Weekly Caledonian. (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1919-1920, 1919-03-19

Il pIiCt IN IN" shipping uCba lmcni IN
the local knitting mill. NcH1 Ne
heard of Elm IN Detroit and then ST
Louis. Hi moihcr cot II postal from
an unkuo~n friend ~ ing that he'd
gold craze. He never came back.
Mr.. Nimrod Briggs stayed with Us
through all the years. He is with Us
yet: he came into the office Il few
moments ag0,-a froWsN, mousey lit
tie 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 mailtime 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 Il baking powder
drummer; eight years later Mrs. Hold
discovered her clclking in a depart
ment store down in Springfield.
When we lay back in an old Office
chair with 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
of life only as Il constant readju't-
ment. n constant replacing OF new
faces for old, constant swapping of
friendships and exchanging of the
old and Anticipated for the better.
After all, the only timing permanent
in life is change. The sane and hap
by 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 vicissitudcs
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 we're dependent upon
memory alone, we would have set it
down that the babies seemed to come
along in the Purse household in re-
cortl-breaking fashion after the adj
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.
If * unexnlainable also that the
birth of twins should be
looked upon by average Am
erican folks as a joke on
the parents. 1t was anything but
a 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 his
family and his job. That was the
pathos of it. There were times when
panic sliced him and he wondered if
there was indeed any future" before
him, if all his energies and his life
must be spent sticking to his job in
the newspaper office which was steady
and permancnt-and. raising those
boys without any great wealth Of
money but just rich in character and
manhood, little bit better men than
their father had been before them,
taught to avoid, if possible, their
fathers mistakes.
America is filled with that kind of
men, men who feel as the days slip
away and the bills keep coming in
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 and
thoroughbrcds by which this nation
is great.
Thomas Joshua and Frederick and
Theodore Herbert came along in
those years while the Purses were
living on Pleasant Street and Jack
was drawing eighteen dollars a week
in our office and looking for some
kind of opening. And the year of
the Truman bankruptcy Richard
Samuel put in his tiny appearance
and demanded his rights as an infant
and got them.
The year of the Truman bank
ruptcy! Let US refresh our memory
by the files. Yes, it was in 1890 that
Truman Wagon Works went into
the hands of the Sheriff. 1t was in
1890 that changes took place in the
lives of some of our story folk in
Iced.
1t did not come wholly unexpected,
he Truman bankruptcy. The town
Knew that Herb was drinking heavily
md that for some mysterious reason
he Purses were trying desperately
% save him. But for an equally
mysterious reason, every time there
vas a new young one in the Purse
home, Herb went on a spree-a ter
'iblc spree-and the last one ended
n his being arrested and detained in
sheriff Crumpett's emporium under ,
he town hall ovpr nipht because be- ,