CHANGING PLACES WITH HIS WIFE

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2935, 22 November 1916, Page 3

CHANGING PLACES WITH HIS WIFE

THE STORY OF A WONDERFUL CRIPPLE. The most wonderful man I know (says a correspondent in "Every Lady's," lives in Washington, D.O. Ho went thero many years ago to take his Civil Service examination as an engraver. His appointment assured, the girl of his choice presiding in a little house down the street, life stretched before him bright and shining. One day an elevator caught him. Tho left leg was torn away, the right hand mangled, the bask injured. At the age of 25 he was brought homo a crumpled, crumbled cripple "Ho will bo able to do nothing consecutive; he may move about the house andl garden, perhaps, in time. The spine will always torment him, even if- —;" and the doctor glanced suggestively at the remains of hand and limb. ' "Move about the house," the crippled man repeated, later, trying to picture tlfe meaning of the words. For weeks he lay there, thinking; ,and the young wife sat beside him, thinking, tOO. -.'';., "Oh, jf it hadl just been I. Jimmy, I could have managed some way with the house," she said one day. The next day as they sat together the husband said: "Lottie. I have solved the problem'. We will change places. You take the examination that I have taken —I can teach you the work. You earn the salary. I'll keep house." . And. they did. Each day tho wife went forth.. Each day the husband waved a cheery goodt-bye above his crutches and turned back to the house. He swept and dusted; he scrubbed and cleaned without; he ironed tho clothing; he made jellies and jams. As for his, bread, it was a work of art and the boast of the neighbourhood. [ Nor was this man benlnd the kitchen apron any lesr, the man. He read broadly and intelligently. Though he could discuss with Mrs. Neighbour the latest method of putting up currant jam, he was no less able to inform her husband of the last turn of the' Euro-. pean situation, or to quote tho latest phrase of Irish Home Rule oratory, and he stood strong for suffrage. This wont on, this petticoat trade of his, as he laughingly termed it, for five, ten, -twenty years; and always there was wit, purpose, and freedom, for the man t was master of his fate and captain of his salvation. It may' he interesting to some to know that there were no children born to this unusual household. This was the great sacrifice. The writer knew the wife as a bright-eyed, efficient little woman of business, one of that vast army of Government employees that surgos into the public buildings at Washington at 9 o'clock every morning and surge's out again f at iin the afternoon. If there were moment's when the grey monotony of her man's life clouded her spirits, no one knew it, least of all the devoted, sustaining companion who waited for her at home.