after all the contracting parties and
the witnesses had assembled, the ceremony began. There was a minister at
each end, and as the various queries and responses were received by the
witnesses, they would read them to the contracting party present, and
finally Paul said,

"With this ring, I thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow:
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen."

The ring was placed on the bride's finger, _by proxy_, the benediction
pronounced by the Wichita minister, and the deed was done. In due time
the certificate was received and signed by all the witnesses, and the
matter made of record in both places.

How long did they live apart? Oh! not very long. I think it was the next
night that I saw a message going through directed to Paul saying, "Will
leave for Louisville to-night," and signed "Jane."

I wonder if old S. F. B. Morse ever had any idea when he was perfecting
the telegraph, that it would some day be used to assist in joining
together,

"Two souls with but a single thought,
Two hearts that beat as one."

Operators are as a rule as honest as the sun, yet, "where you find
wheat, there also you find chaff," and once in a while a man will be
found whose proper place is the penitentiary. One of the easiest ways
for an operator, so inclined to make money, is to cut wires, steal the
reports of races, market quotations, or C. N. D. reports, and beat them
to their destinations. Wires are watched very closely so that it is hard
for an outsider to do any monkeying. Many men understand telegraphy who
do not work at the business, and it is for this reason that all the
instruments in the bucket shops and stock exchanges are turned so low
that no one outside of the operating room can hear a sound. When it is
realized that transactions are made, and fortunes won or lost in a
fractional part of a minute, it will be seen how very careful the great
telegraph companies must be. The big horse races every year offer great
temptations.

While I was working in St. Louis, a case came under my observation that
will readily illustrate the perversity of human nature. In a large
office not so very far away, there was working a friend of mine, who did
nothing but copy race reports and C. N. D.'s all day. On the day the
great Kentucky Derby was to be run, the wire was cut through from the
track in Louisville to a big pool room in this city.

Now the chief operator i