Show DESTINY AWAITS YOU stories which show great telny depends on the moat trivial ino denti A group of through passengers gathered ga therod in the smoking room of a pullman coach and the conversation drifted into a study of this phase of ufa no two of the men had ever met before hut all will probably remember the little meeting as long as they live this was one of the first stories speaking of narrow escapes I 1 was doing business for myself in virginia city nev one time and a friend from tho east came on there and tried his hand at buying and selling mining stocks he was a good operator but the dizzy rush of the comstock or else the rapid gait of the town lost him his chances and he seem to get along he undertook to bull a certain line of shares and put out most of his money on them delost everything he had trying to bolster them up to a fancy price for unload mg he sold his carriage and pawned his jewelry he seni his hotel bill around for me to settle and sunk everything he had on the turn of that days events things went wrong and ho closed out everything but the molly mine shares he started around to my place intending to turn them lovar to me for what ii had advanced him on the way he met another operator and asked him what he would give for the batch of mollie mine shares the fellow was in a farious hurry but he stopped long enough to say 80 a share they had cost my friend but it gave my friend and he closed in a twinkling then he squared up what debts he had out came around to my place and paid me telling as he did so how de lighted he was at being able to do it and explaining that he had started to my office to give me the shares instead I 1 was as glad as he was that he was not compelled to settle in that way but had been able to raise ready money he started to the station to go back east and came back breathlessly in three minutes to tell me the sutro tunnel had a drift which sent the mollie mine shares away up they were worth apiece then and brought before night I 1 just missed fortune by the accident of his meeting the one man in virginia city who knew of the and met him at the one moment ot the whole day when he could have been seen there I 1 have been wondering ever since what I 1 would have done with that money it I 1 had made it my father was killed in an accident said the fourth passenger soberly he had been a soldier and made a record of fifteen battles with never a wound although he have dodged much for he went up from a private of twenty to a colonel of twenty five after the war he bought cattle he used to ride home from town on the main road one night he thought he would cut aaros the farm and save about a filp he took a woods path he never had traveled belore in his life he saw a colt and stopped to pet it A neighbor called to him across the line fence and he stopped just another minute to talk with him he rode into the woods A tree fell without a sign of warning right at the instant he was under it and crushed him to death just a moment more or less with the colt justa an instant more or less with the farmer just a shade slower or faster riding or any other night in the world all these conditions you understand were entirely independent and all of them must unite and he escaped it seamed the perfection of conspiracy banot one batall the fates the war said the last man 1 I happened to be on the losing side in that difference of opinion 1 was an officer in the fleet that was bombarded off mobile in may 1863 we were maneuvering the ene mya position and my aldip was ordered into a certain position in swinging round one af the rudder chains kicked kinked and the vessel be handled for a moment we flagship of the fleet before the engines could under control we had drifted above her and just as we swung clear a shell came through an open port the only one on the starboard side and exploded in the gun room killing and wounding men it was the that morning and the only one tar hours we found afterward it was done by mistake a drunken gunner misunderstanding an order one second earlier would have ranged ahead of us A second later and it would have ranged astern one turn more orless or less and the gunner would have had too much or too little of elevation and disastrous shell would never have found the open port and both crew and ship would have escaped As it was both were almost totally lost |