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Show Alas! Poor Hortus Steals Home Plate i f '"Poor old Hoaus," sighed the sympathetic sym-pathetic narrator. "I don't go to many gamei, but a couple of weeks ago I took in a double header in Pittsburg. I saw Wagner older and, I thought, a lot flower. He made his way to third on a hit. I meditated over the past. Think of it! Playing ball at 41! He seemed pitifully weak and sged and he was panting from apparent exhaustion like the good old hoss he ie. His legs seemed . to creak under him and a patch of gray . at his temples made me think the whole business brutal " At this point he broke into a fit of sobbing and the listening -scribe also mopped away a tear or two on his coat sleeve for the story was so sad that it would have made the heart of a Cossack bleed. The scribe, who has been accustomed accus-tomed to sad and sordid doings in life, had never before been so, affected. "Yes, yes, go on," he pleaded with .the weeping man. Tremblingly and with :.scalding tears rolling down his humanitarian humani-tarian cheeks, he continued: "Well, I continued to watch and pitv him. Poor old fellow! As I have stated, ae stood there, a panting, wearied and -worn out man who would have looked better in a wheel chair on an outer veranda ve-randa of an old menJs home." The weeping narrator stopped speaking speak-ing as the town clock began to toll the hour of midnight. On the last stroke tne sobbing scribe raised himself and asked quietly: "What did you see then?" N vm'" C-r tne stor-v teller, forcing sme through h'is drving tears. lnen I saw him steal home?" |