Title: Forty Minutes Late - 1909
Author: Smith, F. Hopkinson
Language: English
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FORTY MINUTES LATE

By F. Hopkinson Smith

1909


It began to snow half an hour after the train started--a fine-grained,
slanting, determined snow that forced its way between the bellows of the
vestibules, and deposited itself in mounds of powdered salt all over the
platforms and steps. Even the porter had caught some puffs on his
depot coat with the red cape, and so had the conductor, from the way he
thrashed his cap on the back of the seat in front of mine. "Yes,
gettin' worse," he said in answer to an inquiring lift of my eyebrows.
"Everything will be balled up if this keeps on."

"Shall we make the connection at Bondville?" I was to lecture fifty
miles from Bondville Junction, and had but half an hour lee-way.

If the man with the punch heard, he made no answer. The least said
the soonest mended in crises like this. If we arrived on time every
passenger would grab his bag and bolt out without thanking him or the
road, or the engineer who took the full blast of the storm on his chest
and cheeks. If we missed the connection, any former hopeful word would
only add another hot coal to everybody's anger.

I fell back on the porter.

"Yes' sir, she'll be layin' jes' 'cross de platform. She knows we're
comin'. Sometimes she waits ten minutes--sometimes she don't; more times
I seen her pullin' out while we was pullin' in."

Not very reassuring this. Only one statement was of value--the position
of the connecting train when we rolled into Bondville.

I formulated a plan: The porter would take one bag, I the other--we
would both stand on the lower step of the Pullman, then make a dash. If
she was pulling out as we pulled in, a goatlike spring on my part might
succeed; the bags being hurled after me to speed the animal's motion.

One hour later we took up our position.

"Dat's good!--Dar she is jes' movin' out: thank ye, sar. I got de
bag--dis way!"

There came a jolt, a Saturday-afternoon slide across the ice-covered
platform, an outstretched greasy hand held down from the step of the
moving train, followed by the chug of a bag that missed my knees by a
hand's breadth--and I was hauled on board.

The contrast between a warm, velvet-lined Pullman and a cane-seated car
with both doors opened every ten minutes was anything but agreeable;
but no discomfort should count when a lecturer is trying to make his
connection. That is what he is paid for and that he must do at all
hazards and at any cost, even to chartering a special train, the price
devouring his fee.

Once in my seat an account of stock was taken--two bags, an umbrella,
overcoat, two gum shoes (one off, one on), manuscript of lecture in bag,
eye-glasses in outside pocket of waistcoat. This over, I spread myself
upon the cane seat and took in the situation. It was four o'clock (the
lecture was at eight); Sheffield was two hours away; this would give
time to change my dress and get something to eat. The committee,
moreover, were to meet me at the depot with a carriage and drive me
to where I was "to spend the night and dine"--so the chairman's letter
read. The suppressed smile on the second conductor's face when he
punched my ticket and read the name of "Sheffield" sent my hand into my
pocket in search of this same letter. Yes--there was no mistake about
it,--"Our carriage," it read, "will meet you," etc., etc.

The confirmation brought with it a certain thrill; not a carriage picked
up out of the street, or a lumbering omnibus--a mere go-between from
station to hotels--but "our carriage!" Nothing like these lecture
associations, I thought,--nothing like these committees, for making
strangers comfortable. That was why it was often a real pleasure to
appear before them. This one would, no doubt, receive me in a big yellow
and white Colonial club-house built by the women of the town (I know of
a dozen just such structures), with dressing and lunch rooms, spacious
lecture hall, and janitor in gray edged with black.

This thought called up my own responsibility in the matter; I was glad
I had caught the train; it was a bad night to bring people out and then
disappoint them, even if most of them did come in their own carriages.
Then again, I had kept my word; none of my fault, of course, if I
hadn't--but I had!--that was a source of satisfaction. Now that I
thought of it, I had, in all my twenty years of lecturing, failed only
twice to reach the platform. In one instance a bridge was washed away,
and in the other my special train (the price I paid for that train still
keeps me hot against the Trusts) ran into a snowdrift and stayed there
until after midnight, instead of delivering me on time, as agreed. I had
arrived late, of course, many times, gone without my supper often, and
more than once had appeared without the proper habiliments--and I am
particular about my dress coat and white waistcoat--but only twice had
the gas been turned off and the people turned out. Another time I had--

"Sheffield! Shef-fie-l-d! All out for Shef-f-i-e-l-d!" yelled the
conductor.

The two bags once more, the conductor helping me on with my overcoat,
down the snow-blocked steps and out into the night.

"Step lively!--more'n an hour late now."

I looked about me. I was the only passenger. Not a light of any
kind--not a building of any kind, sort, or description, except a box-car
of a station set up on end, pitch dark inside and out, and shut tight.
No carriage. No omnibus; nothing on runners; nothing on wheels. Only a
dreary waste of white, roofed by a vast expanse of black.

"Is this Sheffield?" I gasped.

"Yes,--all there is here; the balance is two miles over the hills."

"The town?"

"Town?--no, the settlement;--ain't more's two dozen houses in it."

"They were to send a carriage and--"

"Yes--that's an old yarn--better foot it for short." Here he swung his
lantern to the engineer craning his head from the cab of the locomotive,
and sprang aboard. Then this fragment came whirling through the steam
and smoke:--"There's a farmhouse somewhere's over the hill,--follow the
fence and turn to--" the rest was lost in the roar of the on-speeding
train.

I am no longer young. Furthermore, I hate to carry things--bags
especially. One bag might be possible--a very small one; two bags, both
big, are an insult.

I deposited the two outside the box-car, tried the doors, inserted
my fingers under the sash of one window, looked at the chimney with a
half-formed Santa Claus idea of scaling the roof and sliding down to
some possible fireplace below; examined the wind-swept snow for carriage
tracks, peered into the gloom, and, as a last resort, leaned up against
the sheltered side of the box to think.

There was no question that if a vehicle of any kind had been sent to
meet me it had long since departed; the trackless roadway showed that.
It was equally evident that if one was coming, I had better meet it on
the way than stay where I was and freeze to death. The fence was still
visible--the near end--and there was a farmhouse somewhere--so the
conductor had said, and he seemed to be an honest, truthful man. Whether
to right or left of the invisible road, the noise of the train and the
howl of the wind had prevented my knowing--but _somewhere's_--That was a
consolation.

The bags were the most serious obstacles. If I carried one in each hand
the umbrella would have to be cached, for some future relief expedition
to find in the spring.

There _was_ a way, of course, to carry bags--any number of bags. All
that was needed was a leather strap with a buckle at each end; I had
helped to hang half a dozen bags across the shoulders of as many porters
meeting trains all over Europe. Of course, I didn't wear leather straps.
Suspenders were my stronghold. They might!--No, it was too cold to get
at them in that wind. And if I did they were of the springy, wabbly kind
that would seesaw the load from my hips to my calves.

The only thing was to press on. Some one had blundered, of course.

"Half a league, half a league--into the jaws," etc.

"Theirs not to reason why--" But my duty was plain; the audience were
already assembling; the early ones in their seats by this time.

Then an inspiration surged through me. Why not slip the umbrella through
the handle of one bag, as Pat carries his shillalah and bundle of duds,
and grab the other in my free hand! Our carriage couldn't be far off.
The exercise would keep my blood active and my feet from freezing, and
as to the road, was there not the fence, its top rail making rabbit
jumps above the drifts?

So I trudged on, stumbling into holes, flopping into treacherous ruts,
halting in the steeper places to catch my breath, till I reached the top
of the hill. There I halted--stopped short, in fact: the fence had given
out! In its place was a treacherous line of bushes that faded into a
delusive clump of trees. Beyond, and on both sides, stretched a great
white silence--still as death.

Another council of war. I could retrace my steps, smash in the windows
of the station, and camp for the night, taking my chances of stopping
some east-bound train as it whizzed past, with a match and my
necktie--or I could stumble on, perhaps in a circle, and be found in
the morning by the early milk.

On! On once more--maybe the clump of trees hid something--maybe--

Here a light flashed--a mere speck of a light--not to the right, where
lay the clump of trees--but to my left; then a faint wave of warm color
rose from a chimney and curled over a low roof buried in snow. Again the
light flashed--this time through a window with four panes of glass--each
one a beacon to a storm-tossed mariner!

On once more--into a low hollow--up a steep slope--slipping, falling,
shoving the hand-gripped bag ahead of me to help my footing, until I
reached a snow-choked porch and a closed door.

Here I knocked.

For some seconds there was no sound; then came a heavy tread, and a man
in overalls threw wide the door.

"Well, what do you want at this time of night?" (Time of night, and it
but seven-thirty!)

"I'm the lecturer," I panted.

"Oh, come! Ain't they sent for ye? Here, I'll take 'em. Walk in and
welcome. You look beat out. Well--well--wife and I was won-derin' why
nothin' driv past for the six-ten. We knowed you was comin'. Then agin,
the station master's sick, and I 'spose ye couldn't warm up none. And
they ain't sent for ye? And they let ye tramp all--Well--well!"

I did not answer. I hadn't breath enough left for sustained
conversation; moreover, there was a red-hot stove ahead of me, and a
rocking-chair,--comforts I had never expected to see again--and there
was a pine table--oh, a lovely pine table, with a most exquisite white
oil-cloth cover, holding the most beautiful kerosene lamp with a
piece of glorious red flannel floating in its amber fluid; and in the
corner--a wife--a sweet-faced, angelic-looking young wife, with a baby
in her arms too beautiful for words--must have been!

I dropped into the chair, spread my fingers to the stove and looked
around--warmth--rest-peace--comfort--companionship--all in a minute!

"No, they didn't send anything," I wheezed when my breath came. "The
conductor told me I should find the farmhouse over the hill--and--"

"Yes, that's so; it's back a piece, you must have missed it."

"Yes--I must have missed it," I continued in a dazed way.

"The folks at the farmhouse is goin' to hear ye speak, so they told me.
Must be startin' now."

"Would you please let them know I am here, and--"

"Sure! Wait till I get on my boots! Hello!--that's him now."

Again the door swung wide. This time it let in a fur overcoat, coon-skin
cap, two gray yarn mittens, a pair of raw-beefsteak cheeks and a voice
like a fog-horn.

"Didn't send for ye? Wall, I'll be gol-durned! And yer had to fut it?
Well, don' that beat all. And yer ain't the fust one they've left down
here to get up the best way they could. Last winter--Jan'ry, warn't it,
Bill?" Bill nodded--"there come a woman from New York and they dumped
her out jes' same as you. I happened to come along in time, as luck
would have it--I was haulin' a load of timber on my bob-sled--and there
warn't nothin' else, so I took her up to the village. She got in late,
of course, but they was a-waitin' for her. I really wasn't goin' to hear
you speak to-night--we git so much of that sort of thing since the old
man who left the money to pay you fellers for talkin' died--been goin'
on ten years now--but I'll take yer 'long with me, and glad to. But yer
oughter have somethin' warmer'n what yer got on. Wind's kinder nippy
down here, but it ain't nothin' to the way it bites up on the ridge."

This same thought had passed through my own mind. The unusual exertion
had started every pore in my body; the red-hot stove had put on the
finishing touches and I was in a Russian bath. To face that wind meant
all sorts of calamities.

The Madonna-like wife with the cherub in her arms rose to her feet.

"Would you mind wearing my fur tippet?" she said in her soft voice;
"'tain't much, but it 'ud keep out the cold from yer neck and maybe this
shawl'd help some, if I tied it round your shoulders. Father got his
death ridin' to the village when he was overhet."

She put them on with her own hands, bless her kind heart! her husband
holding the baby; then she followed me out into the cold and helped draw
the horse-blanket over my knees; the man in the coon-skin cap lugging
the bags and the umbrella.

I looked at my watch. After eight o'clock, and two miles to drive!

"Oh, I'll git yer there," came a voice from inside the fur overcoat.
"Darter wanted to go, but I said 'twarn't no night to go nowhars. Got to
see a man who owes me some money, or I'd stay home myself. Git up, Joe."

It was marvellous, the intelligence of this man. More than marvellous
when my again blinded eyes--the red flannel in the lamp helped--began to
take in the landscape. Fences were evidently of no use to him; clumps of
trees didn't count. If he had a compass anywhere about his clothes,
he never once consulted it. Drove right on--across trackless Siberian
steppes; by the side of endless glaciers, and through primeval forests,
his voice keeping up its volume of sound, as he laid bare for me the
scandals of the village--particularly the fight going on between the two
churches--one hard and one soft--this lecture course being one of the
bones of contention.

I saved my voice and kept quiet. If a runner did not give out or
"Joe" break a leg, we would reach the hall in time; half an hour late,
perhaps--but in time; the man beside me had said so--and the man beside
me knew.

With a turn of the fence--a new one had thrust its hands out of a
drift--a big building--big in the white waste--loomed up. My companion
flapped the reins the whole length of Joe's back.

"Git up! No, by gosh!--they ain't tired yet;--they're still a-waitin'.
See them lights--that's the hall."

I gave a sigh of relief. The ambitious young man with one ear open for
stellar voices, and the overburdened John Bunyan, and any number of
other short-winded pedestrians, could no longer monopolize the upward
and onward literature of our own or former times. I too had arrived.

Another jerk to the right--a trot up an incline, and we stopped at a
steep flight of steps--a regular Jacob's-ladder flight--leading to
a corridor dimly lighted by the flare of a single gas jet. Up this I
stumbled, lugging the bags once more, my whole mind bent on reaching the
platform at the earliest possible moment--a curious mental attitude, I
am aware, for a man who had eaten nothing since noon, was still wet
and shivering inside, and half frozen outside--nose, cheeks, and
fingers---from a wind that cut like a circular saw.

As I landed the last bag on the top step--the fog-horn couldn't leave
his horse--I became conscious of the movements of a short, rotund,
shad-shaped gentleman in immaculate white waistcoat, stiff choker and
wide expanse of shirt front. He was approaching me from the door of the
lecture hall in which sat the audience; then a clammy hand was thrust
out--and a thin voice trickled this sentence:

"You're considerable late sir--our people have been in their--"

"I am _what!_" I cried, straightening up.

"I said you were forty minutes late, sir. We expect our lecturers to be
on--"

That was the fulminate that exploded the bomb. Up to now I had held
myself in hand. I was carrying, I knew, 194 pounds of steam, and I also
knew that one shovel more of coal would send the entire boiler into
space, but through it all I had kept my hand on the safety-valve. It
might have been the white waistcoat or the way the curved white collar
cupped his billiard-ball of a chin, or it might have been the slight
frown about his eyebrows, or the patronizing smile that drifted over his
freshly laundered face; or it might have been the deprecating gesture
with which he consulted his watch: whatever it was, out went the boiler.

"Late! Are you the man that's running this lecture course?"

"Well, sir, I have the management of it."

"You have, have you? Then permit me to tell you right here, my friend,
that you ought to sublet the contract to a five-year-old boy. You let me
get out in the cold--send no conveyance as you agreed--"

"We sent our wagon, sir, to the station. You could have gone in
and warmed yourself, and if it had not arrived you could have
telephoned--the station is always warm."

"You have the impudence to tell me that I don't know whether a station
is closed or not, and that I can't see a wagon when it is hauled up
alongside a depot?"

The clammy hands went up in protest: "If you will listen, sir, I will--"

"No, sir, I will listen to nothing." and I forged ahead into a small
room where five or six belated people were hanging up their coats and
hats.

But the Immaculate still persisted:

"This is not where--Will you come into the dressing-room, sir? We have a
nice warm room for the lecturers on the other side of the--"

"No--sir; I won't go another step, except on to that platform, and I'm
not very anxious now to get there--not until I put something inside
of me--" (here I unstrapped my bag) "to save me from an attack of
pneumonia." (I had my flask out now and the cup filled to the brim.)
"When I think of how hard I worked to get here and how little you--"
(and down it went at one gulp).

The expression of disgust that wrinkled the placid face of the
Immaculate as the half-empty flask went back to its place, was
pathetic--but I wouldn't have given him a drop to have saved his life.

I turned on him again.

"Do you think it would be possible to get a vehicle of any kind to take
me where I am to sleep?"

"I think so, sir." His self-control was admirable.

"Well, will you please do it?"

"A sleigh has already been ordered, sir." This came through tightly
closed lips.

"All right. Now down which aisle is the entrance to the platform?"

"This way, sir." The highest glacier on Mont Blanc couldn't have been
colder or more impassive.

Just here a calming thought wedged itself into my brain-storm. These
patient, long-suffering people were not to blame; many of them had come
several miles through the storm to hear me speak and were entitled to
the best that was in me. To vent upon them my spent steam because--No,
that was impossible.

"Hold on, my friend," I said, "stop where you are, let me pull myself
together. This isn't their fault--" We were passing behind the screen
hiding the little stage.

But he didn't hold on; he marched straight ahead; so did I, past the
pitcher of ice water and the two last winter's palms, where he motioned
me to a chair.

His introduction was not long, nor was it discursive. There was nothing
eulogistic of my various acquirements, occupations, talents; no remark
about the optimistic trend of my literature, the affection in which my
characters were held; nothing of this at all. Nor did I expect it. What
interested me more was the man himself.

The steam of my wrath had blurred his outline and make-up before; now I
got a closer, although a side, view of his person. He was a short man,
much thicker at the middle than he was at either end--a defect all the
more apparent by reason of a long-tailed, high-waisted, unbuttonable
black coat which, while it covered his back and sides, would have left
his front exposed, but for his snowy white waistcoat, which burst like a
ball of cotton from its pod.

His only gesture was the putting together of his ten fingers, opening
and touching them again to accentuate his sentences. What passed through
my mind as I sat and watched him, was not the audience, nor what I
was going to say to them, but the Christianlike self-control of this
gentleman--a control which seemed to carry with it a studied reproof.
Under its influence I unconsciously closed both furnace doors and opened
my forced draft. Even then I should have reached for the safety-valve,
but for an oily, martyr-like smile which flickered across his face,
accompanied by a deprecating movement of his elbows, both indicating his
patience under prolonged suffering, and his instant readiness to turn
the other cheek if further smiting on my part was in store for him. I
strode to the edge of the platform: "I know, good people," I exploded,
"that you are not responsible for what has happened, but I want to tell
you before I begin, that I have been boiling mad for ten minutes and am
still at white heat, and that it is going to take me some time to get
cool enough to be of the slightest service to you. You notice that I
appear before you without a proper suit of clothes--a mark of respect
which every lecturer should pay his audience. You are also aware that I
am nearly an hour late. What I regret is, first, the cause of my frame
of mind, second, that you should have been kept waiting. Now, let me
tell you exactly what I have gone through, and I do it simply because
this is not the first time that this has happened to your lecturers, and
it ought to be your last. It certainly will be the last for me." Then
followed the whole incident, including the Immaculate's protest about my
being late, my explosion, etc., etc., even to the incident of my flask.

There was a dead silence--so dead and lifeless that I could not tell
whether they were offended or not; but I made my bow as usual, and began
my discourse.

The lecture over, the Immaculate paid me my fee with punctilious
courtesy, waiving the customary receipt; followed me to the cloak-room,
helped me on with my coat, picked up one of the bags,--an auditor the
other, and the two followed me down Jacob's ladder into the night.
Outside stood a sleigh shaped like the shell of Dr. Holmes's _Nautilus_,
its body hardly large enough to hold a four-months-old baby. This was
surrounded by half the audience, anxious, I afterward learned, for
a closer view of the man who had "sassed" the Manager. Some of them
expected it to continue.

I squeezed in beside the bags and was about to draw up the horse
blanket, when a voice rang out:

"Mis' Plimsole's goin' in that sleigh, too." It was at Mrs. Plimsole's
that I was to spend the night.

Then a faint voice answered back:

"No, I can just as well walk." She evidently knew the danger of sitting
next to an overcharged boiler.

Mrs. Plimsole!--a woman--walk--on a night like this--I was out of the
sleigh before she had ceased to speak.

"No, madam, you are going to do nothing of the kind; if anybody is to
walk it will be I; I'm getting used to it."

She allowed me to tuck her in. It was too dark for me to see what she
was like--she was so swathed and tied up. Being still mad--fires drawn
but still dangerous, I concluded that my companion was sour, and skinny,
with a parrot nose and one tooth gone. That I was to pass the night at
her house did not improve the estimate; there would be mottoes on the
walls--"What is home without a mother," and the like; tidies on the
chairs, and a red-hot stove smelling of drying socks. There would also
be a basin and pitcher the size of a cup and saucer, and a bed that
sagged in the middle and was covered with a cotton quilt.

The _Nautilus_ stopped at a gate, beyond which was a smaller Jacob's
ladder leading to a white cottage. Was there nothing built on a level
in Sheffield? I asked myself. The bags which had been hung on the shafts
came first, then I, then the muffled head and cloak. Upward and onward
again, through a door, past a pretty girl who stood with her hand on
the knob in welcome, and into a hall. Here the girl helped unmummy her
mother, and then turned up the hall-lamp.

Oh, such a dear, sweet gray-haired old lady! The kind of an old lady
you would have wanted to stay--not a night with--but a year. An old lady
with plump fresh cheeks and soft brown eyes and a smile that warmed you
through and through. And such an all-embracing restful room with its
open wood fire, andirons and polished fender--and the plants and books
and easy-chairs! And the cheer of it all!

"Now you just sit there and get comfortable," she said, patting my
shoulder--(the second time in one night that a woman's hand had been
that of an angel). "Maggie'll get you some supper. We had it all ready,
expecting you on the six-ten. Hungry, aren't you?"

Hungry! I could have gnawed a hole in a sofa to get at the straw
stuffing.

She drew up a chair, waited till her daughter had left the room, and
said with a twinkle in her eyes:

"Oh, I was glad you gave it to 'em the way you did, and when you sailed
into that snivelling old Hard-shell deacon, I just put my hands down
under my petticoats and clapped them for joy. There isn't anybody
running anything up here. They don't have to pay for this lecture
course. It was given to them by a man who is dead. All they think
they've got to do is to dress themselves up. They're all officers;
there's a recording secretary and a corresponding secretary and an
executive committee and a president and two vice-presidents, and a lot
more that I can't remember. Everyone of them is leaving everything
to somebody else to attend to. I know, because I take care of all the
lecturers that come. Only last winter a lady lecturer arrived here on a
load of wood; she didn't lose her temper and get mad like you did. Maybe
you know her; she told us all about the Indians and her husband, the
great general, who was surrounded and massacred by them."

"Know her, Madam, not only do I know and love her, but the whole country
loves her. She is a saint, Madam, that the good Lord only allows to live
in this world because if she was transferred there would be no standard
left."

"Yes, but then you had considerable cause. The hired girl next door--she
sat next to my daughter--said she didn't blame you a mite." (Somebody
was on my side, anyhow.) "Now come in to supper."

The next morning I was up at dawn: I had to get up at dawn because the
omnibus made only one trip to the station, to catch the seven-o'clock
train. I went by the eight-ten, but a little thing like that never makes
any difference in Sheffield.

When the omnibus arrived it came on runners. Closer examination from the
window of the cosey room--the bedroom was even more delightful--revealed
a square furniture van covered on the outside with white canvas, the
door being in the middle, like a box-car. I bade the dear old lady and
her daughter good-by, opened the hall door and stood on the top step.
The driver, a stout, fat-faced fellow, looked up with an inquiring
glance.

"Nice morning," I cried in my customary cheerful tone--the dear woman
had wrought the change.

"You bet! Got over your mad?"

The explosion had evidently been heard all over the village.

"Yes," I laughed, as I crawled in beside two other passengers.

"You was considerable het up last night, so Si was tellin' me," remarked
the passenger, helping me with one bag.

I nodded. Who Si might be was not of special interest, and then again
the subject had now lost its inflammatory feature.

The woman made no remark; she was evidently one of the secretaries.

"Well, by gum, if they had left me where they left you last night, and
you a plumb stranger, I'd rared and pitched a little myself," continued
the man. "When you come again--"

"Come again! Not by a--"

"Oh, yes, you will. You did them Hard-shells a lot of good! You just bet
your bottom dollar they'll look out for the next one of you fellows that
comes up here!"

The woman continued silent. She would have something to say about any
return visit of mine, and she intended to say it out loud if the time
ever came!

The station now loomed into sight. I sprang out and tried the knob. I
knew all about that knob--every twist and turn of it.

"Locked again!" I shouted, "and I've got to wait here an hour in this--"

"Hold on--_hold on_--" shouted back the driver. "Don't break loose
again. I got the key."

My mail a week later brought me a county paper containing this
statement: "The last lecturer, owing to some error on the part of the
committee, was not met at the train and was considerably vexed. He said
so to the audience and to the committee. Everybody was satisfied with
his talk until they heard what they had to pay for it. He also said that
he had left his dress suit in his trunk. If what we hear is true, he
left his manners with it." On reflection, the editor was right--_I had_.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Forty Minutes Late - 1909" ***

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