Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1910-11-18

Ing. and with return of his habitual
listless air he had resumed his walk.
Caleb Conover. stretched on a camp
ped In the corner of his study, smiled
contentedly as the rain beat in tor
rents on the panes. But when the
gale waxed fiercer and the rain at last
ceased, he frowned.
Going to blow off clear and cold
after ALL" he grumbled, turning over.
And the Weather Bureaus the only
one that can't be 'fixed.'"
| But even the Shrek of the storm
could not long hold his attention. The
Railroader was vaguely troubled as
to himself. Heretofore, like Napol-
cons, his steel will had been able to
dictate to Nature as imperiously as
to his fellow-man. Now he had &C.
quired an unpleasant habit of lying
awake for hours in that big lonely
study of his, Of seeking in vain to re-
cover his old-time power of perfect
self-mastery
he thought of Blanche? Yes. there
was a nice sort of complication,
wasn't 1t? Another international mar
riage and the usual ending thereof.
These foreigners can give us poor
Yankee jays cards and spades at the
bunco game!" he mused, half-admir-
ingly. "They beat our CON men
hands down, for they don't even need
to pay out cash in manufacturing
green goods and gold bricks, and they
don't get jugged when they're found
out When'll American girls get
sense? When their parents do, pre-
sume."
Even the very patent fiasco attend.
ant on his one conspicuous effort to
use this relationship as a master key
to the portals of society had not
wholly discouraged him.. Later, when,
practically by acclamation, he should
have won the Governorship, and when
the Princess dAntri's European tri-
umphs should be noised abroad in
Granite, surely then
But now there was no question Of
acclamation. If he should win it
would be by bare margin. He knew
that. And, as for Blanche-well, if he
could keep the worst of the scandal
out of the American papers and make
people think his daughter had come
home merely because her husband
abused her, or because she was tired
Of her surroundings-if he could
achieve this much it would be the
best he could expect
Gerald, too he had hoped so much
from the boys glttering New York
connections. Now that illusion was
forever gone. Though his sons more
recent behavior had in a slight meas
ure softened the hurt to paternal
pride and hope, yet the hurt itself,
Caleb knew. must always remain.
And that particular pride and hope
were forever dead.
In quaint twist of thought over
the Biblical story of job that he had
heard on one of his rare visits to
church Conover, as he lay staring up
into the dark and listening to the
noisy rage of the storm, fell to fitting
the story to his own case.
THE first message / got" he re-
fiected, becoming grimly entertained
In his own analogy, Knocked over
my plans for Jerry. Then the second
stole from me the only square woman
ever knew and all my chances of
campaign walliover The third
smashed my ideas for Blanche, and
for making hit in society. The
fourth-well, l guess the fourth amt
showed up yet Will it clean me out
when 1t does come. | wonder, like it
did the feller in the Bible? Let's see,
he had whiny fool for a wife, too, IL
remember 1t straight. Yes, there's
whole lot Of points in common be-
tween me and him. | wonder II he
ever run for any office. How was 1t
all those messages of his wound up?
'And-and l only am escaped alone to
tell thee That was it,"
After which plunge into the theolog-
ical exegesis-the first and last where
of he ever was guilty-Caleb Conover
turned his thoughts to the morrow's
election, and thus communed with
himself till dawn caught him open
eyed and unsleepy, his splendid
strength and energy in nowise dimin-
ished by forty-eight hours of wake
fulness.
IL was latlcicu' uSSoia'e Woliu
that met the Railroader's eyes as he
gazed down from his window across
the broad grounds and over the city
that lay at their foot. The wind had
fallen, and a pink-gray light was fill
Ing the clean-swept sky. Nature
seemed ashamed to look on the results
Of her own violence, for the dawnlight |
crept timidly over the sleeping
houses
And, with the first glimmers in the |
east, the people of city and State were |
afoot, for history was to be made. |
Election Day had begun.