The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1922-05-11
Copyright 1920, by The Wheeler Syndicate, Inc

Across the tracks and in the holloV
an unaccustomed lamp in Liddy Xii
eady's side window burned withou
flicker. But Annie Kineady gathere
her strength and ran. A whistle ros
off the fatlands behind her. She raj
faster, her black skirts Tapping abou
her and a wisp of black veil fyini
back. AT the dim station, low ant
squat as a hut, the ~telegrapher raiset
up, regarding her from under his eye
shade.
"H1lo, Annie"
"Hllo, joe"
"St. LOUISE"
"Yes."
The Accommodation slid rustily into
the station. She found a seat in the
day coach and sat on the red plush
seat, telescope across her knees ant
eyes squeezed tight against nausea
and rising misery.
Across the aisle a large party with
a heavy gold chain spanning a convex
waistcoat leaned to her with a queer
chirring noise underneath his breath
his eyes. well-imbedded in flesh, glow
ing across at her in quick appraisal.
= "Some kid" he said between moist
chfrrups.
Washington avenue, just above JEFF
ferson, has seen better days. It's
brown-stone fronts, even in bellicose
times, when st. Louis showed pam
talettes beneath her hoops and traded
slaves on the courthouse steps, had
not the sagging stoops or the copings
sunk. Instead, there were starchly
%curtained windows and the copings of
sandstenes, even the granite pairs Of
door lions scrubbed well into the crew
ices of the carved names and, too,
the carriage-step whitley secured for
the comings and goings and doings
and dancings of the Papins and
Chouteaus, Garrisons and Chopins Of
those debonair pioneer days.
! Then because of the West-End
movement, and because people are
constantly prospecting or falling back,
and the street car franchise cutting
through the seclusion, and a new gen
Grafton turning from a brown-stone
to a white-stone front 9 Washing
ton avenue just above Jefferson vac
uated and slipped into decay. ITO Let"
began to stare from empty windows,
doors sagged out of plumb, and finally,
like ghouls to the corpse of yesterday,
the rooming house invaded, the ledger
for the night laying a furtive head
beneath the high, calcimined ceiling OF
prouder days.
At 1886 Washington avenue, SIMS
ter looking with its front door sagging
in like a toothless mouth, its indoor
shutters closed and milk bottles and
cans of the add-hot-water-and-serve
foods of the ledger on the window
sills, Mrs. Lucy Beasley, to whom life
consisted of two frayed ends which
would not meet, conducted a Rooming
House-Light Housekeeping.
You ia whom Light Housekeeping is
but a card stuck in a murky window,
look to it well that you neve know
more. 1t is the h%earthstone and the
family board gone to smash, and in
their stead a tin can over the gas jet.
Women sick with the heaviness of
Light Housekeeping sometimes forget
to turn off the gas. Men in such
rooms sit through the long hours Of
Out-of-work ~workadays, oftimes plan
ming no good. Children cry here, not
knowing why.
In her third-story-back, a slit Of a
room overlooking a segment of alley
and the roofs of the King Kuality shoe
factory, Annie Kineady, brushing out
her flood of hair, heard one such cry
beat against the thin walls of her room
and paused with her brush held away
from her and looking back at herself
in the square Of wavy mirror.
Into the quiet of Sunday morning
slow-clappered church bells rang
roundly. She stood there with her
head cooked to the cry, her hair flow
ing down and over her bare arms and
more than ever brilliant in the meager
room, with it's cot still awry from her
rising, a table spread with her poor
odds and ends of toilet and a bowl
and pitcher. Beside it a tin slop-jar,
and besides that her empty telescope.
The cry, half a cough, rose again
louder, and she tossed down the
brush and wound her hair in its loose
coil, slid into her black dress, with
her neck rising whitley out of it,
squirming to button it up her back.
Slipped out into the dark hall, with
the medley of breakfast smells oozing
from everywhere, and knocked at the
door adjoining hers.
"Ce=e"