Fitzgerald leader enterprise and press. (Fitzgerald, Ben Hill County, Ga.) 1921-1964, 1922-07-06

finally on the knob and her hat fallen
half back from her great bronze bell Of
mead, you crazy devil, you'll Why.
you don't even get drunk like man.
You only blubber Now, Steve Kineady.
stand and stare, you! Crazy devil,
you. Shut up or get out? Eth? Shut
up or get out Well. then, crazy devil,
you watch Watch !"
Annie, girl! Annie" and in the
face of the slammed door he fell for
ward. weeping weak tears into the
| rocker seat.
Outside the rain came down like
pins, pecking and pricking. When An
ME kineady, plunging through the I'M
drained streets, reached the railroad
tracks, her skirts chung so that she
stopped for a moment in the down.
pour to wiring at her hens and the flare
of her jacket.
The lights of the village burned
! through the wall Of rain like the
glazed eyes of the dying, but in Spar
tan the nights are long, and even as
she walked the tracks tie by tie, she
could see them blink out in the box
shaped houses, except in the glazier's,
whose wife lay low of typhoid-pneu.
monia, and in Abe Brodie's, made sim
| pie, poor soul, by sunstroke, and who
| loved to count far into the night imag-
| mary ransoms of imaginary kings.
Across thA Gl.S -, ho
an unaccustomed lamp in Liddy Kin
eady's side window burned without
! flicker. But Annie Kineady gathered
! her strength and ran. A whistle rose
| off the ftatlands behind her. She ran
| faster, her black skirts Tapping about
her and wisp of black veil flying
back. AT the dim station, low and
| squat as a hut, the telegrapher raised
| up, regarding her from under his eye
shade.
'Hllo, Annie"
| "H1lO, joe"
"St. LOUISE"
"Yes."
The Accommodation slid rustily into
| the station. She found seat In the
day coach and sat on the red plush
| seat, telescope across her knees and
eyes squeezed tight against nausea
and rising misery.
Across the aisle large party with
heavy gold chain spanning a convex
waistcOat leaned to her with 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
chirrups.
Washington avenue, just above JEFF
ferson, has seen better days. Its
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
| sandstones, 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 sack,
and the street car franchise cutting
through the seclusiOn, and a new gen.
Grafton turning from brown-stone
to white-stOne front age Washing
ton avenue JUST aDove Jefferson evac-
unted and slipped Into decay. ITO Let"
began to stare frOln 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 it's front door sagging
In like a toothless mouth, It's indoor
shutters closed and milk bottles and
cans of the add observation-disclosures
foods of the ledger on the window
stills, Mrs. Lucy Beasley, to whom life
consisted Of two frayed ends which
would not meet, conducted ROoming
HOuse-Light Housekeeping.
You to whom Light Housekeeping Is
but card stuck in murky window,
look to it well that you never know
more. 1t is the hearthstOne and the
family board gone to smash, and In
their stead 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, slit of a
room overlooking a segment of alley
and the roofs of the King Kuality shoe
factory, Annie Kineady, brushing out
her food 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