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Peck's Sunshine, a fiction by George W. Peck |
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The Trouble Mr. Storey Has |
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_ A dispatch from Chicago says that Wilbur F. Storey, of the _Times_, is in a bad state, and that he gets around by leaning on his young wife with one hand and a cane with the other, that he believes his latter end is approaching, and that he is giving liberally to churches and has quit abusing ministers, and is trying to lead a different life. We should have no objections to Mr. Storey's going to heaven. However much he might try to revolutionize things there, and run the place, there will be enough of us there to hold the balance of power and prevent him from doing any particular damage. Besides, we do not believe he is responsible for the cussedness of his newspaper. It is the wicked young men he keeps. The four that we know, Wilkie, Snowdon, Seymour and Doc Hinman, are enough to make the truly good Mr. Storey have night sweats. They never refuse when you ask them up, and they are full of guile. Storey got fooled the worst on Snowdon. Snow-don is a graduate of a nice Christian college at Ripon, a beautiful blonde young man with the most resigned and pious countenance we ever saw, one that seems to draw people to him. His heart is tender and he weeps at the recital of suffering. A stranger, to look at his face in repose, would say that he was an evangelist and the pillar of some church, and that he associated only with the truly good, but he plays the almightiest game of draw poker of any man in Chicago. The boys say that when Storey engaged Snowdon, after the fire, he got him to attend to the Sunday school department, and to keep track of the church sociables and to report the noon prayer meetings, but that while he was giving him instructions in the duties that he would be expected to perform, Storey suggested that as the evening was well advanced that they play a game of "old maid," an innocent game played with cards. Mr. Snowdon hesitated at first, said it was something he never allowed himself to do, to touch a card, as he had promised his old professor, Mr. Merrill, of Ripon college, that he never would do anything that would bring reproach upon his _almira mater_, but seeing it was Storey he would play one game, just for luck. Well, you know how it is. One word brought on another, they drifted, by easy stages, into draw poker, and before Snowdon left he had won two hundred and eighty dollars and, an oroide watch chain of Storey. Mr. Storey told his wife the next morning that he never was so deceived in a pious looking young person in his life. "Why," said he, as he was thumbing over the Bible to read a chapter before morning prayers, "the tow headed cuss would draw to a pair of deuces and get an ace full. Let us unite in prayer." However, he was not going to see any other paper secure Snowdon's talent, so he gave him a box stall up in the top of the _Times_ building, and any day, after 3 o'clock in the afternoon, you can go there and borrow a couple of dollars of him, if you are in Chicago hard up. The _Sun_ hopes Mr. Storey may live as long as he can make it pay, and when he dies that he may go to the celestial regions, but he must not go and build any temporary seats and charge a dollar a head for us fellows from the country to see the procession go by. We can stand those things here on earth, but when we get over there we must have a square deal, or jump the game. _ |
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