as the biggest gossip in the country, stopped the deacon on the yil' lage street one day to say:
 Look a-here, Samuel, I'm a-hearin' that you are sorter shinin' up to Mary Jones'"
 Well, it's my business if I am" was the blunt reply.
 "So 1t is, Samuel-so it is, but don't you make no mistake on Mary Jones. She lived with us for four years when she was a gal, and I'm telIin' you she's got a worse temper than sore footed eat"
 q hain't seen no signs of it."
 And mebbe you won't till you are married, but it's there, just the same She's expectin' to marry you, and she's as soft and smooth as 'lasSes, but when you are married it will be a diff ferent thing. She'll let her temper loose and make your hair stand up"
 q don't believe a word of 1t, and l don't thank ye for your gossip" ob' served the deacon as be broke away.
 One moonlight night week after his talk with Uncle Joe the deacon invited the spinster out for a row on the river, It wasn't much of a river nor much of a boat, and the deacon wasn't much of a hand at the oars, but it seemed the proper thing to do under the roman tic occasion. The whippoOrwills were singing. the harvest moon blinking and the weeping willows waving theil pluynes in the soft night air as they set out, and everything went we'll for ten minutes. Then Miss Jones suddenly discovered that the boat was leaking and that she had already got one of her feet wet. The deacon was sorry, but as far as he knew all rOwbOats leaked, | and people who went out in them had to make the best of 1t. He bent to hIs oars 10 keep time with the whippOoc wills, but he hadn't been rowing five minutes when he fiirted one of them out of the water and at the same tlme firted about a gallon of the briny over Mary.
 '.Deacon Bradshaw" she called out as she rose up.
 "I am sorry, but couldn't help it."
 But you ought to have helped it. It was very clumsy in you. I'm all wet through, and we must turn back this minute. don't believe you know any. thing about boat"
 If you hadn't heen bobbing around 1t wouldn't have happened"
 "I wasn't bobbng around. l say want to go right back home"
 The deacon started to pull the boat around and lost an oar. In trying to recover that one he not only came within an ace of upsetting the boat but lost the other.
 "Why don't you jump outT shouted the spinster at him.
 Because the water here Is over my head and I can't swim"
 "Then what are we going to dol Deacon Bradshaw, you are nothing but a blunderer|
 Nobody could have done any differ, ent. You were bobbing this way and that, and'-
 q wasn't bobbing! You ought to be ashamed of yourself to try to lay 1t on to me Amt you going to do any thing?"
 "The only thing we can do Is to wait for the boat to drive ashore"
 And how long will that be?"
 No telling. If you hadn't been talk ing about the moonlight on the water l should never have asked you to come out rowing. I guess you'll get moon. light enough"
 Miss Jones didn't answer this taunt. She kept getting madder and madder, but she concealed the fact until the boat finally grounded on sand bar in midsream. When they had both scrambled ashore she found her voice.