Life — November 2, 1905 — page 31: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

oe i oe All's Well That Begins Well. O long asI continue to exist, 1 never forget th day I died My new motor car had only been delivered the night before, nd we—that is, Clara Louise and speeding along at the rate recerced by the speedemeter of fifty-four miles an hour How were we to know that the culvert bric over the Evanston road I—were had been washed away the ni fore by the heavy rain ? I should doubtless have been able to ¢ if, just before we got to the Clara Louise hadn't leaned forward to ask me if I loved her. As if 1, Moward Chandler, This y stop the machine in bridge, could ever love anyone else just cnough to take my eye off the streak ahead, and then in a blinding instant there was a crash—and total darkness, Of course, I didn’t know until some time afterwards that I had been in- stantly killed. The realization of it came to me gradually. The first consciousness that dawned upon me was a kind of choking sensa- tion, I seemed to have, in some unac- countable manner, acquired the swal- lowing habit. Apparently T swallowed with the same regularity that a piston works in a cylinder. Then I discov- ered that I had the blinking habit also, connection with this, the first phrase that flashed across my consciousness was a slang term that apparently had stuck to me right through my sudden ending. It was the term “on the blink. Yes, I said to myself, “I'm on the blink.” At this T rolled over and tried to laugh. Strange tosay, I found that this was no laugh- ing matter, There was something wrong with my vocal cords. Evident- ly they hadn't been used for some time: Gradually it dawned upon me tha I was a baby. I got this idea the day after I learned to focus my eyes. It was a queer thing, that focusing. I would start out all right for some object—get on its trail, so tospeak, and T remember in By CHESTERTON TODD. begin to run it down—when suddenly it would meet me half way—flop right on to me. It was a long time before I began to place things as they ought to be. Then I made some discoveries. The first thing I began to wonder The next, that I y nothing was how old I was. must lie low and he was a nice lit- class type—had My new mother— tle body of the middle a habit of bringing the morning paper into the room, and while I lay in the crib and kicked up my heels, of sitting in a rocking chair near the window and reading it. Then when she got up, she would invariably put it down on a table, about fourteen feet away from where I It was simply maddening to lie there and be just far enough away not to read the date. It’s all very well now to smile as 1 think it over, but then it was no joke. I could hardly rise calmly up in bed and sa ner: “Madam, T'll paper.”” The lady in question—while I have absolutely no complaint to make of her treatment of me— was gifted only with ordinary intelligence, and I might be y in an easy conversational man- trouble you for that Pre aesTe rary misunderstood. The shock would have been too much for her. I realized then, as I never did before, that even in these days there is a limit to the precocity of children, keyond which it isn't safe for any baby to go. As for my new father, he was a hard working bookkeeper. He had proba- bly never heard of psychology or psychic phenomena, and to approach him was out of the question. He used to come in morning and evening and look me over. I remem- her once, as he stood by the crib I saw with a fierce joy that there was an evening paper tucked in the side pocket of his coat. I continued to roll over and made a convulsive grab for it with my chubby fist. In another moment 1 would have had it out, when my mother sprang forward. “Gerny This was her one exclamation, but it The gentleman away precipitately “Well,” T back disconsolately, “it can't be very far from the day I died, for then the most intimate knowledge of germs was known even to factory hands.” I might have continued thus indefi- was enough. moved said to myself, as [ sank * Well, Major, how are you P™ (This story is continued on the 5th advertising page following.) comicbooks.com