Thursday, November 30, 1922
In connection with the wanderings of James Astin, read Robert Louis Stephenson’s “St. Ives,” and Bret Harte’s “Three Vagabonds of Trinidad.”
A few years ago a widow Indian woman, Mrs. Victoria Astin, moved here with three sons. She was a hard working respectable woman who made a home for the boys. These boys showed a decided talent for wild woods life, hunting, trapping and fishing, and they were on the best of terms with the young boys of the town whose minds were filled with woods lore.
The Indian boys worked some, like the rest of us, but not to break themselves down. The oldest boy, Jim, about the time he was of age, got in bad. It appeared at the trial that he was taking the night time to ramble in and it seemed that on a scout through the Levels in the night time, being hungry, he and another young man threw a stone through the Auldridge store window at Millpoint. And no one coming at the tinkle of the falling glass, they burgled the store, getting a lot of stuff to eat, and some shoes and clothes, and so forth.
For this breach, Jim was sent to the pen, where he made a model prisoner, and it is believed he was about to be paroled, when, one day last summer, while in a road camp, he answered the call of the wild, and with another boy from this county, Asa Rider, he made a break for freedom.
In a few days, Rider appeared at a store at Beard, to do some trading, and while there an attempt to arrest him was made and he escaped to the river which was in a state of high water and was shot and killed as he was wading to the other side.
On the same day, which was about the first of September, Jim Astin was seen in the road near that place. Since then for a period of about three months he has been hiding out in these mountains, being seen about as often as a deer might be glimpsed – a deer that was using in these woods.
Once, some officers gathered him up and lodged him in jail at Warm Spring, Virginia, in the adjoining county of Bath, and not being a consenting party, Jim broke jail and left in the night time, and came to his home hills. By this time the nights had become cold and frosty. The morning of the 22nd of November was a very bitter freezing morning. Jim must have been mighty cold, for he showed up at a house on the edge of town about six o’clock in the morning, near frozen, and sat by the fire. Pretty soon the Chief of Police, R. K. Burns, and the Constable, Charles K. Butler, went over there to take Jim, and Jim came running, and the officers sowed bullets around him, but he got into the woods and away. Blood hounds were sent for and came on the train that day, but before they could be used, Constable Ed Cochran picked Jim up and lodged him in the county jail, and at this writing he is due as an unwilling guest at a state institution which is already over crowded with boarders, where, as Howard Holt put it the other day, sixteen hundred men are herded on five acres of ground…
I am sorry for Jim and all the rest of the people in trouble. Jim has got a streak of the wild in him and confinement does not agree with him.
He surely is a problem.
VIRGINIA MOUNTAIN BELLES DRESS GLADYS HULETTE
The entire feminine population of the little village of Monterey in the heart of the Virginia mountains, contributed toward the wardrobe of Gladys Hulette, who is seen playing opposite Richard Barthelmess in “Tol’able David,” the First National Attraction which will be shown next week at the Amusu Theatre. While no Parisian creations or smart New York styles are included, the gathering of the costumes was a harder task than many debutantes have faced before a coming out party.
Miss Hulette went to Monterey without costumes, as she wanted to correctly portray the styles of the locality around which the story was written. When the women of the village understood her plight, they flocked unanimously to her aid.
The village school marm, after school hours, with her own hands, fashioned the unique little “party” dress in which Miss Hulette is seen at a rural dance. The dimity from which it was made came from the dusty counters of the village store.
Three local belles who happened to wear the same size shoe as Miss Hulette contributed slippers to go with the dancing costume, while her room at the hotel resembled a rural millinery shop as a result of the hats which were placed at her disposal.
BIRTHS
Born to Mr. and Mrs. Frank Menefee, at Cloverlick, November 25, a daughter.
Born to Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Jackson, at No. 13 Tannery Row, Marlinton, November 25, 1922, twin girls.
Born to Mr. and Mrs. R. B. Miller on Elk, November 27, a daughter.