THE STRAW. How a Temporary Samaritan Settled a Rude Intruder.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 250, 28 March 1888, Page 3

THE STRAW. How a Temporary Samaritan Settled a Rude Intruder.

Just this side of Blooming a baby in the rear of the car begun fco cry. He was a lusty-lunged little lellow, and made more noise than a dozen babies ought to have. The passengers turned — a good many of them with no very pleasant expressions on their iuecp — to investigate. They found a man holding the little one and doing his be^fc to quiet him. There was no woman in .•>ijjhl\ That vfixa what the tiny sufferer wanted — a vonmii — his mother — to diive away all his Hi tie troubles and soothe him into quiet dumber. The man did all he could. lie was a largo, benevolent-looking man, with a sad, melancholy expression and a world cf tenderness in hn eyes as he looked down at the little bundle of humanity and rocked it to and fro. Bub the baby refused to bo comforted and screamed the louder. So it wont fora dozen miles. The other passengers were growing impatient, and two or thiee of them got up and went forward. There was a touch of sympathy in some face?, but more bore a scowl. Neither seemed to make any difference with the baby — he screamed louder, if anything, as the train sped on. The man who held him was weary, but still he bent over his little charge, and sought in low words — clumsy baby talk— to hush his weeping. There was a man in the next seat in front — a cold, hui d -featured man — who had been disturbed in reading a book. Half-a-dozen times he turned and looked afc the man working with the baby. Each time he glanced with a deeper scowl. Still the other strove to soothe the little one. " There, thare, don't oo cry so ! Maybe oor mamma — " He stopped. " If you can't keep that howling brats of yours still," said the haid-featured man as he turned in his seat, " you'd better chuck it nut of the window !" The man with the baby glanced up surprised, pained. For the space of half a minute he looked the other full in the eye, and then he leaned forward, and with a voico choking with emotion said : " This young one isn't mine ! A confounded woman gave it to me to hold while she made a fool trip forward to the bag-gage-car to see if they'd got her trunk, and 1 guess she'd never coming back. Bub I'll be dashed if you can run on me ! ' And he dumped the baby down in one end of the seat, and, "with an altogether different look in his eye, jumped out in the aisl« and gob the hard-featured man by the collar, and jammed him down on the floor between the seats, and get up on him with both feet, and took hold of the hat-rack with both hands, and raised himself up and dropped back on the hard - featured man, till he had th© features pretty well softened up. And it appeared quite as if he would be going up and down like a pile - driver yet if the woman who owned the baby hadn't flounced back into the car and rescued the infant and quieted him in about ton seconds, and told him in a loud, clear voice thib she didn't know that she'd left her little, darling, pwescioua baby boy with a great, big, ugly prize-fighter. Then the bentvolenb man quit jumping and went and sat down in another scat with his face very red, while the hard-featured party crawled up looking a* if he would have to carry his features in a sling for three weeks.