The Daily Intelligencer

Romance of a Boot Heel.
[From the Omaha Herald.]
An Omaha man found a boot heel sticking in the frog of a railroad switch, and it reminded him of a story: "I was a young man, but it isn't likely that I will ever forget it," and he cast a rueful look at the empty leg of his pants. "The story is soon told," he went on, turning the boot heel over in his hand, as if to find inscribed upon it a story similar to his own. "I was walking on the track near St. Joe, in Missouri. It was a terrible dark night in February, and a heavy snowstorm was prevailing at the time. The snow and wind beating in my face was almost sufficient to have blinded me in midday. I was walking briskly along, not dreaming of any harm—in fact, I was returning from a visit to my sweetheart, who had that very evening promised to be my wife—when suddenly I found my foot fastened in the 'frog' where side-track joined the main track, just as this heel was fastened there between these rails. At that moment I heard the shrill whistle of a locomotive, and looking up the track I saw through the blinding snow a light gleaming down upon me. I made a desperate effort to wrench my foot from the vise-like grip of the rails, and the horror of my position was increased a hundred-fold when I found that my greatest strength was powerless to release me. The light was so closely upon me that its reflection upon the newly-fallen snow blinded me. As a man will in such positions, I thought of a thousand things in an instant: of my aged parents, of the events of my life and my promised bride; and the thought that I should be torn from her or maimed for life, was infinitely more horrible than the threatened death. But I'll not trouble you long with this painful narrative. The headlight was blazing like the fires of hell right in my face. It was this leg that was fastened," he said, swinging the stump back and forth—.
"Yes, yes," interrupted his companion, with pale cheeks, "you just threw yourself to one side and the engine just severed your leg from your body"
"Not exactly," rejoined the story-teller, smiling blandly at his victim "The truth is, sir, I am almost ashamed to say, that the light did not proceed from a locomotive, but from the lantern of a watchman who happened to be coming down the track."
"And the shrill whistle that you heard?"
"That, I presume, came from a saw-mill not far away"
"But your leg—how came you to lose that:"
"As many another brave man has lost his," came the answer, with a heavy sigh, accompanied by a far-away look, as if to recall the scenes of a battle field: "I fell under a mowing machine and had it chopped off"
"Well, all I have to say is," returned the disgusted companion, "I hope the girl went back on you and married an ax-handle maker, or some one else who could make her happy."
"No, she stuck to me," said the romancer sorrowfully. "She stuck to me through good and evil report, and married me one rapturous evening in the merry month of May, and now"—his voice grew husky with emotion—"and now I would give the top of this bald and beetling pate if she hadn't"
He turned away to hide his emotion, while his companion was busily engaged in fastening a pin in the end of a cane and dropping a little in the rear.