Butler High School - Magnet Yearbook (Butler, PA)

Page 23 text:

THE SENIOR {MAGNET 21 cided on the latter course, and after she had eaten, she started on her tour of the island. She enjoyed herself all morning and all afternoon. Along towards evening Captain Sedley returned, bringing with him Miss Agnes Haspin and her nephew, Lysander Lane. The summer passed quickly and Gwendolyn found both health and happiness. How could she help being happy with a nice young fellow like Lysander to go around with her under the chaperon age of Miss Haspin Then one day something happened. Gwendolyn was rummaging among some books in the library when she found a letter addressed to her, in her cousin’s writing. She opened the envelope and found a note which read, “I knew you would be sensible and stay here to regain the health which you have all but lost. I knew you would find this note. Health and wealth bring happiness and now you will be the possessor of both. For you have, no doubt entirely regained your health and in the-----Bank you will find fifty thousand dollars deposited in your name.” Gwendolyn was overjoyed. She was now very glad that she had stayed. In the winter she went to live in the city with Miss Haspin and Lysander. The following summer it was not Miss Gwendolyn Seaton and Lysander Lane who returned to Pine Island, but it was Mr. and Mrs. Lysander Lane and their aunt, Agnes Haspin, who loves to tell the story of their romance which she has reproduced on canvass. --------b.h.s.----- JUST STUMPY Ella Steen Newsboys are “just boys” no matter whether they sell papers for a Metropolitan daily like the New York Globe or the Salem, Ohio, Argus. Newsies are necessities, it seems, although they may sometimes be nuisances. Customers pay little or no attention to them, but no one ever said that anyone ignored “Stumpy.” There was something pathetic in that little figure in the patched, second-hand clothing, and many a customer felt a curious lump in his throat as he glanced from those great dark eyes to the little crutch and the mere stump of a leg that ended just below the knee. Often an extra coin dropped into “Stumpy’s” little hand as the giver thought of other dark eyes, but laughing and full of mischief anil fun of carefree childhood. So “Stumpy” fared well, for the most part, although many an unthinking fellow newsie bullied him on occasion or even went so far as to drive him away from a desirable street corner. Christmas was coming, but the season of holly, paper Xmas bells, and mysterious packages meant little more than usual to “Stumpy,” orphan as he was, with none to give to, and none to give him anything—not even a mother’s love. Three days before Christmas the snow came, a veritable blizzard, sweeping out from the Middle West into the East. Farms, homes, villages, towns and the cities lay half buried in the snowy whiteness. In the last rush of Christmas buying, “Stumpy” was practically ignored, and sales of papers dropped, and still dropped to almost none at all. And then came Christmas eve, and still more snow. Cold, half-clothed, sick and weak, “Stumpy” was hardly able to yell, “Argus, Mister?” at hurrying pass-ersby. One or two men did buy papers, but “Stumpy” had a bundle unsold and

Page 22 text:

20 THE SEN JO R [MAGNET tom—“Jim dear, that old valise has been the whole cause.” Mrs. Palmer explained her hasty decision to her husband and begged forgiveness. “Well, Madaline, I wanted to tell you that morning, but you were talking on without giving me a chance to say any- -------B.H. GWENDOLYN’S Dorothy thing. I knew Mr. Briggs would call and I really couldn’t wait until you stopped your advice, because I had a very important engagement with Mr. Coggs. It was necessary for me to hurry as he was leaving on the nine car. By this time all was sweet and lovely at the Palmer home. INHERITANCE Young Gwendolyn watched Captain Sedley as he stored her baggage in the little motor boat, then she took her place in the boat while the captain pushed the boat away from the landing and grasped the wheel, all one quick motion. “Where is the island?” she asked after they had fairly started. “Ye can’t ketch a sight of her until after we round yon curve. Kinder queer, ain’t it, what cousin Jim Seaton left you when he died. Me and Mirandy thinks it would hev been a little better if he had left you a little money instead of this lonely island, which as I heerd was said in his will, ye couldn’t sell for five years.” “Yes, I guess it is queer, but cousin Jim always was that way. I too, would have appreciated a little money—but I guess he knew what he was about,” Gwendolyn responded. “Pine Island, ahoy!” cried the captain, as he rounded a curve. “My!” gasped Gwendolyn. “How pretty it looks. 1 know already that 1 am going to like it. I wonder if 1 could get a couple of pleasant people to board with me for the summer. Then I could stay here and get the rest, which I need so badly and make a little bit of money besides.” “That’s a purty good idee,” said the captain. “There’s a lady stayin’ over at the village inn, with her nephew. They’re artists and I reckon they’d like it over here where there is somethin’ worth paintin’. If ye don’t mind, I’ll go around and see ’em about it tomorrow.” “How lovely! exclaimed Gwendolyn, “I’d love to have them.” “Wal then, if youre so anxious to have them I’ll go and see ’em and if they wants to come, I’ll bring ’em around tomorrow evenin’. I lere we are now,” said the captain as he drew up at the landing of the pretty little boat house. “It’s strange that of all cousin Jim’s houses, he liked this lonely one out here best,” said Gwendolyn. “1 reckon he liked it because it was healthy out here. They left the boat and made their way up to the path to the pretty little cottage. After the captain had gone, Gwendolyn kindled a fire in the kitchen and then examined the five rooms of the cottage. She found that the house was plainly but comfortably furnished. She then set to work, and out of the provisions which she had brought along, she selected her supper. She was very tired and very sleepy, so after she had eaten and washed the dishes she went to bed. She was up bright and early the next morning. All nature seemed so beautiful that she did not know which to do first, to go out and examine her inheritance or to eat her breakfast. She de-

Page 24 text:

22 THE SENIOR [MAGNET just eight cents in one pocket. With no supper and with just the memory of a sandwich for dinner, the shivering cripple stood in the whirling snow, waiting, waiting, for customers. Quite a few men and women passed by, warm-hearted, perhaps, but unthinking and unseeing, too intent on their own business to notice the sad-eved lad with the crutch, pressed against the wall of a building, hoping to protect himself in a measure from the fury of the storm. It was rapidly growing colder, and the lad shivered more and more. “Stumpy” forced himself to drag his weary body out towards the corner of the street just as a young giant bumped into him, almost knocking the lad down. Grasping him quickly, Howard Tyson prevented the boy from being knocked into the street. “Argus, Mister?” “No, not this time,” laughed Howard, as he hurried on his way to the inter-urban that would take him to a prosperous community where a joyful reception awaited him. But, try as he would, young Tyson could not shake off the appeal, the reproach in those eyes that looked into his in that instant before they separated in the storm. The trip home did not remove the uneasiness, the feeling that he had not done what was right, so I loward Tyson arrived at his father's home in a depressed state of mind. The warm welcome took his thoughts away from the newsboy, but he could not entirely shake off the depression, and went to bed with the memory of the haunting eyes uppermost in his mind. Christmas Day was more of a disappointment than it had been a pleasure because Howard found his thoughts turning again and again to the crippled newsboy. In the city the next day, I loward made inquiry of another newsboy near the place where he had seen the crippled lad, but to no avail. Later in the day, Howard found a brief item in the Argus:” “Local Newsboy Found Dead on Xmas Eve. At 11:30 o’clock last night, Xmas Eve, Patrolman Winton found the body of ‘Stumpy,’ a crippled newsboy at the corner of Smith and Penfield Streets. ‘Stumpy’ had been a newsie for the ‘Argus’ for two years, and had no parents or relatives living, so far as is known. The coroner states that the death was due to hunger and exposure.” On Christmas Eve! What a Xmas present for poor, crippled “Stumpy,” snatched from life into Eternity, where he would never need the crutch again. Fhe tragedy of it! And he, Howard Tyson, could have helped or done something! And those eyes, pleading and reproachful, appealing. Howard Tyson learned a lesson that he will never forget to his dying day. Now he never refuses to buy a paper from a cripple or ragged newsboy that hails him.