Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1917-08-05

Bill Hassett, lonely and superheated.
made violent effort last Sunday to go to
| Clair. whose latest claim to fame is that
while a buggy painter in Indiana he
painted a honeysuckle on Deacon Skin
ners buggy SO true to life that hum
| ming bird broke his beak on it. Bill Is
one OF these dear. good souls from Yer
! mont who love seclusion. Just why he
sought it on a Colonial Beach excursion
no one knows. Anyhow. he did.
Bert. the humming birds nemesis,
missed the boat. but made for Alexandria
by trolley. expecting to join the expedi-
ton at that point. Bill. wandering to the
dock. was bounced on by dark-eyed girl
aboard the boat and discovered that ten
Thousand others. more or less. had been
| stricken with the same desire to find Sc
ciusion. and that. Furthermore. they were
all banded together under the name of
some relief society. In fact. Bill and the
crew were the only people aboard who
didn't have the password.
Not finding the buggy painter on the
cellar moor. he moved by slow gradations
10 that eminence in the river boat archi-
lecture which is invariably called 1.-THE
| hurricane deck" without seeing a trace of
| his lost companion.
| And SO the boat pulled Off with band
PLAYING. peanuts, pop corn and ice cream
haunting, and everybody talking lodge
secrets but Bill and the deck hands. All
Bill did was to wander here and there
with wad of Sunday papers under one
arm and a camp stool under the other
He stepped on people. backed into old
LADIES'; sat down on children's candy and
made himself thoroughly disliked, and still!
he didn't find st. Clair. who was madly
that port. :
Now for some reason Bill didn't see Bert
on the dock at Alexandria, and Bert
didn't espy Bills plaintive face looking
downward from the mass of humanity. as
the descriptive artists say) which was
Gn9wing gum on the boats many decks
Bill decided he had been altogether un-
successful in his search for seclusion and
decided to leave the boat. but at the time
ne made this decision the boat had been
loosened from the dock, or east off, or
whatever the nautical term is, and there
was an increasing distance between Bill
and Alexandria's best river front But
that made little difference. He swung his
legs over the rail and leaped nonchalantly
half way across the river and aliehted- He
was a bit ruff1ed. but he had his nerve
ana his Sunday papers with him. and also
mad the steamers camp stool. This latter
TACT was attested to by the captain of the
excursion craft. who bawled from some
| where in the rigging:
Mhat are you going to do with that
not going to do nothing with that there
chair. and hurled it aboard the boat. do
ing no damage at all except to ring the
legs around deck hands neck. and
| "A SNPAoSioH VI
After that Bill went up and down
Alexandria's streets looking for Bert
while on the other side of the various
blocks the Indiana buggy painter wan.
dered about looking for Bill, and /,
wasn't until late that night, in Washing
ton. on the roof garden Of the Press Club
that they met one another and in the
cool OF the evening both looked one an
other in the eye and sighed: There isn't
single place on earth like home, is
there?" :
! When the omnibus war claims bill was
up for discussion in the House Repre-
sentative Garland Dupre of Louisiana re-
ceived a letter from a man in his dis
trfct reading as follows:
my Dear Mr.. Dupre: / notice that the
omnibus war bill is going to be pass
ed, and write to ask you IL it has my
! name in 1t. If not it ought to. because
| my father drove an omnibus in the Con-
federate army"
When the French war commission was
here many Of the young women plunged
into the depths of hero worship at the
sight Of a French aviator whose record