The evening Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1918-1920, 1919-03-18

| tic old man without any teeth and
| given to excessive portions of chew
/ ing tobacco-who will someday fall
into the press and make an awful
mess of the edition, probably just
at mail-time when we are hurrying to
make the trains. Susie Whitcomb
| our second compositor, became one
of our linotype operators and was
beginning to show speed when she
ran away with baking powder
drummer; eight years later Mrs. Hod
discovered her clerking in a depart
ment store down in Springfield
When we lay back in an old office
chair with a friendly pipe in the quiet
hours and think of the changes which
the last thirty years have wrought
more and more do we come to think
ment. q constant replacing of new
faces for old, constant swapping OF
friendships and exchanging of the
old and antiquated for the better.
After all, the only timing permanent
in life is change. The sane and hap
py person is he who can accept life
as such and adapt himself most
quickly and thoroughly to the cir
cumstanceS.
AS for Jack and Mary Hold, the
files place all their family vicissitudes
in very orderly and quite rational
fashion. But if we had no great
dairy of the towns life to thus guide
US and if we were dependent upor
memory alone, we would have set it
down that the babies seemed to come
along in the Purse household in re-
cord breaking fashion after the ad-
vent of Thomas Joshua. 1t was one OF
the unexplainable things in life that
they should all have run to boys but
that is what happened. Fred and
Theodore were born the fall after
Mibb and her mother left Herbert
and went to Europe and Mary was
buster in her little home than ever.
1t is unexplainable also that the
birth of twins should be
looked upon by average Am
erican folks as joke or
the parents. 1t was anything but
joke to Jack Purse. Not that he
didn't love the youngsters as his life.
but that he was beginning to grow
gray at the temples prematurely
wondering when that business chance
was coming along which should pro
vide the money necessary for their
bringing up and education.
We have always given Jack full
credit; he tried to do his best by hi:
family and his job. That was the
pathos of it. There were times wher
panic siezed him and he wondered L
there was indeed any future" before
him, if all his energies and his life
must be spent sticking to his job If
the newspaper office which was steady
and permanent-and raising those
boys without any great wealth O!
money but just rich in character anf
manhood, little bit better men thar
their father had been before them
taught to avoid, if possible, Their
fathers mistakes.
America is filed with that kind OF
men, men who feel as the days sliI
away and the bills keep coming il
,, and money must be secured to meet
them that they may have already shot
their bolt and missed, that the best
part OF their lives is passing, that
| the best they can do is to equip those
young lives for whom they are re-
sponsible to take up the battle of life
where their father left it off and
| carry it forward to a better conclu-
sion. They are heroes, these fathers
They are the real blue-bloods ano
thoroughbreds by which this nation
| is great.
Thomas Joshua and Frederick ano
Theodore Herbert came along il
those years while the Purses were
living on Pleasant Street and Jacl
was drawing eighteen dollars a weel
in our office and looking for some
kind of opening. And the year o.
the Truman bankruptcy Richart
Samuel put in his tiny appearance
| and demanded his rights as an infan
and got them.
The year of the Truman bank
| ruptcyi Let us refresh our memoir.
| by the files. Yes, it was in 1890 tina
Truman Wagon Works went int
the hands of the Sheriff. 1t was il