HONEST BOY RETURNS GOLD PIECE TO OWNER

(Article was smudged and difficult to read in places.)

Let pissimists wag their silly heads and groan, while "muck-rakers" dig in the mire of human frailties, and honor's voice still speaks, and a $5 check which is to be framed and placed in the offices of W. P. Holt & Co. will continue to proclaim that honesty is not a dead virtue.

The hero of the little story is Sumner Earl Wheeler, a lad of 9 years, who lives at 1123 Twenty-seventh? av., a rising young citizen and a member of our public schools. He found a $20 gold piece and it was round and heavy and sunburned. It also looked exceedingly tempting, especially to the groceryman who was animated with a keen? desire to take it off the boy's hand, when the youth exhibited the item with the information that he had picked it up.

But Sumner knew where the money belonged, and that was in the pocket of the owner. He also knew who the owner was, as he had seen the transfer man of W. P. Holt & Co., looking for that very piece of lucre earlier in the day, when in putting it in his pocket the man had missed his mark and the piece had dropped to the ground.

"Finders keepers" is boyhood's slogan and the early nurtured code of honor, but the boy side-stepped the temptation and trusted home to talk it over with his mother.

That's where the check comes in figuring? as the concrete evidence that Mr. Holt's appreciation of honesty in the abstract. The check was turned over to the principal of the Walla Walla school, where young Wheeler's ideas are learning how to shoot, and furnished the basis for a most eloquent talk on stern old honesty when it was turned over to the boy who so completely deserved it. The does it proud and the mother is proud, and even the principal is a little chesty, while Mr. Holt smiles reflectively and wonders what color he will make the frame.