Scared Dog Bests Long Dead 'Gator

Printed Feb. 1920

Fearless Journalists and Compositors Pale at Scene of Devastation

SHELBYVILLE, Missouri. — A dead alligator caused more terror to a long, slim country dog that came to town the other day than a dozen live ones would have created. While the dog's owner was talking to the editor of the Herald, the dog went to sleep over in a corner, and when he woke up the place was dark and all the doors locked.

In the office was a baby alligator in a glass tank. The alligator had departed this life some time ago, and was preserved in some sort of fluid. But the country dog didn't know that. All he saw was some strange looking animal floating around in the tank of water.

Just what happened when the dog became aware that he was locked in with such an uncanny companion can only be surmised by such deduction as Sherlock Holmes might make on the ensuring homicide.

When the foreman of the print shop arrived at the hour prescribed by union labor regulations, he thought at first he might be in the wrong place. The shop he left the night before was orderly, everything where it belonged. Now it looked like a devil's dance had been going on. The alligator was sprawled out on the floor, and suggested a big toy that had run down. The glass tank was in more pieces than the Dutchman's clock. The doors and windows showed marks where the dog had frantically tried to gnaw its way to freedom and, the foreman said, "There were indications that he had climbed up to the telephone to send in any alarm."

Sheets of heavy editorial, country correspondence and poetry were scattered about, with imprints of dog feet upon them, as he had tracked across the press fountain and distribution plates in seeking some place to hide.

The foreman said that everything that wasn't spiked down seemed to have moved about. No cyclone from Kansas could have jostled things about more than did that poor country dog during his exciting night when he had the power of the press all to himself.

If that little 'gator had been alive he would certainly have enjoyed himself.

Progressing among the wreckage, the foreman found the dog over in a corner, seemingly all in, but when he opened the back door something whizzed past him and he heard the snapping of wind out in the alley.

The dog had gone back to the country.

Secluded Veteran Dies After Five Years of Leprosy

1910

Badger Leper Dies

Passes Away After Five Long Years of Affliction

Lived Life of Seclusion in Building Set Apart for Him at the National Soldiers' Home In Milwaukee.

Milwaukee, Wis. — Albert S. O'Gorman is dead. Milwaukee's leper, after nearly five years of retreat in a little brick house on the grounds of the Soldiers' home, is no more. Death came quietly. It was the gradual dissolution of a body wasted by disease, that could no longer find strength to meet the daily strain demanded of it.

O'Gorman was a soldier. He served many years in the regular army, seeing service throughout the east and west. He joined the ranks when the war with Spain broke out, and was one of the foremost in Cuba and the Philippines. It was while with the army in the islands that he contracted the disease which brought his death.

Upon his return from war, O'Gorman entered the regular service in various army posts. Then he was taken ill. He asked a pension, and permission to enter a soldiers' home. The request was readily granted. A monthly income of $72 was allowed him by the government. He was ordered to the Milwaukee national home.

Then, and not till then, did O'Gorman learn the true character of his malady. He was examined by staff physicians, who diagnosed his disease as leprosy. There was no help for him, they said, and preparations were made to arrange for his comfort during his lifetime.

In a corner of the grounds a small brick house, once the home of one of the officials, was set aside for him. It was a two-story structure, with three rooms — a living room, a kitchen and a bedroom. Furniture and books, utensils and regulation clothing were furnished him, and he settled down to live the life of a recluse during the remainder of his days.

That was five years ago. During the intervening time, O'Gorman lived almost happily. Two of his daily meals he prepared himself on the cook stove in his little kitchen. Each day an orderly brought his dinner to him. Tobacco was supplied in abundance. Papers and books were plentiful. He was a deeply religious character, and spent much time reading the Bible, sitting on the low steps of his dwelling, basking in the sun.

To look at the man, one would not realize that he was the victim of the most horrible of diseases. He was inclined to a pleasant personality. None of the horror or fear of the evident indications of leprosy were shown.

O'Gorman suffered especially during the winter time. Cold weather, he complained, increased the steady aches and pains to which he was subjected. During last winter, he failed slowly but steadily. Spring came, and he rallied slightly; but his system was too far gone, and the convalescence proved only temporarily.

O'Gorman was born in Ireland in 1856 It was in 1874 that he came to the United States. He settled near St. Paul, Minn., and it was from there that he was recruited into the regular army.

The case of the patient attracted much attention throughout the country. He was one of two individuals in the United States afflicted with the plague.

Several times the state department and the secretary of war considered transferring his case from Milwaukee, but there were no leper colonies where he might be sent, and it was decided finally, that he could be best cared for in the little brick building in which he made his home.

—Suburbanite Economist, Chicago, Aug. 26, 1910.