“Cyrus Potts,” he thundered, “kiss that schoolma’am, or I’ll brain you as I did those other fellows.”
Cyrus dabbed an icy kiss in my direction.
A week later Cyrus and I left for Boston. His salary has been raised to $25 per month and I had saved $210.
Aubrey DeVere accompanied us to the train. Under his arm he carried a keg of blasting powder. As our train rolled out he sat down upon this keg and touched a lighted match to it.
One of his great toes fell through the car window and fell in my lap.
Cyrus is not of a jealous disposition, and I now have that great toe in a bottle of alcohol on my writing desk. We are married now, and I will never taken another trip to the South.
The Southern people are too impulsive.
(Houston Daily Post, Sunday morning, May 10, 1896.)
Whiskey Did It
A solemn philanthropist was standing at a corner of the Market House square yesterday making a calculation in his head as to how long it would take a man to save enough beer money to build Solomon’s temple. While he was musing, a small, slender policeman with a fiery eye came along, dragging by the wrist a big negro man about twice as large as himself.