The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1911-03-07
THE EVENING STORY
Blowing a Gale.
(By Donald Allen.)


(By Donald Allen.)
Mr.. Rivers, the broker. had over
slept that morning. and had gone off
on his train to the city without break
fast. He had said he'd be hanged.
and he'd be dinged, and he'd be
donged, and the nervous Mrs. Rivers,
who couldn't help his dreams of
shorn lambs and oversleeping, was
get up to breakfast.
If she had got up matters would have
been worse. There was a high wind
blowing. and the kitchen range smok-
ed, and the cook threatened to quit,
and the woman who washed the
day before, but not hung out the
clothes. sent a snub nosed boy to say
that she had rheumatism in her
shoulder and couldn't come that day
Miss Minnie Rivers, daughter OF
the house. might have swallowed her
fork as she ate her smoky breakfast
and made things worse-but she
didn't. She made them worse by in
terviewing the cook and suggesting
that she should get the clothes out
on the line to dry and look for her
posed to be beyond the sky and not
yet approached by the aviator.
Then the gale outside and inside
the house sensibly increased in in
tensity. In fact, the cook blew out
with her bundle, and then blew into
distance. It was the last straw for
which she had been waiting. Other
cooks had gone on the stage and
made fame as actresses. and why not
she?
Miss Minnie sat down and wept
and wished she was married and
away from home, and that her
fathers train would run off the track,
and her mother get cramps in her
toes, and the cook meet a goblin, and
the house catch fire and burn to the
ground. Then she laughed little
hummed little, and then put on her
old fishing skirt and started in to
settle things. Although the daughter
of the house, she had come to be in
way the head of it. If things went
awry, it was for Miss Minnie to
straighten them out
That's a part Of the course at col
lege-to straighten out things. They
pretend that the family cook has
quit the job to become a Sarah Bern
hardt, and then have the girl stu
dents do things. They even have them
tinker at smoking kitchen ranges,
and they even have papa rushing
out of the house and saying ding
dong.
Another nice thing college does is
to teach the girls how to hang out
the Monday wash to produce the most
arI1SL1c and picturesque elISCl Oh Inc
landscape for a mile around. There
are landscape artists and sculptors and
poets who don't know that it is
against art and sentiment to pin a
towel and beet side by side on
clothesIine.
The kitchen was cleaned at last,
and then for the clothes! College
teaches the gentle art of passing
washed clothes through a wringer
without making a puddle on the floor
or bringing too great strain on the
foundations of the house. Miss Min
and wrung, and beholci-it was as
easy as playing 1.-THE Old Blue Bon
nett on the piano.
Then came the artistic part-the
hanging out. = And that's where Mr..
Arthur Gregg came in and got the
across the country from Cloverdale
to reach his mothers house, and
thinking of nothing particularly,
when three table napkins came flying
at him from somewhere They were
followed by a bath towel and a pillow
cover other things taking wing.
Mr. Gregg was a young man just
entering upon the law, and after a
moments thought his legal mind
made him conclude that there was a
fountainhead nearby whence all these
the rear of the Rivers house. He APP
peared there with his arms full He
found a wild eyed maiden hanging to
blowing, tapping clothesline, from
which some garment was escaping ev-
cry instant.
AT college the students are taught
to hang out the wash only on quiet.
placid days, and this is an oversight
that the faculty should correct at
once. It brought trouble and con
fusion to Miss Minnie Flap and away
went napkin. Flap and away went
a sheet! Flap and away went a
towel! The gale was roaring, the
clotheslines twistingi She was grit
ting her teeth and hanging on for dear
life when Mr.. Gregg appeared.
Did Mr.. Gregg, with lot of damp
GARMENTS pressed to his beating heart,
stop and introduce himself to Miss
Minnie Rivers, hanging on to the
swaying line with both hands and
feeling that all was lost? He didn't.
He threw etiquette and the conven-
tionaIities to the dogs, and brought
his legal lore to bear on the main
issue.
He saw at once that the lines were
stretched across the path of the gale
In five minutes he had united them
from the posts and stretched them
cided cessation of the fiappety- flap.
Then he ran here and there to gather
up the estrays, which must go back
to the rinsing tub. He had only ac-
complished this when he noticed
smoke pouring from the open kitchen
door He entered to find that the
cook had left the hampers so as to
make a smoke house of the place,
but a twist of the wrist made things
all right College teaches nothing
about stove hampers. That is a
thing to be learned by red eyed ex-
perience.
AS he stepped out doors again an
old hen and half dozen chickens
emerged from the coop to take a
saunter. The gale caught them up
and away they went, but Mr.. Gregg
was after them and they were
brought back in good shape and with
gentle hand. Then he frightened one
of the lines little more, refastened
a sheet that wanted to be a star
spangled banner, and with a careful