The Brownsville daily herald. [volume] (Brownsville, Tex.) 1897-1910, 1906-08-16
.SERGT. SHARP
WINS A BRIDE
Saw Name on Label of Condens-
ed Milk Can.
Wrote to Girl, then Wooed and Won Her.
Hero Formerly Stationed at Fort
Brown and Well Known Here.

was on duty at this post for sew
eral years il the quartermaster' s
department. There are doubtless
many here who still remember the
Sergeant and who will be inter
ested in the following story of how
he has won a fair girl for his bride,
which appeared in last Sunday S
St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
It was just an ordinary can of
condensed milk, nothing more. A
sealed cylinder of common tin,
containing the most harmless, the
most beneficial beverage known to
mankind, in concentrated form.
But it bore a label on the outside.
Even the label failed to distin-
guish it from hundreds of other
similar cans, however. Up in the
big condensed milk factory at
Greenville ILL.,, that one lone fate
full can was hustled along with the
rest, took its turn as thousands of
others had under the condensed
milk spout, was filled and slid
along to the soldering room, sealed
and rushed on to the labelling de-
partment.
The prettiest girls are always in
the labelling departments. It is
as if an unseen god of commerce
demanded the fairest for the finish
ing touch. And the prettiest,
deftest girl i'll the condensed milk
factory was Miss Laura E. Turner.
Just why she should happen to
select that particular can, when
she saw hundreds every day, no
one can say. She doesn't know
herself. 1t was the psychological !
moment, the second of fate, when
destiny, for one instant, held back
the purposeless routine of circum-
stance and wove the web of two
human lives about a can of con-
densed milk. For in that moment
Miss Turner had taken a pencil
and written her name aud address
on the label of that one lone, ordi-
nary can.
That was all. It was swept
away with hundreds of others,
packed in a wholesale lot and ship
ped. So far as Miss Turner was
concerned, there was about as
much chance of that can ever find
ng the right man as if she had ,
written her name on a slip of paper,
,orked it in bottle and tossed it
)ut to the waves III mid-ocean.
)ne can of condensed milk adrift
n the whole world. BY every law .
If ordinary, logical common sense ,
t should have landed or the shelf
If some grocery store. That par
ocular box that it was packed in
vent due south, bound for the
ommissiary department of the
United States regular army post at
7ort Bliss, Texas.
1t was a propitious destination,
nut even here it took a risk. There
we're many married men at the
'ost. Married men use more cans
f condensed milk than unmarried
mes. Yet that can of condensed
nix with a girl 5 name OIL it went
D the quarters Of Post Quarter
laster Sergeant Eber I. Sharp, the a
single man at the fort, s
nd when he started to open it he )
aught sight of that name. 5
Even at such a crucial point a 5
autious man would have hesitated. 5
tut the gallant Sergeant took the s
hallenge. A letter was sent at s
nee to Miss Laura Z. Turner, 5
ireenville, III. Then the Sergeant s
mptied the can, cleaned it and 5
olished it, and set it up on a s
tile shelf in his own private s
Dom, the first sacred symbol on s
is shrine of love, and waited. s
LETTER FROM TEXAS. Z
The letter reached Miss Turner :
] Greenville. It must have been s
manly letter, the sort that tells s
,,,,a+tir1U Of th.4 vx-ita-fs yt,o-or- 4