The Lexington intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1901-1949, 1908-08-29

~ 0N aAHN uAMEAA MuNlNHIIAIu
held his small and unusual collection
OF books. Standing side by side on
the same shelf were French romances
and the Holy Bible. much bethumbed
and penclled There were scboolbooks
alongside Of sentimental love tales
Greek lexicons and quaint old fairy
stories. law books and works on Grim.
inology; books on botany. geology.
anatomy and physics. In all perhaps
there were 200 volumes. A life Of Ia.
poleon revealed signs Of almost con.
slant usage. There were three por.
traits Of the Corslcan on the dlngy
green walls.
The strange character Of the man
was best shown by the pictures tina;
adorned or rather ~disfgured the walls.
Vulgar photographs and prints were to
be seen on all sides. Mingled with
these cheap creations were excellent
copies Of famous Madonnas, quaint
Scrlptural drawings. e~ngrayings Of the
Saviour and an allegorical colored
print which emphasized the lows of
heaven. There was also a badly drawn
but ideallzed portrait of broom. done
In crayon at the age of twenty. This
portrait was n of his priced posses
sions. He loved it best because it was
a bust and did not expose his longitu.
dinal defects, If broom ever had en-
tertalned a feminine visitor in his
apartments. there is no record of the
fact. But few men had seen the int
rior Of his home, and they had gone
away with distressed, perplexed seusi-
bilities.
He cooked his own meals on the oil
stove and, alone, ate them from the lit.
tie table that stood near the heater.
Occasionally he went out to a nearby
eating house for a lonely feast. His
rooms usually reeked with the odor of
boiled coffee, burned cabbage and
grease, pungent chemicals and long
suffering bed linen. OF his 'front.'
room it may be said that it was kltch.
en-, dining room, parlor, library. work
shop. laboratory and conservatory.
Four iowerpots, in which as many
geraniums existed with difficulty do
spite Droom's constant and unwaver.
ing care, occupied a conspicuous place
on the window stills overlooking the
street. He watched over them with
all the tender solicitude of a lover. sur.
prising as it may appear when one
pauses to consider the vicious exterior
of the man.
broom was frugal. He was. In truth,
a miser. If any one had asked him
what he expected to do with the money
he was putting away in the bank. he
could not have answered. calculating
as he was by nature. He had no rela-
tive to whom he would leave it. and
he had no inclination to give up the
habit Of active employment. His salary
was small, but he managed to save
more than half of it-for a rainy day,"
as he said. He did his reading and ex.
perimenting by kerosene light and
went to bed by candlelight, saving n
few pennies a week in that way. The
windows in his apartment we're wash
ed not oftener than once a year. He
was seldom obliged to look through
them during the day, and their only
duty at night was to provide ventila.
ton, and ece that was characteristic
ally meager
lie was Il man Of habit. not habits
A pipe at night was his only form of
dissipation, 1t was not too far for
him to walk home from the office of
evenings. and be invariably did so un.
the weather was extremely IN
pleasant. So methodical was he that
he never had walked over any other
bridge than the one in Wells street.
and going.
Past sixty-fve years Of age, Droom's
hair still was black and snaky. his
were as yellow and Jagged as
they were in the seventies, and his
were as blue and ugly MS ever.
lie had not aged with James Ban.
semer. In truth. he looked but little
older than when we made his &C.
luaintance. The outside world knew
more Of Droom's private transac-
ions than it knew of Bansemer's. Up
n the horrid little apartment in Wells
the queer old man could do as
lie willed, unobserved and unannoyed
could pursue his experiments with
chemicals, he could construct
nd devices with his kit of tools. and
lie could let Off an endless mount of
inventive energy that no one knew he
Possessed
When he left Graydon Bansemer on
he sidewalk In front Of the office
'uilding he swung Off with his long
tribes toward the Wells street bridge.
lis brain had laid aside everything
hat had occupied its attention during !
hours aud had given itself over !
D the project that FASTENED his steps |
omeward. His supper that night was ,
small n and hurrledly eaten in or
er that he might get to work on his Z
ew device. broom grinned and !
lckled to himself all alone up there J
the lamplight. for he was pe~rfecting :
q Invention" by which the honest !
.tizen could successfully put to rout r
le "holdup" man that has made Chi. !
famous !