DANNY'S OWN STORY BY DON MARQUIS TO MY ... - Pink Monkey

with him for that reason.
"We decided the best plan would be to slip away
quietly and get married. We knew it would raise
a row. But there was bound to be a row anyhow
when they found she intended to marry me instead
of McMakin. So we figured we might just as well
be away from there.
"We left your place early on the morning of
October 31, 1888--do you remember the date,
Tom? We took the train for Clarksville, Tennessee,
and got there about two o'clock that afternoon.
I suppose you have been in that interesting centre
of the tobacco industry. If you have you may
remember that the courthouse of Montgomery
County is right across the street from the best hotel.
I got a license and a preacher without any trouble,
and we were married in the hotel parlour that
afternoon. One of the hotel clerks and the county
clerk himself were the witnesses.
"We went to Cincinnati and from there to
Chicago. There we got rooms out on the South
Side--Hyde Park, they called it. And I got me a
job. I had some money left, but not enough to buy
kohinoors and race-horses with. Beside, I really
wanted to get to work--wanted it for the first
time in my life. You remember young Clayton
in our class? He and some other enterprising
citizens had a building and loan association. Such
things are no doubt immoral, but I went to work
for him.
"We had been in Chicago a week when Lucy
wrote home what she had done, and begged forgiveness
for being so abrupt about it. At least,
I suppose that is what she wrote. It was--"
"I remember exactly what she wrote," says
Colonel Tom.
"I never knew exactly," says the doctor. "The
same mail that brought word from you that your
grandfather had had some sort of a stroke, as a