Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1910-02-14
CHAPTER VIII.
The Second Section

The Second Section.
Have you ever been picked up out
Of your three-meals-a-day life, whirled
around in tornado of events, and
landed in situation SO grotesque and
yet SO horrible that you laugh even
while you are groaning, and straining
at its hopelessness? Mcknight says
that is hysteria, and that no man
worthy of the name ever admits to it.
Also. as Mcknight says, it sounds
like tank drama. Just as the revolv-
ing saw is about to cut the hero into
stove lengths, the second villain blows
up the sawmill. The hero goes up
through the roof and alights on the
bank of stream at the feet of his
lady love, who is making daisy chains.
home again, with Mrs. Klopton brew
ing strange drinks that came in paper
packets from the pharmacy, and that
smelled to heaven, I remember stag
gering to the door and closing it, and
then going back to bed and bowling
out the absurdity and the madness Of
the whole thing. And while laughed
my very soul was sick, for the girl
was gone by that time, and knew by
men for honor that I would have to
put her out of my mind.
And yet, all the night that followed,
filed as it was with the shrieking de-
mons of pain, saw her as had seen
her last, in the queer hat with green
ribbons told the doctor this, guard
eddy. the next morning, and he said it
was the morphia, and that was lucky
not to have seen row Of devils with
green tails.
I don't know anything about the
wreck Of September last. You who
swallowed the details with your coffee
and digested the horrors with your
chop. probably know great deal more
than do. I remember very distinctly
that the jumping and throbbing in my
arm brought me back to a world that
at first was nothing but sky, heap of
clouds that / thought hazily were the
meringue on blue charlotte russo.
AS the sense of hearing was slowly
added to vision, heard a>woman uear
me sobbing that she had lost her hat
pin, and she couldn't keep her hat on.
I think I dropped back into uncon-
sciousness again. for the next thing
I remember was of my blue patch Of
sky cfouded with smoke, of q strange,
roaring and cracking, of rain of
fiery sparks in my face and of some
body beating at me with feeble hands.
I opened my eyes and closed them
again: The girl in blue was bending
over me. With that impervfousness
to big things and keenness to small
that is the first effect of shock, I tried
to be facetious, when a spark stung
my cheek.
"You will have to rouse YOURSELF"
the girl was repeating desperately.
You've been In dro twice already"
A piece Of striped ticking hoated SLOW
~ over my head. Az the wind caught
It its charring edges leaped into flame.
Looks like q kite, doesn't it,"
remarked chesrfully. And then. as
my arm gave an excruciating throb--
fJove. how my arm hurts!''
The girl bent over and spoke slow
y. distinctly. ~ one might speak to
deaf person or q child.
Listen. MI. Blakeley," she said
earnestly. you must rouse yourself.
There has been q terrible accident.
The second section ran into us. The
wreck is burning now, and if we don't
move, we will catch fire. Do you
lear?"
Her voice and my arm were bring
ng me to my senses. Il hear" said.