Audubon County journal. (Exira, Iowa) 1884-1993, 1909-02-04
T III Z BOY WHO
ram AWAY
a Story That Turned Out
the Other Way.

! This boy decided that he would run
away from home
He had good home, and all like
that but he didn't care for home any
| more
ANYHOW, he figured it that his folks,
namely his father and mother, we're
handing it out to him pretty hard
| They declined to permit him to play
with the gang. They interfered with
| MIN in lots of ways.
Consequently, after giving the mat
ter due and proper thought the boy
decided that there was but one thing
for him TO do, and that was to run
away.
Away from home. he felt he would
| be able to indulge in his natural pro-
| pensities without let or hindrance
Now, his most natural propensity,
as it seemed to him, was for the
robbing OF trains-far western trains.
The boy had a profound feeling that
he was modelled, cut out, fashioned,
devised and intended by nature to be
the greatest robber Of trains that ever
| craWled over the tender of an engine
and put the engineer and fireman I'M
der a sawed off shotgun filled with
slugs.
He felt, too, that his folks would be
liable to thwart such an ambition on
his part were he to mention it to
them.
He figured, therefore, that in view
OF these considerations the only prop
er thing for him to do was to get his
few things together and beat it. He
had read many pieces of fiction-all
of the fiction, however, as he under
stood, founded upon fact-which re-
lated how famous train robbers had
started off upon their distinguished
careers by running away from home
just as he meant to do, and HON some
thing always turned up pretty soon to
Pat them in way of achieving a
mastery of their chosen profession.
And so the boy, working very Sc
cretly and deliberately, gathered to-
gether all his little possessions and
wrapped them UP in a big silk muf-
fer belonging to his father There
wasn't much TO be packed in the muf-
tler, but still he didn't elect to leave
his few little possessions behind, since
he was very certain that he would not
return to his boyhood home for many,
many years, if ever
1t was beautiful moonlit night
when he decided to make the jump.
he went to bed, or pretended to go TO
bed, and waited for his parents and
groWn-up brothers and sisters to turn
in. Then with his little bundle slung
over his shoulder at the end of a stout
stick he softly stole down the stairs,
opened the front door noiselessly, tip
toed out after closing the door, and,
reaching the front gate, turned TO gaze,
as he felt, upon the home of his youth
for the last, last time
He made directly for the freight
depot at the other end of the town,
his idea being that, as he had often
read in connection with other runaway
heroes, he might be able to catch an
outgoing freighf train. As there
wasn't any outgoih9s freight train that
night, daylight found him still hang
ing around the freight yard
BY this time he was pretty hungry,
and he thought of the usual ham ard
eggs and hot mullins and things that
he'd been accustomed to eat for break
fast. Somehow in the clear, SUNNI
light OF morning it looked heap more
difficult TO get a start as a train rob
Der than it had seemed while he was
planning the great expedition He
stood and watched the freight hands,
making themselves some coffee on a
> little stove in a signaling snack, and
, MS hunger became something fierce
and he thought of the nice clean table
cloth and
However, just minute. Just one
minute.
Here is the spot where it is Gus
tomary to get in swift climactic &C.
ton.
1t is the usual thing to narrate hog
the hungry would-be runaway boy who
: nankered to be train robber fiz
lied out in his desire as he though
about the home grub, and how he be
gan to whimper around the freight
yard, and how two or three kindly
l grizzled freight yard hands asked him
y what was chewin' on him, and how
they finally got his story out of him
!, and how they sympathetically advised
him to beat it for home and paw and
NAV Just as fast as he could go. and