Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-10-23
Washington News

Look down-look down that lonely
road, the hacks all dead in line:
Some give a nickel, some give dime,
to bury dis po' body o. minel"
All ready for the dismal ritual of
burial lies the body of the author of
those lines-ready for the trip down
the lonely road
And the money-it must come from
some place other than the pitifully
empty purse that was found in the
little attic room at 1925 K street beside
the body Of the author yesterday
morning.
All that is mortal of Miss Draper Gill,
! romantic booklover, who finally found
that in poverty the body shackles the
mind to the humdrum of this world,
and who broke the ShackleS with an
open gas Jet, lies in the Tabler Funeral
Home, 928 M street, while friends and
relatives busy themselves with the
arrangements for her funeral. The
arrangements have not been completed.
Lines Written as Life Ebbs.
Miss Gill, whose closest friends were
the fanciful figures from between the
leaves of books, wrote the above lines
as the close of her life, as her final
efforts to slash the shackles Of poverty
that took her too often from her friends
of the phantom book world into the
every day pursuits of livelihood.
With her was found her story, elo-
quent in its pathoS, telling a tale of
Thirteen Cigarettes" the coffin nails"
with which she sealed the lid upon the
Stacking body and with which she
hoped to free her intangible self to stay
always with her fanciful friends Of
fiction.
Even as she died in the shabby little
room some time yesterday morning, she
moved with her fiction friends, this last
time as a f1ctional character of her own
creation, as Carol" a girl like her
self, strangely, though, even in the tale,
coming every now and then into the
world of real men and women and leav-
ing the fancy world behind.
Left Only Few Pennies.
The story she ended with the two
lines above, she wrote as gas filled her
room and as, all unmindful OF the
danger to her plans her smoking might
constitute, she inhaled puff after puff
from the fatal number of cigarettes.
AS she took the last puff from the last
cigarette she laid her story aside, and
lay down quietly to await the final
She left only q few pennies, and
there is none coming to her from her
last place of employment, the book shop
Of the Woodward & Lothrop department
store, for she had on Saturday, the last
day she worked, drawn in advance the
little pay she had coming to her.
Story Of Thirteen Cigarettes.
Eloquently, the story Of Carol" and
the Thirteen Cigarettes" tells Of the
death of all that was mortal Of Draper
Gill. 1t follows:
October 81, 1880
Thirteen cigarettes.
1.-THE bare attic room bore signs OF
former occupancy, but none OF them
sufficiently interesting to fire any ones
imagination. Discolored, once-white
walls, the plaster Clipped and cracked,
and a few nail holes were about all.
Situated on the fourth and top floor
and partitioned OF from the unfinished
attic proper, the room had probably
been occupied by careless servants.
carol lay prone on a cot in this
same room, ostensibly reading but stop
ping at intervals to rehearse what had
become very futile philosophy Of life
her life.
Termed CONN Nails.
"Just the other day she had read q
story entitled Something Will Hap
pen,' but nothing had In the story.
Carol had been more fortunate in the
past, and the evil spells of desirable
circumstances have always been broken
sooner or later. Now it was different.
She was 26 and voluntarily or involun-
tarily, she herself had closed all avenues
of escape The Is cigarettes indeed
represented the oft-bruited coffin nails.
When they were gone and when the
ash tray held the thirteenth stub and
contributing ashes, Carols doom would
have been knelled, silently but sig
nificantly.
Reviewing events, recent and long
past, was not very comforting. Always
she had made wrong moves and Suf-
fered from the unexpected results. A
childish spontaneity had been half
smothered during adolescence and
thoughtless selfishness coupled with an
indefinable weakness Of purpose were
growing up in its place. Carol recognized
the change dolefully and helpleSsly, and
so did very little to remedy it.