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 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OP 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO 
 Donated in memory of 
 
 John W. Snvder 
 
 by 
 
 His Son and Daughter
 
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 From a drawing by Albert T. Reid.
 
 AT THE 
 GRASS ROOTS 
 
 COMPRISING 
 
 "The Christmas of 1883," 
 
 AND OTHER VAGRANT SKETCHES 
 
 BY 
 
 ELMER &OUSE 
 
 ( Dodd Gaston) 
 
 WITH 
 
 Cover Design and Frontispiece by 
 ALBERT T. REID 
 
 MONOTYPED BY CRANE & COMPANY, 
 
 TOPEKA, KANSAS. 
 
 1905
 
 Copyright 1905, 
 BY ELMER HOUSE.
 
 TO ARTHUR CAPPER, 
 
 whose kindly and encouraging indulgence 
 gave these sketches inspiration and birth.
 
 FOKEWOKD. 
 
 THIS trifling volume goes to its readers without 
 pretense. If the vagrant sketches gathered between 
 its covers possess literary merit, I do not suspect it. 
 They have no purpose, are aimed at no condition, 
 and, so far as I know, point no moral. They were 
 quickened by the spur of necessity, and represent 
 simply the daily striving for enough "copy" to fill 
 a given space. The book itself is the bound sheaf 
 of many a day s hard work. It was written amid 
 the hurry and disorder of a newspaper office, with 
 the clatter of the linotype ever in my ears, and the 
 minute-hand of the clock moving always remorse 
 lessly on toward five in the afternoon. Sometimes 
 the day was gray and the hand of sorrow fell upon 
 me as I wrote. Sometimes the sun shone through 
 the window above my head and the melody of my 
 story ran into the major scales. 
 
 When the impulse to gather them into a bound 
 volume first came upon me I thought to polish them 
 up a bit. But they wouldn t polish, and they stand 
 or fall here practically as they went to the printer at 
 the close of the day s work. And so, while the 
 impressions herein set forth may lack fineness and 
 clearness, they are given as accurately as my mem- 
 
 (v)
 
 vi Foreword. 
 
 ory kept them. The people of whom I have written I 
 knew intimately and well. Most of them were, and 
 are, my close friends. In only one or two instances 
 have I taken the trouble to conceal their identity 
 under assumed names. In nearly every incident or 
 episode spread upon these pages I had a part. 
 
 It always seemed to me that the humble folk I 
 knew in boyhood were as interesting as those of 
 more pretentious circumstance with whom my lot 
 has fallen in later years. I think they gathered from 
 their simple diversions a keener sense of enjoyment 
 than do those who set themselves above them. I 
 know their expression of emotion was more natural, 
 their lives less repressed and less hedged in by arti 
 ficial limitations. And so I have placed a few of 
 them in brief review upon the printed page. Here 
 is the hope that they may hold for you the same de 
 gree of interest they have held for me. 
 
 ELMER HOUSE. 
 TOPEKA, December I, 1905.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 THE CHRISTMAS OF 1883, 9 
 
 "SOCIETY" AT ROWDEN S FORD, 20 
 
 A PASSING GLANCE AT SQUIRE HARMON, 25 
 
 THE UPLIFT AT DOANE, 30 
 
 THE NEIGHBORHOOD FIDDLER, 37 
 
 THE NEIGHBORHOOD S GAYER SIDE, 41 
 
 IN MEMORY OF AN ORNERY PUP, 46 
 
 THE PRINCESS ENTERS, 50 
 
 THE LURE OF THE CIRCUS, 56 
 
 WHEN FLORA DIED, 62 
 
 THE GHOST AT SCOTT S CHURCH, 65 
 
 BACK AT GRIGSBY S STATION, 72 
 
 GOING BACK TO GRANDMOTHER S, 78 
 
 THE PASSING OF "MUSKOGEE RED," 84 
 
 AN APOSTROPHE TO THE RABBIT, 89 
 
 THE SMARTEST BOY IN SCHOOL, 93 
 
 THE OLD DISTRICT JUDGE, 97 
 
 THE OPOLIS DAILY SUN, 101
 
 viii Contents. 
 
 Page. 
 
 BROTHER BILL, 113 
 
 HER FIRST REAL TRAGEDY 117 
 
 THE PRINCE BUSINESS, 119 
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOY, 121 
 
 THE GIRL IN "GoooLY-Goo," 128 
 
 A PILGRIMAGE INTO THE PAST, 133 
 
 THE TAKING DOWN OF HESTON, 136 
 
 WHEN A MAN is WORTHLESS, 143 
 
 ON LICKING NICK HARTLEY, 146
 
 THE CHRISTMAS OF 1883. 
 
 The first Christmas that stamped itself 
 cleanly on my memory was that of 1883. 
 It is not that I am not old enough to re 
 member Christmas days that preceded it, 
 but because the circumstances surround 
 ing the Christmas of 1883 were so new 
 and unusual that they left an impression 
 on my boyish mind. 
 
 We had come to Kansas in a covered 
 wagon two or three months previously, 
 from a comfortable home in a prosperous 
 and settled community of an eastern state. 
 I shall never forget the house into which 
 we moved. The advance agent of the 
 plow and mowing-machine w r ho home- 
 steaded the claim had built originally a 
 two -room dwelling. Later on he put a 
 mortgage on the claim and added a shed 
 room on the south. With the advent of 
 the next year s baby he put on a second 
 mortgage and added a shed room on the 
 west.
 
 10 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 A peculiarity of the shed room on the 
 west was that it was higher than the orig 
 inal house, and the roof having but one 
 slope, it presented a most grotesque ap 
 pearance. In the front door of the house 
 some jackleg carpenter, probably the 
 homesteader himself, had cut a hole and 
 into the hole he had nailed an old-fash 
 ioned window-sash containing three small 
 panes of glass. I was too young to know 
 anything about artistic effect, but that 
 window-sash in the front door always 
 jarred on me, and when, a year or two 
 later, a new house was built, I chopped 
 the door into kindling with fiendish glee. 
 
 The schoolhouse was a mile and a half 
 away across the prairie. There were no 
 fences worth mentioning and the road 
 zigzagged across the prairie at the con 
 venience of the person who happened 
 to be using it at the time. I started to 
 school the Monday after we got settled 
 in our new home, and by the time Christ 
 mas came round I was established in the
 
 The Christmas of 1883. 1 1 
 
 community. Which is to say that I had 
 been whipped by the teacher, had fallen 
 in love with a girl, and had stood on the 
 schoolhouse grounds with a chip on my 
 shoulder for twenty minutes one day 
 during the noon hour, daring anybody 
 of my size to knock it off. I also had an 
 engagement to fight Bill Fought, a neigh 
 bor boy, the first time we got far enough 
 out of sight of the teacher and our re 
 spective fathers to insure an unlimited 
 round go. We finally fought at the skat- 
 ing-pond a few weeks later, and Bill made 
 a doormat of me. Two or three years 
 later, having grown very rapidly mean 
 while, I evened things up by whipping 
 both Bill and his twin brother, Grant, at 
 one sitting. 
 
 There were no churches in the imme 
 diate vicinity, and the Christmas tree 
 was given at the schoolhouse. Preceding 
 the distribution of presents there was a 
 literary program by the pupils of the 
 school and other young people of the
 
 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 neighborhood. I was down to "speak a 
 piece." It was the first time I had ever 
 appeared on a literary program, and the 
 thing was of tremendous moment to me. 
 
 They tried to get me to speak a "Dear 
 Little Willie" sort of selection, but I 
 wouldn t stand for it. I had just begun 
 to dig into Shakespeare, Pilgrim s Prog 
 ress and other literature of the heavy 
 weight class, and it s a wonder I didn t 
 insist on reciting Hamlet s Soliloquy. 
 But the thing I had set my heart on was 
 "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and 
 they finally let me have my way. 
 
 An enormous crowd came to the 
 Christmas tree, and the schoolhouse 
 was packed and jammed with people 
 when the preliminaries began. Up to 
 that time I had been rather buoyant over 
 the thought that I was to recite, but when 
 quiet settled down upon the crowd my 
 nerve deserted me and I fell into a blue 
 funk. I would have gone home leaving 
 the "Light Brigade " to its fate, but I had
 
 The Christmas of 1883. 13 
 
 not the courage even to slink from the 
 schoolhouse. And so with the heavy 
 hand of woe upon my soul, and the palsy 
 of fright benumbing my limbs, I sat wait 
 ing for my turn to speak. 
 
 Finally, after what seemed hours to me, 
 although it was probably not more than 
 ten minutes, since I was the third per 
 former on the program, I heard my 
 name called and managed to make my 
 way to the platform, although I never had 
 any subsequent recollection of the inci 
 dents attending the journey. And in a 
 voice which sounded to me as though 
 it were coming out of Kincade s corn 
 field a quarter of a mile away, I started 
 the "Light Brigade" into action. I 
 halted it almost immediately in the teeth 
 of a murderous fire. For I forgot the 
 thing and stood there gibbering at the 
 crowd without being able to recall a sin 
 gle word. The horror, the chagrin and 
 the shame of that moment are still real 
 to me, although it happened more than
 
 14 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 twenty years ago. At last I caught 
 sight of the teacher and asked him to 
 excuse me, although in the light of ma- 
 turer years and better judgment I can 
 not see what the teacher had to do with 
 it. The teacher, however, expressed the 
 opinion that I was excusable, and I got 
 down from the improvised platform some 
 how and buried my ignominy and shame 
 in the crowd. I am not much of a mili 
 tary tactician, but I know I left the 
 "Light Brigade" in bad shape to resist 
 the attack of an enemy, and I apologize 
 for it. 
 
 Most Christmas trees nowadays get 
 along with the assistance of a Santa 
 Claus, but that one had not only a Santa 
 Claus, but a Kriss Kringle as well. In 
 later years I have pondered over the 
 Kriss Kringle business a good deal, but 
 never found out who he \vas or why he 
 was mixed up with that Christmas tree. 
 It was considered necessary that both 
 Santa Claus and Kriss Kringle should
 
 The Christmas of 1883. 15 
 
 be humorists of a high order, to the end 
 that they might make the crowd roar 
 with quips and jests and jokes. So there 
 was considerable rivalry between neigh 
 boring communities to secure high- 
 class humorists for the occasion, and if 
 one had the reputation of being funny he 
 was often spoken for months ahead. Our 
 Santa Claus that year was Sam Turner, 
 and Jim Willison was the Kriss Kringle. 
 They were supposed to be about the best 
 in the business, and they had the crowd 
 going from the start. I will admit that 
 they tickled me nearly to death. But I 
 knew them both very well in after years, 
 and never heard either say anything par 
 ticularly funny. 
 
 Rivalry between neighboring commu 
 nities did not halt with the selection of 
 the humorists who served the occasion. 
 Insofar as the Doane and Dodd districts 
 were concerned the Dodd district ad 
 joined the Doane on the east it extended 
 to the value of the presents on the tree.
 
 16 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 The Doane folk were mostly from New 
 York and Massachusetts, and they looked 
 down upon the people of the Dodd neigh 
 borhood, who had moved in from Indiana 
 and Illinois. The Dodd folk reciprocated 
 the feeling. It was probably true that 
 the Doane neighborhood had more edu 
 cation and culture than its neighbor on 
 the east, but the Dodd district people had 
 more money and fewer mortgages on 
 their land. 
 
 It was generally admitted that so far 
 as the Christmas of 1883 was concerned, 
 the Dodd tree won the pennant. For 
 upon its branches, in addition to the 
 usual assortment of handkerchiefs, pho 
 tograph albums, earmuffs, pocketbooks, 
 nubias, mittens, pocket-knives, popcorn 
 and candy, there hung also a bureau and 
 a sewing-machine. The Doane people 
 had to admit they were beaten, as no 
 present on their tree cost more than $5, 
 but they claimed Dodd had taken an un 
 fair advantage, inasmuch as the district
 
 The Christmas of 1883. 17 
 
 had combined with the Olive Branch 
 neighborhood in giving the tree. 
 
 The event of the evening at Doane 
 which did most to stimulate gossip was 
 extraneous in its nature. Herschel 
 Meeker, one of the neighborhood beaus, 
 brought Ella Talbott to the schoolhouse 
 in a top buggy. It was the first top 
 buggy in the neighborhood, and the in 
 cident created a great deal of comment 
 both at the tree and afterward. The at 
 titude of the neighborhood toward the 
 innovation is best shown by the remark 
 of a neighbor woman who called on 
 mother a few days afterward. She said 
 she d "bet anything that Joe Meeker 
 mortgaged his claim to bu}^ Herschel that 
 buggy." 
 
 I did not go home with the family after 
 the tree. I had heard there was to be a 
 dance in the schoolhouse, and under the 
 pretense of cutting across the prairie and 
 getting the fires started before the fam 
 ily reached home, I eluded father and
 
 18 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 sneaked back to watch the dance. I 
 didn t get home until two o clock. What 
 happened to me next day is not a matter 
 for extended reference. I had never be 
 fore seen a dance, and I was greatly in 
 terested. Our family was made up of 
 strict Methodists, who believed dancing 
 to be a device of the devil. 
 
 A good many people stayed for the 
 dance. Everybody danced the qua 
 drilles, but only a few could schottische, 
 and the waltzing was confined to one 
 couple. When the orchestra played a 
 waltz the orchestra was a violin and a 
 bull fiddle everybody sat back and 
 watched this highly accomplished cou 
 ple. They were strangers, apparently, 
 and I never found out who they were. 
 
 The dance was given for the benefit of 
 the library association, and netted six 
 dollars. Between periods of drying 
 peaches and making soft soap the women 
 were trying to get together enough money 
 to buy a library. They were always giv-
 
 The Christmas of 1883. 19 
 
 ing socials in summer and plays at the 
 schoolhouse in winter for the benefit of 
 the library admission ten cents. A 
 good many years later the library asso 
 ciation broke up, so many of the members 
 having either died or moved away that it 
 was no longer possible to maintain an 
 interest in the organization. When it 
 disbanded there was $18 in the treasury.
 
 "SOCIETY" AT ROWDEN S 
 FORD. 
 
 When I was a boy I went a good deal 
 to dances at Rowden s Ford. The Ford 
 was the eastern outlet of the community 
 which lived in the big bend of the river, 
 and as it brought the church, the drug 
 store, the circus and the Fourth of July 
 celebration four miles nearer, it had a 
 considerable patronage when the water in 
 the river was low. The Rowden s Ford- 
 ers were a rather careless lot, much given 
 to coon-hunting by night and horse-trad 
 ing by day. In the Doane neighborhood 
 it wasn t considered very good form to 
 go to the Rowden s Ford functions. There 
 was too much fist-fighting and too much 
 easy familiarity with the Demon Rum to 
 make the locality popular with staid peo 
 ple. Very few of the Doane girls ever 
 went to Rowden s Ford. But most of 
 the boys drifted into the habit in time. 
 
 (20)
 
 "Society" at Rowden s Ford. 21 
 
 The leader of society at Rowden s Ford 
 was the Moses family. The Moseses usu 
 ally gave a dance once a week in winter. 
 In summer the intervals between the 
 "rags," as they were derisively called in 
 the Doane neighborhood, were longer. It 
 wasn t much trouble for the Moses family 
 to entertain. All they had to do was to 
 move the kitchen chairs into the "front" 
 room and the table and cupboard out 
 into the back yard. The decorative ef 
 fect was completed by placing a chair for 
 the fiddler on top of the cook-stove. 
 The Moses family could arrange to give 
 a party in fifteen minutes any time. 
 
 The dances at Rowden s Ford usually 
 lasted from eight o clock in the evening 
 until four or five o clock the next morn 
 ing. Sometimes we stayed till sunrise if 
 no hard feelings had been engendered and 
 the necessity of stopping the dance to 
 keep down a fight did not arise. Those 
 who participated were charged 25 cents 
 apiece. When one paid his money he
 
 22 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 received a number, and when dancing 
 began the numbers were called out four 
 at a time in rotation. When one s num 
 ber was called he hunted up a partner 
 and took his place on the floor. If a 
 good many numbers were sold one did 
 not get to dance very often, but as he 
 could always step outdoors and stir up 
 a fight in the intervals between dances, 
 nobody suffered from ennui. 
 
 Nothing but square dancing was in 
 dulged in at Rowden s Ford. A girl who 
 knew how to waltz was thought to be 
 stuck up and the least familiarity with 
 the round dance subjected a man to a 
 good deal of suspicion. One of the fea 
 tures of the parties at the Ford was the 
 jig-dancing of Lee Rowden. Lee always 
 wore a pair of fine boots with very small 
 high heels, into the tops of which he 
 tucked his trousers. He was a very 
 slender, graceful man, and when called 
 upon invariably responded without much 
 urging. He was also in great demand for
 
 Society" at Row dens Ford. 23 
 
 calling the figures of the quadrilles, and 
 received his number free for "calling" 
 half the dances. As Lee was a married 
 man with a wife and several children, 
 this arrangement was a very good one, 
 financially, for him. 
 
 At Rowden s Ford the three -foot vein 
 of trouble lay very near to the surface of 
 the ground, and one had to be very care 
 ful lest he disturb it. We boys from 
 adjoining neighborhoods always figured 
 to get our numbers in the same set so 
 that we would be near each other if the 
 lode were uncovered, and we danced with 
 our coats off, no matter what the mercury 
 was doing outside. I was not very pop 
 ular at Rowden s Ford. The real aris 
 tocrats of the community the Moseses, 
 the Rowdens and the Braziers liked me 
 first-rate, and are still my warm friends. 
 But the others were always suspicious of 
 me because I habitually wore a derby hat, 
 and because some of my enemies had 
 circulated the report that I could schot- 
 tische.
 
 24 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 The last party I attended at Rowden s 
 Ford turned out unpleasantly, and I 
 never went back. That night supper was 
 served to the guests in the bedroom up 
 stairs. The supper was 25 cents extra, 
 but we Doane boys all partook of it. 
 One of the boys who had recently moved 
 into the community from Iowa, and who 
 was unaccustomed to the ways of the 
 Ford, went up to supper a little late and 
 could find nothing to eat but a little cold 
 rice in a teacup. He must have known 
 that it was only an oversight, but he had 
 the bad taste to mention it to the niece 
 of the hostess when he returned to the 
 dancing-floor. I was out of doors when 
 the thing started, and got off with one 
 cut and a few bruises, but we had to lead 
 him home.
 
 A PASSING GLANCE AT SQUIRE 
 HARMON. 
 
 Andrew Jackson Harmon was one of 
 the "characters" of our neighborhood. 
 Harmon was a New-Yorker by birth and 
 a Democrat by profession, who farmed a 
 little as a side line. He put in most of 
 his time talking politics, however, and 
 if the neighbors were all busy he mounted 
 his horse and rode until he found a man 
 idle enough to listen to him. It was one 
 of the neighborhood "stories" that he 
 was once seen sixteen miles from home 
 at the sunset of a bitter winter s day en 
 gaged in a hot discussion of the tariff 
 with a man who was splitting wood by 
 the roadside. The man was doing his 
 evening "chores" and Harmon had rid 
 den up and started an argument. 
 
 Harmon was a little sawed-off man with 
 whiskers like General Grant s. He wore 
 habitually a frock coat, and, being short 
 
 (25)
 
 26 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 in stature, the tail of it flapped against his 
 legs midway between his knees and his 
 ankles. He had a good frock coat in 
 in which he arrayed himself for "liter- 
 aries," dances, spelling-schools, county 
 conventions, and on his trips afield. 
 He had an old and rusty garment of 
 the same length and contour which he 
 wore about his work on the farm. But, 
 summer or winter, no day or occasion 
 which demanded a coat caught him 
 garbed in anything other than a frock. 
 Another sartorial idiosyncrasy which dis 
 tinguished Harmon from his associates 
 was that when he wore a white or, in the 
 local vernacular, a "boiled" shirt, he 
 also wore cuffs with it. In Kansas in the 
 early eighties it was not difficult to find 
 a sovereign who owned a white shirt, but 
 those who owned both shirt and cuffs 
 were indeed rare enough. 
 
 I have often thought that had Harmon 
 been a Republican he would have gone 
 to Congress. Certainly, I never heard a
 
 Squire Harmon. 27 
 
 more eloquent public speaker. He was 
 fairly well educated, exceedingly well in 
 formed, and had a command of good 
 English that was marvelous. He never 
 made a speech, no matter what the sub 
 ject, without referring to Thomas Jef 
 ferson, Andrew Jackson and John C. 
 Calhoun. Occasionally he referred to 
 Daniel Webster, but Webster having been 
 a Whig, Harmon was a little chary about 
 pushing him to the front. 
 
 Being a Democrat, and disliked not 
 only by the Republicans but by many 
 of his own party as well, Harmon never 
 achieved much political distinction. 
 Once his party ran him for justice of the 
 peace, but he was beaten overwhelm 
 ingly, and his services in an official ca 
 pacity were restricted to one term as 
 clerk of the school board of the district 
 in which he lived. As a delicate recog 
 nition of the fact that he had once run 
 for justice of the peace, the neighbors 
 always called him " Squire" to his face,
 
 28 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 although behind his back they referred 
 to him as "Jack" or "Old Jack." 
 
 Harmon was the most arrant coward 
 I have ever known. Being forever in a 
 political discussion, he was likewise al 
 ways in a quarrel with some one. As he 
 was exceedingly abusive and insulting in 
 his arguments, he was always tempting 
 some partisan of the opposite faith to 
 chastise him. But he always managed 
 somehow to avoid a personal encounter. 
 He would begin by putting up a strong 
 bluff, and if that failed to stop his ad 
 versary and damage to his features 
 seemed imminent, he would pose ma 
 jestically and say: "I have heart dis 
 ease. The doctors say I can live no more 
 than three years at most. Strike me at 
 your peril." That usually stopped the 
 man he had insulted. If it didn t, Har 
 mon slunk away like a whipped puppy. 
 Although I saw him probably in fifty 
 quarrels where a personal encounter 
 seemed likely, I never knew a man to lay 
 a finger on him.
 
 Squire Harmon. 29 
 
 Harmon had one boy, upon whom his 
 hopes centered. The boy was smart and 
 made almost as good a speech as his 
 father. The father s dream was to make 
 a statesman of the son, and he bought a 
 lot of law books and set him at the task 
 of reading law. But when the boy finally 
 left home he went to town and opened a 
 billiard hall. The father never seemed 
 the same afterward : the apostasy of the 
 boy broke his spirit and his heart.
 
 THE UPLIFT AT DOANE. 
 
 We lived in what was known locally as 
 the Doane neighborhood. It took its 
 name from the schoolhouse, which had 
 been built on the Doane farm. The fam 
 ily had moved away several years before, 
 but the name stuck and still sticks, al 
 though it must be all of thirty years since 
 the last Doane left the community. 
 
 The uplift at Doane rested pretty heav 
 ily on a Sunday-school library sent out 
 from Massachusetts some years previous 
 to the time of this chronicle, and the 
 Doane Literary and Debating Society. 
 The neighborhood was famous locally for 
 its literary and debating society, which 
 met in the schoolhouse every Friday night 
 from October to April. In those days 
 pretty nearly every country school district 
 in Kansas had its "literary," but none 
 round about brought out such a famous 
 array of debaters or such literary talent 
 as gathered at Doane. 
 
 (30)
 
 The Uplift at Doane. 31 
 
 Being a member of the "literary" was 
 optional with those who attended. The 
 membership fee was five cents, but no 
 body was barred from participation in 
 the debate or literary program. Only 
 members, however, could vote at the 
 election of officers, or on matters affecting 
 the society officially. The first office I 
 ever held was that of treasurer of the 
 Doane "literary," and occasionally, when 
 the society was flush, I had as much as 
 sixty cents in my possession. The treas 
 urer was also the purchasing agent of the 
 society, and during my term of office I 
 bought all the kerosene used and the 
 lamp chimneys necessary to replace those 
 broken at the meetings. Afterward I 
 worked up to the position of secretary, 
 and was editor of the paper one term 
 when I was fourteen. In fact, the first 
 editorial work I ever did was on the 
 Doane Pulverizer, a local newspaper 
 printed on foolscap and issued every two 
 weeks. It was considered too great a
 
 32 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 mental strain on the editor to issue the 
 paper every week. 
 
 At the meetings of the society the lit 
 erary program was always given before 
 the debate. Between the two there was 
 a recess of fifteen minutes, presumably to 
 give the audience opportunity to get 
 over the former. The literary program 
 was made up of music, recitations, which 
 were called declamations then, select 
 readings, and an occasional essay. There 
 was only one encyclopedia in the neigh 
 borhood, and as the owner loaned the 
 volumes grudgingly, it was pretty hard 
 to write an essay. Usually there were 
 more select readings on the program 
 than any thing else, because it was a great 
 deal easier to read a piece than it was to 
 commit one to memory. When one did 
 go to the trouble of committing some 
 thing to memory he worked it pretty 
 hard. I used to recite "Barbara Friet- 
 chie" an average of three times every 
 winter, working it in alternate shifts
 
 The Uplift at Doane. 33 
 
 with "Darius Green" and "The Mid 
 night Ride of Paul Revere." When one 
 was on the program and had failed to 
 prepare anything, the polite form of get 
 ting out of it was to arise in his seat, 
 make a bow to the president and say 
 "Not prepared" in a soothing tone of 
 voice. 
 
 During the recess the secretary made 
 out the program for the next meeting, 
 and it was read immediately preceding 
 the debate. When the debate came on, 
 the older men had their innings. The 
 questions discussed were mostly of na 
 tional import, and we often settled things 
 at Doane before Congress had a chance 
 at them. Once a month an easy subject 
 was selected and the boys were given a 
 chance at it. My first debating was done 
 on the question as to whether art is more 
 beautiful to the eye than nature. I had 
 the negative and lost, all three of the 
 judges being against me. I have found 
 in later years that the judges were right :
 
 34 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 a good many things in nature are greatly 
 improved by the application of a little 
 art. The art and nature question was a 
 standard subject for discussion. They 
 always started beginners on it, and al 
 lowed them to work gradually up to the 
 tariff and woman suffrage. 
 
 The judges of the debate were usually 
 chosen from among the men in the neigh 
 borhood who were not smart enough to 
 be debaters. John Hance was nearly 
 always a judge, although John s knowl 
 edge of things with which the world was 
 concerned began and ended with his abil 
 ity to top out a wheat-stack so that it 
 would shed the rain. Occasionally, dis 
 tinguished visitors came from town to 
 attend the "literary": that is to say, 
 men who expected to be candidates for 
 county office at the next election. Such 
 visitors were always treated with rare 
 consideration. They were invited to de 
 bate, and permitted to choose the side of 
 the question upon which they desired to
 
 The Uplift at Doane. 35 
 
 talk. If they did not care to debate they 
 were solicited to act as judges. The 
 Doane idea of hospitality and considera 
 tion was to invite visitors to take part 
 in the "literary." 
 
 The paper was always made the last 
 number on the program. The crowd was 
 never much interested in the debate, and 
 as the paper, which was always extremely 
 personal, and which dealt chiefly with 
 the love affairs of the young people of 
 the neighborhood, was the most inter 
 esting feature, it was kept until the last 
 in order that the talkers might not be 
 embarrassed by having the audience melt 
 away at an inopportune moment. Edit 
 ing the paper was hard work. It con 
 sisted principally in finding rhymes which 
 would bring the name of every young 
 man in the neighborhood in close juxta 
 position with that of some girl. 
 
 The time covered in this chronicle was 
 of a date written much more frequently 
 twenty years ago than at any subsequent
 
 36 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 time. But reading the local paper not 
 so long ago I noticed that a literary so 
 ciety to meet on Friday nights during the 
 winter had been organized at the Doane 
 schoolhouse.
 
 THE NEIGHBORHOOD FIDDLER. 
 
 Morey Aldrich was the neighborhood 
 fiddler. Aldrich s orchestra, which con 
 sisted of a violin and a "bull" fiddle, 
 played at nearly all of the big dances in 
 the country round about. One could 
 hire Aldrich s orchestra for $3, and in 
 addition to furnishing the music Aldrich 
 "called off" the figures in the square 
 dances without extra charge. Other fid 
 dlers could be hired more cheaply. Music 
 might be had for as little as $1.50 an 
 evening, but Aldrich was considered the 
 best of the lot and his orchestra played 
 for all of the swell dances. 
 
 I have referred to Aldrich as a fiddler, 
 the title by which he was known in the 
 neighborhood. I did not know then, but 
 I know now, that the man was an artist, 
 a violinist of rare skill and wonderful 
 temperament. I had been raised in the 
 Methodist church, and about the only 
 
 (37)
 
 38 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 music with which I was familiar were the 
 long-meter hymns of that sect. And yet 
 I can still recall my surging emotion and 
 the tugging at my heartstrings which 
 inevitably occurred when Aldrich, on the 
 occasion of a social evening, discarded 
 dance music and played what he chose. 
 The names of Schubert, Strauss and 
 others of the masters whose music Al 
 drich played when he sought relaxation 
 meant nothing to me then. I only knew 
 they were the signal for the onslaught of 
 a torrent of varying moods and emotions. 
 But I know now that I was listening to 
 a master of the bow. 
 
 Aldrich is long since dead. Even then 
 his hair and beard were white, and he 
 must have been a long way down the hill 
 on the other side of fifty. He was a 
 Massachusetts man, and I have often 
 wondered what strange upheaval up 
 rooted him from his native soil and set 
 him down on a Kansas prairie. He 
 farmed a little in a dilettante sort of
 
 The Neighborhood Fiddler. 39 
 
 way, and had a few pupils in music 
 some on the organ, a few on the violin, 
 and occasionally one in vocal methods. 
 But there was a great deal stronger de 
 mand for bread and butter in Kansas 
 during those years than there was for 
 music, and the real business of his life 
 was playing for country dances. 
 
 The fiddler s farming was the joke of 
 the community. He had a strange an 
 tipathy for, or fear of, a horse, and would 
 not have one on his farm. He put in 
 and tended his crops with a hoe and gath 
 ered them in a wheelbarrow. He would 
 not even ride behind a horse if he could 
 help it, and invariably walked to the 
 dances at which he played. Some of 
 them were held as far away as ten miles 
 from his home, and one often saw him 
 setting out as early as three o clock in the 
 afternoon for the dance at which he was 
 to play that night. After the dance he 
 walked back home again, although at 
 many of the festal affairs in which he
 
 40 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 participated the merrymaking ended co 
 incident with the rising sun. 
 
 Aldrich s one weakness, a not uncom 
 mon one, by the way, was his belief that 
 he could sing. He knew music thor 
 oughly and could play seven or eight 
 different instruments, but he had not the 
 slightest suggestion of voice considered 
 from the standpoint of either quantity 
 or quality. But he always sang at public 
 entertainments, and invariably chose the 
 "Marseillaise" as his selection. In the 
 five or six years I knew him intimately 
 I heard him sing the "Marseillaise" not 
 fewer than thirty times. 
 
 His was one of the strange, unusual 
 types in the incongruous mass which peo 
 pled Kansas in its earlier days. A gentle, 
 kindly man with the soul of an artist 
 and the touch of a master, his later years 
 were as utterly lost as is the novice at 
 sea in an open boat.
 
 THE NEIGHBORHOOD S GAYER 
 SIDE. 
 
 Society in our neighborhood was di 
 vided into two factions those who 
 danced and those who didn t. The danc 
 ing faction was the larger, but the anti- 
 dancing folk evened things up by claim 
 ing to be a great deal better than the 
 dancing crowd. As a sort of antidote for 
 the dancing germ, the anti-dancing crowd 
 indulged in a form of diversion known 
 locally as the "play party." One needed 
 no invitation to attend a dance. All that 
 was required of him was a deposit of 25 
 cents, in return for which he received a 
 number, written usually in lead-pencil 
 upon a fragmentary portion of a paste 
 board box, and tacit permission to dance 
 whenever his turn came. But it wasn t 
 considered polite to go to a " play party 
 unless one had an invitation. 
 
 The dancing parties were conducted on 
 strict business principles. If no supper 
 
 (41)
 
 42 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 were served the dancer was assessed 25 
 cents. If supper had been provided he 
 paid 50 cents, although it was optional 
 with him whether he took supper. Some 
 times, if the dance was very swell and 
 the supper more than usually elaborate, 
 the prices were doubled. At that time 
 the two-step had not been invented and 
 they were still dancing the polka and the 
 schottische, but mostly the dances were 
 quadrilles, a waltz or schottische being 
 thrown in every fourth or fifth dance. 
 
 As has been noted, attendance on 
 "play parties" was by invitation only. 
 If one were lucky at a "play party" it 
 fell to his good fortune to kiss every girl 
 present sometime during the evening. 
 The "play party" was devoted to the 
 playing of games and the paying of for 
 feits. One of the games was "Miller 
 Boy," in which several couples marched 
 in a circle with a lone lad as its center, 
 singing a mournful ditty about a miller 
 boy who took his toll with a free good-
 
 The Neighborhood s Gayer Side. 43 
 
 will, and who at the same time kept one 
 hand in the hopper and the other in the 
 sack. At a signal the marchers changed 
 partners, and the lad in the center made 
 effort to forcibly separate some other lad 
 from his girl. If he were successful the 
 lad bereft of a marching companion paid 
 a forfeit and took his turn as the hub 
 around which the spokes of the wheel 
 revolved. It was a wildly exciting form 
 of entertainment. 
 
 There were several dozens of these 
 games "Old Dan Tucker," "Weevilly 
 Wheat," "Fruit Basket," "Tin Tin," and 
 others, but as they were all, like "Mil 
 ler Boy," founded on kissing the girls 
 later on in the evening, they need not be 
 reviewed at length. When forfeits had 
 been imposed upon everybody pres 
 ent, they were sold by an extempore 
 auctioneer over the head of one of the 
 participants. This participant named 
 the price which the owner had to pay to 
 again secure possession of his property,
 
 44 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 but as forfeits were always redeemed by 
 kissing some person of the opposite sex, 
 the price was never considered prohib 
 itive. 
 
 Perhaps the most popular plan for re 
 deeming forfeits was the game called 
 "Postoffice." In "Postoffice" the per 
 son bent on retrieving his property from 
 the hands of the trustee of forfeits went 
 into an adjoining room and sent word to 
 some girl, usually his sweetheart, that a 
 letter awaited her. "Postoffice" was 
 really the ideal form for liquidating one s 
 osculatory obligations, because he was 
 not compelled to wipe out the debt in 
 full view of a jeering audience, and he 
 could pay as much interest as the girl 
 would stand for. Building a Telegraph 
 Line" and "Picking the Cherries" also 
 had a strong following among those stag 
 gering under the burden of debt, for in 
 each of these popular divertisements 
 every lad kissed two girls and every girl 
 was kissed by two young men.
 
 The Neighborhood s Gayer Side. 45 
 
 This country isn t what it used to be. 
 One cannot kiss a young woman now 
 unless he happens to be engaged to her, 
 and the cost of dancing has advanced 
 600 per cent.
 
 IN MEMORY OF AN ORNERY 
 PUP. 
 
 Generally speaking, I have no com 
 plaint to make. The world has been 
 kinder to me than I deserved. Its peo 
 ple have often returned good for evil. 
 My digestion has been saved to me unim 
 paired, and while I would have preferred 
 to keep my hair a little longer, hair is 
 more or less a thing of vanity and should 
 not be entered when the ledger is bal 
 anced. 
 
 Two or three women to whom I had 
 been fair and gentle hurt me by being 
 cruel when it would have been just as 
 easy to be kind. A few men whom I 
 trusted and w r ith whom I was frank and 
 honest passed me the hot end of it. But 
 in the main, I have faith in the human 
 animal and stand for him. And still. I 
 must admit that my warmest friends have 
 been dogs and tobacco. No dog friend 
 
 (46)
 
 In Memory of an Ornery Pup. 47 
 
 ever went back on me. Tobacco never 
 failed to sooth and comfort. Looking 
 through the smoke that curled from my 
 cigar I have dreamed my finest dreams. 
 Never yet have I looked in vain to a dog 
 for reassurance and sympathy. And so 
 I dedicate one chapter of this little vol 
 ume to an Ornery Pup whose brief biog 
 raphy runs like this. 
 
 Once there was a pup cast adrift on the 
 tide of dogdom who came a derelict to 
 the kitchen door of an old-fashioned 
 woman I know. He was an Ornery Pup 
 whose lineage was untraceable beyond the 
 first generation of forbears. His pedi 
 gree was tainted at every crossing by 
 mongrel blood. His coat was mangy and 
 his bones stuck out. But when he 
 touched at the kitchen door of the old- 
 fashioned woman he was in still waters 
 and a safe harbor. 
 
 Between the Ornery Pup and me there 
 sprang up a fast friendship. For six 
 weeks we fished in the creek, watched
 
 48 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 for the young squirrels in the woods pas 
 ture, and lay for hours in the sun on the 
 grass-grown declivity that sloped down 
 toward the timothy meadow. And then, 
 without saying even "good-by" to the 
 Pup, I went away to try my luck else 
 where, leaving him to his amours and the 
 humdrum life of the farm. 
 
 It was two years before I dropped an 
 chor in that port again. I tacked into 
 the harbor well along in the small hours 
 of a moonlight night, as much a derelict 
 as had been the Ornery Pup of two years 
 before. For I had fought my first im 
 portant battle with the world and had 
 retreated. 
 
 Heartsick and weary I swung the front 
 gate open, and as the latch clicked the 
 Ornery Pup, grown now into a mature 
 dog, came bounding to meet me, and 
 jumping upon me with his dirty paws, 
 licked my face in an ecstacy of joy. It 
 mattered not to him that my coat was 
 old and ragged and that my shirt had
 
 In Memory of an Ornery Pup. 49 
 
 gone too infrequently to the laundry. 
 He cared nothing that I needed both a 
 bath and a shave. His friend had come 
 back and he was glad. 
 
 The Ornery Pup is dead these seven 
 years now. We buried him on the little 
 mound above the pool in the creek where 
 he and I together caught the five-pound 
 bass, and I sometimes think a little of my 
 heart went into the grave with his in 
 animate clay. For once when the wind 
 blew out of the northeast and the sky 
 was gray, the Ornery Pup brought to me 
 the first kind message I had heard in 
 two vears.
 
 THE PRINCESS ENTERS. 
 
 I often wonder what became of Emma 
 Barnhart, who taught the Doane school 
 for a couple of years along in the early 
 eighties. Miss Barnhart was the first 
 princess I ever knew at all intimately. 
 Up to the time she first shed her effulgent 
 beauty and daintiness upon my young 
 life, I had known only the girls who lived 
 on adjoining farms. They were good, 
 sensible girls, who could milk cows, make 
 butter, set a hen, and in the pinch of har 
 vest-time and haying drive the binder or 
 run a sulky hayrake. But they were, I 
 regret to admit, not so very beautiful or 
 artistic. They wore ill-fitting dresses of 
 coarse cloth, big checked aprons, heavy, 
 broad-toed shoes even rubber boots in 
 muddy weather and home-made sun- 
 bonnets. They were always badly 
 tanned, and in the spring and fall their 
 hands were chapped and red like a boy s. 
 
 (50)
 
 The Princess Enters. 51 
 
 So when Miss Barnhart came from a 
 neighboring town to teach our school I 
 had my first intimation of the fact that 
 the world was not bounded on the north 
 by Miller s sawmill, on the east by the 
 Porter Hill bridge, on the south by Sal- 
 ter s stone barn, and on the west by Rock 
 creek. Miss Barnhart had what I have 
 since learned to describe as an aureole 
 of reddish hair that shone like burnished 
 copper, a delicate, creamy complexion, 
 soft white hands with tapering fingers, 
 and she wore gowns that rustled as she 
 walked, and soft, fluffy things about her 
 neck and wrists. 
 
 In many respects Miss Barnhart was a 
 decided innovation to the pupils at 
 Doane. We had been accustomed to big, 
 husky men teachers who whipped the big 
 boys for the slightest infraction of the 
 rules, and who began their day s work by 
 repairing to a neighboring growth of 
 hedge and cutting six or seven long, stout 
 withes to be used in the exigencies of
 
 52 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 school government. Miss Barnhart in 
 troduced new methods. She began by 
 putting us on honor so far as our behavior 
 was concerned, and let it be known that 
 she did not consider it any particular 
 crime to whisper during school hours. 
 She taught us songs, and we devoted a 
 portion of the study hours every day to 
 singing. In fact, I think she was entirely 
 responsible for the idea, which I was 
 twelve years in shaking off, that I could 
 sing, she having, early in the term, made 
 me leader of one division of the school 
 chorus. 
 
 Up to the time of Miss Barnhart s ad 
 vent into the neighborhood I had never 
 been called anything but "Dodd," "you 
 there," "don t be all day about it," or 
 that little devil. She greatly surprised 
 and pleased me by calling me "Mr. Gas- 
 ton." In fact, she gave all boys over 
 eight the title of "Mr." and invariably 
 addressed the girls over six as "Miss 
 Lou," "Miss Ella," or "Miss Ada," as the
 
 The Princess Enters. 53 
 
 case might be. Before Christmas she was 
 the most popular person I have ever 
 known, and she taught the year out with 
 out once being criticised by either parent 
 or pupil, a record which will probably 
 stand for all time. 
 
 On the closing day of school there was 
 a big dinner at the schoolhouse, and 
 everybody in the district came in for the 
 dinner and the exercises. At the close 
 Miss Barnhart tried to make a little 
 speech, but she choked up and finally 
 broke down and cried, and then every 
 pupil in school sniffled and the girls blub 
 bered as though their hearts were broken. 
 
 Ed Fought, who was the biggest boy in 
 school and who had a certain amount of 
 dignity to sustain, always claimed that 
 he laughed while the others were crying, 
 but I sat in the seat just across the aisle 
 from Ed and saw him wiping his eyes on 
 his shirtsleeve. Ed claimed that as Miss 
 Barnhart was only going to her home 
 twenty miles away to spend the summer
 
 54 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 there was nothing to cry about, but he 
 couldn t fool me, although I could see 
 that his sisters believed him implicitly 
 
 Miss Barnhart came back in the fall 
 to teach another year, and was just as 
 popular as before. Of course it is use 
 less for me to say that I had long before 
 made up my mind to marry her when I 
 grew up, and so when the story that she 
 was to be married to a man from a distant 
 town in the spring was first circulated, 
 I was very miserable. At first I scouted 
 the idea, saying that I did not believe 
 Miss Barnhart would marry the best man 
 that ever lived, but it leaked out dur 
 ing the winter that he was coming to see 
 her, and one morning along toward the 
 end of the term he came to school with her 
 and stayed until noon. 
 
 I had expected a great deal of Miss 
 Barnhart s suitor, but he was distinctly 
 disappointing and I couldn t see what 
 she saw in him. He was a little fat man 
 with a fierce black moustache, who seemed
 
 The Princess Enters. 55 
 
 to get his exercise by twirling his watch- 
 chain on his fingers. When he laughed 
 he cackled, and I know now that he must 
 have had an enormous bay window by 
 the time he was forty. He was that sort. 
 At the close of the school we had 
 another big dinner, and another surpris 
 ingly large tearfall. Miss Barnhart 
 packed up her books and things and 
 went away, and I never saw her afterward. 
 I kept hoping that something would 
 happen to break off her engagement, 
 but nothing did happen, and she mar 
 ried the little fat man in the early sum 
 mer. I was very unhappy for a few 
 days, but I soon got over it, although at 
 long intervals I still find myself thinking 
 about Miss Barnhart and wondering what 
 became of her.
 
 THE LURE OF THE CIRCUS. 
 
 The biggest piece of news that ever 
 happened in our neighborhood was when 
 Ol Swank and Vern Harbaugh ran away 
 with a circus. Neither was over sixteen 
 years old at the time. They had gone 
 down to Osage Mission to see the circus 
 with a lot of other boys, and the spirit of 
 unrest which surges in the breast of every 
 boy having swept them off their feet, 
 they were lured into the lair of the boss 
 of the roustabouts. There was an im 
 pression current among the boys of the 
 neighborhood that Ol and Vern were 
 wearing spangled tights and riding a fat 
 white horse around an improvised ring, 
 kissing their hands the while in response 
 to the plaudits of an assembled multi 
 tude. But that fiction was later on ex 
 ploded. For it developed that Vern 
 looked after the monkey cage and drove 
 a wagon in the parade, while Ol was em 
 ployed in the cook tent. 
 
 (56)
 
 The Lure of the Circus. 57 
 
 The affair was the talk of the neigh 
 borhood for weeks. Ol left a widowed 
 stepmother and a large family of smaller 
 brothers and sisters whose principal sup 
 port he had been, and there was much 
 indignation because of his summary de 
 sertion of them. He had not gotten 
 along well with his stepmother, but she 
 was an admirable and worthy woman, 
 and the sympathy of the neighborhood 
 was with her. It was freely predicted 
 that the boys would come sneaking back 
 within a week, but as a matter of fact, 
 Ol never came back. Once or twice he 
 was heard from in remote sections of the 
 country, but he never sat foot in the 
 neighborhood again, and in the course of 
 a few years all trace of him was lost. 
 
 The boys ran away in August. Vern 
 made land at his father s hearthside early 
 in the following January. Curiously 
 enough, he seemed to have lost all of his 
 desire to be a circus performer, but he 
 consented to teach the boys in the neigh-
 
 58 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 borhood the business, and nearly all of 
 the idle time during the following year 
 was devoted to it. Vern s circus school 
 turned out a number of finished perform 
 ers. It came to be one of the commonest 
 of sights to see a sedate plowhorse loping 
 across the prairie, a boy poised on one 
 foot on his broad back. A number of 
 polished "flip-flop" turners were also 
 graduated. Al Grable could do a double 
 "flip-flop " faultlessly from a short spring 
 board, and Frank Harbaugh reached that 
 point of perfection at which he could 
 negotiate a back "flip-flop" standing 
 squarely on level ground, with the great 
 est of ease. In fact, I have since seen 
 circus performers fail in turns which the 
 boys of our neighborhood did handily 
 without the aid of circus accessories. 
 
 Interest in the circus business was 
 finally submerged in the excitement over 
 the return of Henry Fought from Colo 
 rado, and the performers went out of 
 business. Henry was the oldest of the
 
 The Lure of the Circus. 59 
 
 Fought boys, and had been in Colorado 
 a number of years. Those of us who 
 came into the neighborhood after his de 
 parture had heard a great deal about him. 
 The fact that he was steadily employed 
 at $3 a day and was saving his money 
 gave him considerable distinction, and as 
 he had been a great favorite in the neigh 
 borhood, local interest in him held up 
 well. 
 
 Henry came back one fall wearing the 
 best clothes I had ever seen up to that 
 time. He visited the school within a day 
 or two after his arrival, and if any doubt 
 had been entertained as to his status in 
 the neighborhood it was at once set at 
 rest. For the teacher not only greeted 
 him cordially, but permitted him to sit 
 with two or three of the big girls during 
 the afternoon and help them with their 
 examples. This latter was a special mark 
 of distinction, and was conferred only 
 upon honored guests of the school. I 
 confess, that at first sight, Henry was a
 
 60 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 little disappointing to me. For he wore 
 chin whiskers, and I am so prejudiced 
 against the chin whisker that even now, 
 when the breadth and knowledge of ma- 
 turer years have swept away many of my 
 old prejudices, I am never able to asso 
 ciate it in my mind with greatness or 
 distinction . 
 
 The stories of Henry s prosperity were 
 borne out immediately upon his return 
 by his purchase of a top buggy and a 
 breech -loading shotgun. Up to that time 
 there had been but one top buggy in the 
 community and no breech-loading shot 
 gun. The other Fought boys, Ed, Grant, 
 and Bill, were permitted to hunt with the 
 gun, and it not only gave them a great 
 advantage over the other boys when the 
 ducks and geese were flying, but caused 
 a lot of enmity and jealousy as well. 
 Most of us had nothing better than single- 
 barrel guns, and there were more con 
 demned army muskets than any other 
 kind of shooting-iron. And so when the
 
 The Lure of the Circus. 61 
 
 Fought boys began to bag three and four 
 mallards at a shot and talk contemp 
 tuously of muzzle-loading guns there was 
 much indignation and hard feeling toward 
 them. 
 
 I had nothing but an old cap-and-ball 
 rifle, and never killed anything anyway, 
 but I took sides with the other boys 
 against the Foughts, who were thought 
 to be "stuck up "over Henry s gun. We 
 were constantly inventing stories about 
 the prodigious amount of game we killed 
 with our antiquated weapons and running 
 down the breech-loader, although it was 
 really a very good gun. Half a dozen 
 fights resulted, and in the excitement of 
 trying to beat the Fought boys the circus 
 business was forgotten.
 
 WHEN FLORA DIED. 
 
 They say youth is untroubled. The 
 wish that lies nearest the heart of every 
 man who fights his way is that he might 
 go back to boyhood. The shank of every 
 hard day brings to the tired man mem 
 ories of his boyhood years. And yet I 
 doubt that youth is happier or less the 
 prey of sorrow than mature age Look 
 ing backward over a stretch of years, 
 each of which has had its share of gray 
 days, I recall no grief so keen, so tem 
 pestuous, as that which came to me the 
 day Flora died. 
 
 Flora was a bay mare of Kentucky 
 lineage, which was from the spring she 
 came a yearling until the day of her 
 death as much a member of the family 
 as those born into it. She had all the 
 fine attributes of humanity without its 
 vices. She was so kindly and gentle that 
 little children played about her heels. 
 
 (62)
 
 When Flora Died. 63 . 
 
 She never lost her temper, nor failed to 
 do her best, and she had such courage 
 and spirit that when she was sixteen 
 years old, riding her without whip or spur 
 and with no guide but a halter, I gave the 
 dust of the country road to the fastest 
 horses in the country round about. 
 
 It may be said that she did not under 
 stand my boyish confidences, and that 
 what I mistook for sympathy and under 
 standing were only evidences of her love 
 for me, but I shall always believe she 
 understood. When the old home ties 
 were broken up and the family went 
 pioneering to Kansas, Flora was taken 
 along. The other horses were sold, but 
 it would have been quite as possible to 
 have left the baby behind as it would 
 have been to leave Flora. And so the 
 intimacy that began when I was a boy 
 of five ended only with her death. I 
 count it as one of my most precious mem 
 ories that during all those years I never 
 struck her with a whip or raised my voice 
 to her in anger.
 
 64 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 I shall not forget the day she died. 
 For hours I had huddled over the fire in 
 the kitchen stove, mute and with misery 
 in my heart. I could not go to the barn 
 where she lay dying, for my soul rebelled 
 against even the sight of her suffering. 
 And when they brought the news that 
 she was dead I ran blindly down to the 
 creek bank, where I lay for hours sobbing 
 away the grief that harrowed my soul. 
 
 Life has not always been well with me 
 since. I have stood where death wrung 
 the tendrils of my heart and turned to 
 it a face unwashed by tears. Sorrow has 
 never since laid upon me a hand so heavy 
 that it startled me into exclamation. 
 Therefore, I doubt that youth is more 
 care-free than age, or less trammeled by 
 grief. I, at least, found its sorrows quite 
 as hard to bear. 
 
 It is seventeen years since Flora died, 
 and I remember still. For it seems to 
 me that of all those I have known, she 
 was the kindliest, the gentlest, and the 
 least disappointing.
 
 THE GHOST AT SCOTT S 
 CHURCH. 
 
 If I have any pride in myself, it is 
 because of the belief that I am of a 
 practical turn of mind. I do not fol 
 low the crazy pendulum of public senti 
 ment. I do not chase fool fads. I do 
 not allow my opinion to be warped by 
 every four-flusher who chances to get 
 the attention of the public. I try 
 always to be fair, sane and practical. 
 I fail often and do fool things, but I 
 try to square everything by the rule of 
 common-sense. Theoretically, I do not 
 believe in ghosts or apparitions from 
 the spirit world. Applied common- 
 sense rebels at the idea of such things 
 and casts them out. But I once saw a 
 ghostly visitor which I have never been 
 able to explain away. 
 
 Scott s churchyard lay along the slope 
 of a long clay hill. The highway ran 
 
 (65)
 
 66 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 alongside. The church stood at the 
 top of the hill, on the highest point 
 in the country round about. At the 
 bottom of the hill, a quarter of a mile 
 from the lower side of the church 
 yard, lay a swamp partially redeemed 
 to agriculture, but still the abiding- 
 place of frogs and other scaly things. 
 
 One summer evening Press Hobbs, re 
 turning home at dusk from a day s work 
 in a neighbor s field, started to climb 
 the hill past the churchyard. He was 
 a practical-minded man, then nearing 
 fifty, stolid and unimaginative by nature. 
 Hobbs encountered something on the 
 hillside which caused him to take to his 
 heels and flee as if from the wrath to 
 come. He brought up at a neighboring 
 farmhouse panting, exhausted, and in a 
 condition of mind bordering on hysterics. 
 He never gave a lucid explanation of 
 what he saw, but the story circulated 
 through the neighborhood and brought 
 out other stories of queer things en-
 
 The Ghost at Scott s Church. 6V 
 
 countered along the roadside leading by 
 the churchyard. 
 
 In the course of a week the neighbor 
 hood was in a ferment about it, and little 
 else was talked of. Frank Halpin, Will 
 McDannold and I were boon com 
 panions, and among the boys, the ad 
 venturous spirits of the neighborhood. 
 Nearly all of the neighborhood crime 
 and misdemeanor was charged to us, 
 and the bookkeeping was, in the main, 
 correct. Halpin was about 17. Mc 
 Dannold and I were a couple of years 
 younger. We talked the Hobbs ghost 
 over between ourselves for a week or 
 two, and finally agreed to spend a night 
 in and about the churchyard in the role 
 of an investigating committee. We kept 
 our intentions secret, and although the 
 story afterwards leaked out, it was years 
 before our experience became the com 
 mon property of the people of the com 
 munity. 
 
 Halpin, McDannold and I met by ap-
 
 68 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 pointment at the cross-roads a mile 
 north of the church one evening just 
 after sunset. We reached the bridge 
 across the swamp just as the dusk began 
 to gather, and started leisurely up the 
 hill. It was a perfect .summer even 
 ing. The whirr and clatter of a har 
 vester in a near-by wheat-field had just 
 ceased. The frogs in the swamp were 
 taking the first bars of the "Te Deum." 
 We poked along up the hill without tak 
 ing much heed of our mission. Every 
 event of the evening is clearly stamped 
 on my memory to this day, and I re 
 member that I was telling the other 
 boys about Lewis Wetzel, a celebrated 
 Indian-fighter of whom I had just been 
 reading, and we were speculating as 
 to whether it were possible for a man to 
 load his rifle while running at full speed. 
 Wetzel s biographer had claimed this as 
 one of Wetzel s accomplishments. 
 
 I was still babbling away, and we had 
 passed the lower corner of the church-
 
 The Ghost at Scott s Chiirch. 69 
 
 yard. Suddenly Halpin, who was lead 
 ing, stopped, and McDannold grabbed 
 me by the arm. Straight ahead of us, 
 in the center of the road, was the gigantic 
 figure of a man standing motionless and 
 at ease. I make due allowance for the 
 tense condition of my nerves and my 
 youthful imagination, but it has always 
 seemed to me that the figure was at least 
 ten feet high and proportionately broad. 
 
 Halpin had nerve that was as fine as 
 chilled steel, and the plugging deter 
 mination and obstinacy of a mule He 
 was afterwards a celebrated peace offi 
 cer in the far West, and died with his 
 boots on, his six-shooter barking to his 
 last breath. After the first start of sur 
 prise he pushed forward straight toward 
 the figure, McDannold and I following. 
 We seemed to be approaching it, but 
 when we reached the spot where it had 
 appeared to be, it suddenly vanished into 
 the air of the dusky summer evening. 
 
 We stopped instinctively, and I
 
 70 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 glanced nervously behind me. The 
 figure was leaning against the fence at 
 the lower corner of the churchyard, more 
 than fifty yards away. Halpin hesi 
 tated not a second, and again led the 
 way toward it. When we reached the 
 lower corner of the churchyard there 
 was nothing there, but we could see the 
 figure dimly outlined at the top of the 
 hill fifty yards or more beyond where 
 we first encountered it. It vanished 
 again as we approached and reappeared 
 almost immediately in the churchyard. 
 McDannold s nerve oozed away at 
 this juncture, and mine followed. We 
 climbed the fence into the field opposite 
 and streaked across it panic-stricken, 
 Halpin following, blowing like a porpoise. 
 He was the last to give way, but it had 
 been too much even for him. We ran 
 most of the way home, and the re 
 searches of the investigating committee 
 were never carried any further. We 
 made a compact to keep it secret, and
 
 The Ghost at Scott s Church. 71 
 
 it was not until years afterward that I, 
 then a man grown, revisited the neigh 
 borhood and told the story. 
 
 I do not believe in ghosts or appa 
 ritions from the spirit world. But what 
 was it Halpin, McDannold and I saw on 
 that dusky summer evening, now many 
 years to the windward, in the road along 
 side Scott s churchyard ?
 
 BACK AT GRIGSBY S STATION. 
 
 I spent a Sunday lately back at Grigs- 
 by s Station. In the memory of every 
 man who gravitates from the clean dirt 
 to paved streets there is a Grigsby s 
 Station, and most of them pretend to 
 love it. I don t. Frankly, the town 
 grinds upon my soul and maddens me. 
 I hate its narrow, jaundiced view of 
 life, and I resent the prying interest 
 of its uncouth, unshaven men and its 
 gossipy, slatternly women. I hate its 
 meddling and its tendency to sit in 
 judgment on the affairs of others, al 
 though I do not forget that when sor 
 row comes to rest on one s doorstep 
 Grigsby s Station is always responsive, 
 and that it gives freely in sympathy 
 and in neighborly kindness. 
 
 Grigsby s Station wears somewhat 
 ostentatiously the mantle of religion. 
 Human endeavor finds its principal out- 
 
 (72)
 
 Back at Grigsbys Station. 73 
 
 let there in getting people to the mourn 
 er s bench. Seven months in the year 
 they hold revival services at the churches. 
 The fullness of the remaining five is 
 consumed in getting the converts into 
 the water. They talk of the moral 
 atmosphere of the town, and boast that 
 it never had a saloon. And yet during 
 the past twenty years I ve known a 
 hundred strong, useful young men in 
 the town who went to hell through 
 drink, and I ve known a hundred girls 
 whp turned to the left because the town 
 was so busy saving souls that it had no 
 time to provide the clean, simple diver 
 sions beloved by youth, or to point the 
 way to a higher plane of living. 
 
 Sunday begins early in Grigsby s Sta 
 tion, and on the day of which I write I 
 tumbled downstairs to a late breakfast 
 to find the Neighbor Woman who teaches 
 a class in the Sunday school holding 
 converse with the Family. She had 
 dropped in to find why the Family had
 
 74 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 gone to a show in the "opry house" the 
 night before instead of attending the 
 services at which the presiding elder de 
 livered a sermon. She noted also that 
 the Family had been somewhat irregu 
 lar in its attendance on Sunday school, 
 and pressed it for a reason. And as she 
 chattered on I noted curiously enough 
 that while there was much of the church, 
 of the minister, the prayer-meeting and 
 kindred topics in her speech, it was all 
 pitched to the note of querulous com 
 plaint. There was nothing of the joy 
 of living, she touched no chord of fine 
 endeavor, and made no record of the 
 deeds of those whose influence was ex 
 erted outside the narrow sphere in which 
 she lived and moved. 
 
 In these later years I do not go much 
 about in Grigsby s Station. Those I 
 knew intimately and well have mostly 
 gone away and those who remain hold 
 no interest for me. But on the occasion 
 of which I write, my cigar-case had run
 
 Back at Grigs by s Station. 75 
 
 low and I harked uptown to replenish 
 it. The center of activity uptown 
 seemed to ebb and flow in front of the 
 livery stable, where twenty or thirty 
 men, most of whom needed clean linen 
 and a shave, were grouped. In the bar 
 ber shop a hot game of checkers w T as in 
 progress, and there was tremendous ex 
 citement among the onlookers. A little 
 farther up the street a man came out 
 of the butcher-shop with a roll of meat 
 under his arm. As I walked back the 
 bus went by on its way to the noon 
 train. 
 
 After dinner Mrs. Shank Reeves came 
 over to sit awhile. Mrs. Reeves was 
 much perturbed. One of the Slote boys 
 had married one of the Peck girls- 
 somewhat unexpectedly, it seemed the 
 night before, and Mrs. Reeves was in 
 a flutter of excitement to learn whether 
 it was a "military" wedding. I left the 
 house again to shut out the memory of 
 Mrs. Reeves.
 
 76 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 Four girls none of them more than 
 sixteen, came down the street past the 
 hotel and peeked in. They had hoped 
 to find a traveling gentleman, but there 
 was no one hanging about the hotel 
 office and they went on to Epworth 
 League. I continued my walk. On a 
 back lot four men were pitching horse 
 shoes. A little farther on, Ed Simons s 
 dog had chased a cat up a tree and was 
 holding it. Just beyond the school- 
 house grounds I ran into and disturbed 
 a fence-corner poker game. 
 
 I got back in time to join the crowd 
 on its way to see the 4 : 38 train come in. 
 At the station there was great excite 
 ment. Someone had broken a pane of 
 glass in the waiting-room, and a young 
 couple reputed to have recently become 
 engaged were walking up and down 
 the platform. I returned to the house 
 to find Mrs. Shipley there. She had 
 run over to borrow a little coffee for 
 breakfast, and to express her opinion
 
 Back at Grigsbys Station. 
 
 of the Widow Carver. Pretty soon 
 the church-bells rang. At eight o clock 
 a dog barked somewhere in the neigh 
 borhood, and by nine o clock everybody 
 was in bed. I had spent twelve hours 
 in Grigsby s Station and had heard no 
 generous thought expressed nor seen a 
 single kindly deed performed. 
 
 In the memory of every man who 
 gravitates from clean dirt to paved 
 streets there is a Grigsby s Station, and 
 most of them pretend to love it. I don t. 
 Frankly, the town grinds upon my soul 
 and maddens me.
 
 GOING BACK TO GRAND 
 MOTHER S. 
 
 I sometimes think there comes into 
 the life of a man no more depressing in 
 fluence than the realization that he is 
 no longer a boy. The consciousness of 
 youth is always an anchor to the wind 
 ward. To be suddenly cut adrift from 
 one s boyhood makes rough sailing. Not 
 long ago I went for a brief visit to the 
 old home for the first time since grand 
 mother died. For fifteen years the 
 smooth waters of grandmother s house 
 were my port of refuge. It was the one 
 place where I was always sure of a hearty 
 welcome, rest, quiet, comfort, and the 
 coddling so dear to a masculine heart. 
 
 The world changed a good deal dur 
 ing those fifteen years, and I saw it at 
 many different angles. But neither the 
 face nor the atmosphere of that roomy, 
 old-fashioned tw r o- story farmhouse set 
 
 (78)
 
 Going Back to Grandmother s. 79 
 
 down between two hills ever altered. 
 It was always restful and quiet there, 
 and the sound of a footfall could be 
 heard anywhere in the house. One 
 could sit on the front porch and hear 
 the big clock ticking in the dining-room, 
 and in the evenings the only sounds 
 that freighted to and fro upon the air 
 were the chirping of the katydids and 
 the occasional bark of a lonely dog. 
 
 Up in the garret of the old farmhouse 
 there was the most wonderful array of 
 curious things. A chest of drawers that 
 came over ahead of Cornwallis stood in 
 the half-light against the north wall, and 
 in one of the drawers was a bundle of 
 old, yellow, faded letters written home 
 to North Carolina by a captain under 
 "Mad Anthony" Wayne. In another 
 drawer were a lot of daguerreotypes of 
 curious -looking people in impossible 
 clothes. An old hair trunk sat under 
 the east window, and above it hung a 
 sword that followed General Zachary
 
 80 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 Taylor to Mexico. In the trunk, folded 
 carefully on top of a miscellaneous col 
 lection of other fabrics, was an old blue 
 uniform, a hole in the right sleeve, and 
 the sleeve splashed and stained with 
 blood. And like a row of sentinels, there 
 hung from the rafters a long line of hoop- 
 skirts, derelict and abandoned by girls 
 who had been country belles in the six 
 ties. 
 
 I did not go often to grandmother s 
 house. Often there was a year, some 
 times two or three years, between my 
 visits. But I always knew I could take my 
 incipient pneumonia there any time and 
 have it fixed up with a mustard plaster 
 on my chest. I knew grandmother could 
 tie a red-flannel rag around my sore 
 throat and cure it overnight, and I knew 
 that when I got ready to go away the 
 holes in my hose would all be nicely 
 darned. It never mattered how late I 
 slept in the morning. The coffee-pot was 
 always simmering gently on the back of
 
 Going Back to Grandmother s. 81 
 
 the stove and there was a pan of hot bis 
 cuits in the oven when I came down 
 stairs. It never mattered, either, how 
 low the canned fruit ran it made no dif 
 ference that a late frost came and killed 
 the blossoms on the trees a can of cher 
 ries was always set away against my com 
 ing. For while the world might forget 
 that I was inordinately fond of cherry 
 pie, grandmother never did. 
 
 She never understood me in the later 
 years of her life, because we traveled 
 different roads. Much that I did seemed 
 foolish and frivolous to her. For I was 
 at the age when pleasure was my watch 
 word, and gaudy waistcoats, cravats and 
 shirts the countersign I gave at the places 
 into which I desired entrance. I re 
 member she once chided me for some 
 frippery cut to the contour of a shirt, 
 which I was wearing, and to prove her 
 case bought at the little country town 
 store where she did her trading a shirt for 
 68 cents and presented it to me. She
 
 82 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 claimed it was just as good as the more 
 expensive garments I had been wearing; 
 and that she might not be disappointed, 
 I put it on and wore it like the soldier 
 whose old blue uniform lay in the hair 
 trunk upstairs. But, farther than that, 
 she never criticised or questioned what I 
 did, and I could be sure of her sympathy, 
 no matter what happened. 
 
 Not long ago I went back. I knew 
 that grandmother had gone the short 
 journey from the home to which she went 
 a bride in 1844 to the little cemetery on 
 the hillside, but that was the least I had 
 to learn. The landscape had not 
 changed, but it no longer held an inter 
 est for me. The faces of the people were 
 familiar, and they were kind, but they 
 could not dispel the feeling of loneliness 
 that gripped my heart, nor bring back 
 that which had gone out of my life. I 
 walked to the top of the hill overlooking 
 the old house, saw alien figures about the 
 place, and turned on my heel. And I
 
 Going Back to Grandmother s. 83 
 
 realized when I drove away next morning 
 that I should never come nor care to 
 come again. I knew, too, that the last 
 link that bound me to boyhood had been 
 riven, and that I was adrift on a troubled 
 sea.
 
 THE PASSING OF "MUSKOGEE 
 RED." 
 
 "Muskogee Red" has passed on. In 
 a little Territory town, one of the senti 
 nels set by civilization at the outpost 
 nearest to the wilderness, they found him 
 one morning cold in death. The light 
 had failed in the breath of a December 
 storm, and the body lay unprotected from 
 its fury. The coroner s jury gathered 
 quickly, rendered a verdict of death from 
 chronic alcoholism, and the undertaker 
 hauled the body to a convenient potter s 
 field. There were no flowers, no friends. 
 The solitude and loneliness of the man s 
 life found fitting complement in its hard, 
 almost brutal, ending. 
 
 "Muskogee Red" was an Irishman by 
 birth, a printer by trade. He had the 
 burr of his country s dialect upon his 
 tongue, its map graven upon his face. 
 Before drink benumbed his faculties he 
 
 (84)
 
 The Passing of " Muskogee Red . 85 
 
 was a clever fellow. But that was long 
 ago. Before it unsteadied his hand he 
 was a good workman. But that was 
 also long ago. For twenty years pre 
 ceding his death he had but one passion, 
 but one ambition. And that was whisky. 
 A drink brought content, three drinks 
 happiness, enough to fill a pint flask was 
 Heaven. Other men who had gone 
 "Red s" gait gathered themselves to 
 gether as they began to slip over the brow 
 of the hill toward the sunset. They mar 
 ried, reared families, grew a vine and 
 fig tree, and turned their faces toward 
 reputable ambition. 
 
 But "Red" never shifted. Every 
 vista down which he peered had liquor 
 at the end. He wandered about over 
 the face of the earth scantily clothed, as 
 scantily fed, and with nowhere to lay his 
 head. He never knew the comforts of a 
 home, the assurance of permanency, or 
 felt the soft touch of a woman who loved 
 him. Toward the end his own craft
 
 86 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 shunned him. A few friends he kept 
 through it all. There were those who 
 could look far enough beyond the be 
 numbing, degrading influence of drink to 
 see the warm-hearted, fine-fibered Irish 
 man it had led astray. They gave him 
 pleasant greeting and paid, to the end, 
 the tribute he levied. 
 
 The writer was "Red s" friend for 
 more than fifteen years. It cost him an 
 average of $5 a year in tribute, but he 
 never grudged the money. It is worth 
 a great deal more than $5 a year to give 
 any fellow-being the exact thing he needs 
 to make him happy. " Red " was always 
 in conflict with the police. He claimed 
 to hold the jail and calaboose champion 
 ship of the country, and there was none 
 to dispute his title. And yet, the only 
 entry ever set against his name on the 
 police court records was "drunk and 
 disorderly." He never stole nor cheated, 
 he never gambled, and he assailed neither 
 the honor nor virtue of woman.
 
 The Passing of Muskogee Red. " 87 
 
 He knew he was going as he did. The 
 last time the writer saw him was on a 
 cold winter evening at the beginning of 
 the year. He had come up to collect 
 the final dividend on the friendship we 
 bore each other. And, strange to say, 
 he was sober. "I m goin away," said 
 he, preliminary to his always masterly 
 exposition of the "touch." "Likely yez 
 11 never see me agin. I m gittin old, and 
 some marnin they ll find me stiff and 
 cold." He got the small silver he asked 
 for, and drifted down the office stairs a 
 derelict on the tide of life, too far gone 
 in ruin and decay to hold out a hope of 
 salvage. 
 
 "Muskogee Red s" life had no saving 
 grace except insofar as it serves a warn 
 ing. He frittered it away in utter folly. 
 But there is this about it to make one 
 think : if it seems that your life is cast 
 within hard lines, compare it with 
 "Muskogee Red s." For forty years he 
 fought a demon appetite that brought
 
 88 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 him nothing but misery and woe. He 
 never had a home or reasonable assurance 
 of a coming meal. No child ever laid its 
 soft face against his bearded cheek. No 
 woman ever watched for him at the win 
 dow or listened for his footsteps. 
 
 And, because there is no other to do 
 it, the writer drops a tear on his neg 
 lected grave. Here s hoping that on the 
 Other Side there ll be no mad appetite 
 to drag him down, no folly to benumb 
 the best that s in him.
 
 AN APOSTROPHE TO THE 
 RABBIT. 
 
 If I detest any one thing more than 
 another, that thing is politics. I hate the 
 game as fiercely as a Methodist preacher 
 hates the jack of spades. And yet, 
 nearly all of my close friends are in pol 
 itics, and I have been closely associated 
 with politics and politicians all my life. 
 Once a woman, startled into speculation 
 by some expression of disgust that had 
 crossed my lips, asked why I detested the 
 game in which so many men find their 
 keenest enjoyment. I promised her that 
 one day I should write a specific reply. 
 And that is the justification the reader 
 must find for that which follows. 
 
 I hate politics because it makes rabbits 
 of men. It turns the most courageous 
 into spineless, abject imitations of their 
 Creator. A politician once said to a 
 friend of mine: "I like Gaston, and I d 
 
 (89)
 
 90 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 like to be friendly with him, but he keeps 
 me at arm s-length. He won t warm up 
 to me." I kept him at arm s-length be 
 cause politics had made him a creeping, 
 crawling thing afraid of his own shadow. 
 
 Poke Smart is my best friend. I would 
 go farther and carry a heavier load for 
 him than any other man I know. Poke 
 used to be the bully boy of his town. He 
 was a natural leader, and when he spoke 
 they all danced to his music. Poke did 
 his business in the open, and one knew 
 always where to find him. Before he 
 was elected to office he had the fine cour 
 age to stand always for the thing he be 
 lieved to be right, and the finer courage 
 to admit it when he was wrong. Since 
 Poke was elected to office he hasn t 
 squeaked. Every opinion he has ex 
 pressed has been spoken in a whisper. 
 
 Alfred Farley is a fine, clean, decent 
 young man against whom nothing can 
 be said. I like him immensely because 
 he is fine and clean and decent. Upon
 
 An Apostrophe to the Rabbit. 91 
 
 a time there was a function in which 
 Farley and I participated. Evening 
 clothes were optional, but other partici 
 pants in the function got together and 
 decided that it was the thing to dress for 
 the occasion. Farley was approached in 
 the matter. "I can t do it, boys," he 
 said. "I m in politics, and if I were to 
 wear my evening clothes the fellows 
 would say my head had swelled, and it 
 would hurt me." 
 
 I greatly admire the Hon. Benton 
 Griggs. Griggs has such a fine mind, 
 such breadth and poise and strength of 
 character, that he is one of the most 
 likeable fellows I know. He used to be 
 so frank and open and courageous that 
 association with him gave the keenest 
 sort of joy. But Griggs, who has been 
 in politics less than two years, has com 
 menced to trim. He talks cautiously and 
 is beginning to resort to platitude. Some 
 things that were admirable have already 
 gone out of his makeup. In five years,
 
 92 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 if he sticks to politics, his spinal vertebras 
 will be gone and he will be like the rest. 
 I take it that if I were in politics, I, 
 too, would be a rabbit. And while I 
 have only a humble job at a modest wage, 
 I greatly prefer it to the best politics has 
 to offer. For I do not have to kowtow 
 to the voters, nor cater to the tiresome 
 asses who attach themselves to every 
 political caravan. And I can wear what 
 I choose, eat what I please, and say what 
 I like.
 
 THE SMARTEST BOY IN 
 SCHOOL. 
 
 In my day Geddes Burgess was the 
 smartest boy in Grigsby s Station. He 
 knew more than any of the other boys 
 and he told it better. More than that, 
 Geddes Burgess was a clean, manly boy. 
 Doing the right thing seemed instinctive 
 with him. He acquired no bad habits, was 
 careful of his associations, and showed 
 both industry and thrift. We were good 
 friends always, but the time I spent be 
 hind the livery stable learning to smoke 
 Geddes utilized in reading history. The 
 summers I wasted acquiring a profane 
 vocabulary and learning to throw an in- 
 shoot Geddes devoted to getting in touch 
 with the dry -goods business in the em 
 porium of Gage & Bro. In winter he was 
 easily the best student in school and the 
 best orator that appeared at the debates 
 of the literary society. By the time he 
 
 (93)
 
 94 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 was twelve years old people had begun 
 to point to him and say there was a boy 
 who would make his mark. 
 
 When Geddes finished high school he 
 went away to college. From the side 
 window of the Grigsby s Station Clarion, 
 where I sat perched upon a high stool 
 setting type, I watched him drive away 
 to take the train for the university town, 
 and although he was my friend there was 
 bitterness and envy in my heart. 
 
 Geddes made a great record at college 
 and was a big man in his class, but it 
 seemed not to affect him in the least. He 
 came home on his vacations without any of 
 the swagger or undue cranial development 
 which is usually the sign of the college 
 student from a small town. There was 
 not even the suggestion of the university 
 in the clothes he wore, and during his 
 summer vacations he turned his hand to 
 any odd job of work that came along. 
 
 He graduated with honor, but he re 
 turned home the same simple, unaffected
 
 The Smartest Boy in School. 95 
 
 Geddes Burgess I had known from child 
 hood. People looked up to him, treated 
 him with great deference, and everybody 
 predicted that he would cut a mighty 
 wide swath in affairs. It was talked 
 freely that he would some day be a 
 United States Senator or a federal judge, 
 and many thought even the presidency 
 not far beyond him. 
 
 Geddes decided to take up the law, 
 and went into the office of the best firm 
 in town. About the time he settled down 
 to the law I took out a traveling-card and 
 went away for a look at the country be 
 yond. I heard occasionally of Geddes in 
 the two years that elapsed before I re 
 turned. He was fulfilling every predic 
 tion his brilliant youth had made, and was 
 fast developing into a fine lawyer. But 
 when I returned home finally I learned 
 that Geddes had quit the law and was 
 doing newspaper work in a neighboring 
 city. It was said of him at the time that 
 he was the most promising reporter on the
 
 96 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 staff of the paper for which he worked, 
 and I did not doubt it. 
 
 I lost track of Geddes for a while, and 
 when I next heard of him he was in the 
 support of Kern, the great tragedian, and 
 the critics said he was the best young ac 
 tor seen in the West for years. I did not 
 locate him again for three or four years, 
 when I returned to Grigsby s Station one 
 fall to find him running for State Senator. 
 People said Geddes had struck his gait at 
 last and that he would land high. But 
 as a matter of fact he was beaten by a 
 few votes and dropped out of sight again. 
 
 I met Geddes quite unexpectedly in 
 St. Louis a year or two ago. I had not 
 seen or heard of him for six or seven 
 years, but he seemed the same simple, un 
 affected fellow I had known in my boy 
 hood days. He refused an invitation to 
 take a drink and declined to smoke, but 
 we spent a pleasant hour together. Inci 
 dentally, I learned that he was working as 
 a stenographer in a wholesale house at 
 $15 a week.
 
 THE OLD DISTRICT JUDGE. 
 
 Of all the folk in Grigsby s Station I 
 liked the Judge best. There may have 
 been a time when the Judge was only 
 an "Hon." or plain "Mister," but he has 
 been on the bench so long that I can not 
 remember it. In a place like Grigsby s 
 Station whenever a man begins to get his 
 head above the level of his neighbors 
 one hears stories "on" him. It is told 
 about that he got his property by cheat 
 ing, that he is mean to his family, or 
 that he is stingy and drives a hard bar 
 gain. Sometimes, if he is particularly 
 prosperous or prominent, they tell 
 "woman" stories on him, although in a 
 small town like Grigsby s Station very 
 little of that sort of thing goes on. But, 
 although I have known the Judge ever 
 since I can remember, I never heard him 
 spoken of unkindly or disrespectfully. 
 
 (97)
 
 98 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 I have always thought that had the 
 Judge pulled himself out of the rut of 
 the small country town and gone to a 
 more considerable community he would 
 have been recognized as a very great man. 
 He is certainly learned in the law and 
 he has the soul of a poet and the eye 
 and understanding of an artist. But he 
 stuck to the little white house with the 
 green shutters, and for more than twenty 
 years has sat in the dusty, dingy court 
 room in a splint-bottomed chair and be 
 hind a worn desk the top of which is cov 
 ered with oilcloth of the sort careful 
 housewives lay upon their kitchen floors. 
 
 The only time the Judge ever criticised 
 me was upon an occasion when I appeared 
 in Grigsby s Station wearing a fancy vest 
 very delicate in texture and very light 
 in color. "I hate to see a man wearing 
 a thing like that," he said when I met 
 him in front of the postoffice. So I went 
 home and buried the offending garment 
 in the bottom of my suit-case. Sarto-
 
 The Old District Judge. 99 
 
 rially, the Judge has always been the 
 despair of his wife and daughters. His 
 only condescension to style is a collar and 
 tie worn upon occasions when he happens 
 to be holding court or attending a sol 
 diers reunion. 
 
 Once the Judge set out by rail from 
 Grigsby s Station to Birmington, a neigh 
 boring town. A new conductor hap 
 pened to be on the "run" that day, and 
 he promptly took up the Judge s pass 
 and collected full fare. "That damn 
 tramp back there," he remarked to the 
 brakeman as he went forward, "was 
 a- try in to ride on Judge Lee s pass." On 
 another occasion the Judge s trousers had 
 reached the stage where further patching 
 was impossible. So Mrs. Judge thrust 
 the price into his hand and bade him go 
 uptown and buy a new pair. The Judge 
 set off obediently enough. He came 
 back in an hour or two with a bundle 
 under his arm, and unwrapping it with 
 that pleasurable pride which always
 
 100 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 precedes the springing of a surprise, dis 
 played two new books. 
 
 I have said that had the judge gone 
 to any considerable community he would 
 have been recognized as a very great man. 
 But perhaps, after all, he chose wisely. 
 In the little house with the green shutters 
 every picture and every decoration is an 
 association and every book an old fa 
 miliar friend. About the house there is 
 the green grass and the trees. Away to 
 the west there is the river, and there are 
 the tints in the sky-line to be watched 
 and the drowsy hum of the country town 
 to lull one to rest and quiet. 
 
 And so the Judge s life has run on like 
 a gently flowing river between green 
 banks and under blue skies. He has 
 peace and quiet and every neighbor is^his 
 friend. The other life, the life he might 
 have led had he chosen, has its greater 
 victories, but it also carries its scars. 
 Perhaps the Judge chose wisely, after all.
 
 THE OPOLIS DAILY SUN. 
 
 Somebody once asked me to tell the 
 most interesting episode in my experi 
 ence. I think now that it was my at 
 tempt to give the town of Opolis a met 
 ropolitan daily newspaper. Opolis was a 
 little shack town on the edge of a prairie. 
 They claimed a population of 10,000 peo 
 ple and had the figures to prove the claim, 
 but I have always thought they counted 
 the tombstones in the burying-ground 
 and the names on the old hotel registers 
 in making the compilation. 
 
 I lit in the town one day along toward 
 the crimpy end of an unpleasant autumn, 
 without money and without a job. Al 
 though the town had already three daily 
 and two weekly newspapers, I found that 
 another daily was badly needed. There 
 was much dissatisfaction w r ith the press 
 of the community. The fellows who were 
 running newspapers in Opolis were, it 
 
 (101)
 
 102 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 seemed, slow and non- progressive. I 
 gleaned from sundry conversations with 
 real-estate agents, lawyers and probable 
 candidates for office at the next election, 
 that what the town really needed was a 
 bright, clever young fellow \vho could 
 throw vim and snap into his work. 
 
 As my entire capital at that time con 
 sisted of vim and snap, I concluded I had 
 found a lucrative field for its investment, 
 and having neither money nor job I con 
 cluded to start the fourth daily news 
 paper in the town. Before I took the 
 final step I went around to see the slow, 
 non-progressive fellows who were run 
 ning the sheets already established. I 
 intimated to each of them in turn that 
 if he would give me a job at $10 a week I 
 would drop my hastily formed plan to 
 drive him out of business, but the "stall" 
 wouldn t fight and I went ahead with my 
 plans for a bright, snappy, metropolitan 
 newspaper. 
 
 I knew a man in a near-by city who
 
 The Opolis Daily Sun. 103 
 
 had a printing plant lying idle, so I bor 
 rowed the necessary railroad fare and 
 went down and leased it. On the same 
 trip I touched a friend for $25 to pay 
 freight on the plant and for incidental 
 expenses. When I finally got my mate 
 rial set up in a room for the rent of which 
 I had stood the landlord off, I had $4 
 left. A dollar of this I used as advance 
 payment on a stove for which I had 
 gigged a second-hand dealer, another dol 
 lar was expended on coal, and a third went 
 into the cash drawer of a retail dealer 
 in lamps, kerosene and sponges. The re 
 mainder of the nest-egg was deposited 
 with the barber and haberdasher in an 
 effort to bring my personal appearance 
 up to the standard required of newspaper 
 proprietors. 
 
 On the morning of the day of the first 
 issue of the Opolis Daily Sun I had hope 
 in my heart and ten cents in my pocket. 
 The white paper for the first two or three 
 issues of the Sun was borrowed from one
 
 104 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 of the competing sheets upon the rep 
 resentation that the carload I had or 
 dered had not yet arrived. I may as 
 well say here that the particular carload 
 of paper in question hasn t reached me 
 yet. 
 
 I had gathered together a rattling good 
 staff. One indication of the weakness of 
 humanity is that every man who gets to 
 know me well wants to work for me. It 
 was an all- round staff, too. Every man 
 on the paper could write editorial or news, 
 set type, run a press, or solicit adver 
 tising. There were seven of us all told, 
 and I shall always believe it the best ag 
 gregation of newspaper talent ever gath 
 ered under one canvas in a town the size 
 of Opolis. 
 
 In order to avoid embarrassment on 
 Saturday nights, I made the Sun a coop 
 erative concern. I was to have the last 
 word in matters of policy, but the profits 
 of the enterprise were to be shared 
 equally. Whenever I get to thinking I
 
 The Opolis Daily Sun. 105 
 
 know nothing about business I recall the 
 masterly manner in which I evaded pay 
 day on the Opolis Daily Sun and am 
 reassured. 
 
 We started out with a shriek and a 
 hurrah. The first issue of the paper was 
 made on a Monday, and the city editor 
 was thrashed by an indignant citizen 
 within thirty minutes after the Tuesday 
 issue was on the street. I had trouble 
 with the owner of the theater on Thurs 
 day, and only escaped a fight by putting 
 up a strong bluff. The advertising man 
 ager was ordered out of the biggest store 
 in town Saturday because of a "hot" 
 story, incriminating the proprietor, un 
 loosed by the police reporter in an effort 
 to be funny. 
 
 The Sun sold like twenty-dollar bills 
 at reduced prices on the streets. Some 
 times we disposed of as many as 100 
 copies a day, but somehow not a great 
 deal of money came in at the gate. On 
 the first Saturday night there was $1.30
 
 106 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 in the cash drawer after the incidental 
 expenses had been paid, and after I had 
 divided it pro rata we all went out and 
 took a shave and a sack of smoking- 
 tobacco. 
 
 The Sun Publishing Company ran along 
 for a month with little annoyance from 
 creditors. Occasionally, on Saturday 
 nights, the dividend was forty or fifty 
 cents apiece and the company enjoyed 
 the luxury of a cigar. One week the 
 business manager insisted on getting a 
 shave, a haircut and a shampoo, and it 
 cut the profits down to ten cents apiece. 
 On another occasion the foreman, who 
 had, as was his wont, fallen in love, in 
 sisted on spending the entire week s earn 
 ings for carnations, and no dividend 
 could be declared. This caused some 
 hard feeling on the part of his fellow- 
 stockholders, and was really the begin 
 ning of the end. 
 
 At the end of the first month the ad 
 vertising collections were insufficient to
 
 The Opolis Daily Sun. 107 
 
 pay more than a small installment on 
 our combined hotel bills, and the land 
 lords began to give us the stony stare. 
 The Boniface at the Astor House had the 
 bad taste to remonstrate with the man 
 ager of circulation. "Hell!" said the 
 manager of circulation, who was a some 
 what profane man, "you ve got no kick 
 coming. You re only feeding two of us. 
 The autocrat over at the St. James is 
 keeping the coyotes from the door of the 
 editor, the business manager, and the 
 foreman. You re really not doing your 
 share." 
 
 By the middle of the second month the 
 cordiality of the people had not only con 
 gealed, but it had reached a thickness of 
 fully sixteen inches. The ice with which 
 the town encased itself against our ap 
 proach broke all records for that latitude. 
 Everything we ordered began to come 
 C. O. D., and our position at the ho 
 tels became absolutely untenable. So I 
 rented a suite of two rooms furnished
 
 108 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 with a couple of beds, three chairs, a 
 kerosene lamp and a combination stove. 
 The foreman s mother sent him $5 for a 
 birthday present and we bought a coffee 
 pot, a frying-pan and a miscellaneous as 
 sortment of tinware, and began doing our 
 own cooking. 
 
 I made arrangements for a week s 
 credit at a butcher-shop and a grocery 
 store and we got along fairly well, the 
 advertising man doing the cooking and 
 the balance of us taking turns at washing 
 the dishes, until the butcher and grocer 
 called our bluff the following Monday. 
 By that time everybody was "next." 
 Creditors began to multiply and harass 
 us. I went to and from the office through 
 alleys and by the way of unfrequented 
 streets in order to avoid meeting people 
 we owed. We lived literally from hand 
 to mouth. Frequently we had money 
 sufficient to buy baker s bread, butter, 
 and coffee. Occasionally, we had meat. 
 Sometimes we were down to baker s 
 bread and mighty little of that.
 
 The Opolis Daily Sun. 109 
 
 The greatest office expense was white 
 paper, and we bought and borrowed un 
 til the limit was reached. One of our 
 competitors had gotten out a rather 
 elaborate Christmas edition. He ran a 
 weekly publication and used what is 
 known in newspaper offices as a patent 
 inside. For his Christmas edition he had 
 ordered a larger supply of patent insides 
 than his circulation warranted, and the 
 superfluous Christmas stories and "Peace 
 and Good Will" poetry was piled in the 
 rear end of his office, one side blank. 
 The business manager, who had a good 
 head, deftly lifted the rear window of the 
 competing office one night and stole the 
 pile of patent insides. It gave us a bad 
 name in the town when the story came 
 out, but it deferred the obituary notice 
 of the Daily Sun several days. 
 
 We made luncheon one day on water 
 poured over the remains of the coffee 
 with which we had girded up our loins at 
 breakfast. "You ll have to do some-
 
 110 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 thing," I said to the business manager 
 that afternoon when the dinner hour be 
 gan to stare us in the face. "If this Dr. 
 Tanner business keeps up another day 
 we ll have to suspend." The foreman 
 had been growling all afternoon and 
 threatening to jump to "Chi," and there 
 was every indication of a general storm. 
 
 The business manager s name was 
 Grim. Poor fellow! He crossed the 
 dark river by the laudanum route a year 
 or two later because the girl he loved 
 could not care. Grim went out deject 
 edly. He came back just at dusk, an 
 hour or two later, and laid a quarter on 
 my desk. "I had to do it! I had to do 
 it!" he kept saying to himself as he 
 walked away. "Had to do what?" I 
 asked. "I robbed a little boy who was 
 going after meat," replied Grim with a 
 sob in his voice. 
 
 The end came suddenly the following 
 forenoon. Along about eleven o clock 
 the close-fisted miser from whom we
 
 The Op oli s Daily Sun. Ill 
 
 rented our apartments sent word that 
 we could neither occupy them nor re 
 move our personal effects until we paid 
 the rent. The bill was $6 : it might just 
 as well have been $6,000. "The jig is 
 up," I said to the Sun Publishing Com 
 pany when I read the miser s note. "I ll 
 go out and sell the Sun, or give it away." 
 Around the corner I met the idle eldest 
 offspring of the Episcopal rector. He 
 had been pestering me for a job as a re 
 porter, and tackled me again for the fifth 
 time in three days. "I ll sell you my 
 interest in the plant, the good-will and 
 the business for $10," said I. "If I can 
 borrow the money from mother, I ll take 
 it," he replied after a moment of becom 
 ing hesitation. The offspring came back 
 in a half -hour with a $10 bill and the 
 deal was closed. The members of the 
 Sun Publishing Company put on their 
 coats and went out to a quick-lunch 
 counter. The next morning the four re 
 maining members who had been able to
 
 112 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 successfully conceal themselves from the 
 brakeman during the long night, disen 
 tangled themselves from a car attached 
 to a fast freight in the Burlington yards, 
 Chicago, and the company dissolved.
 
 BROTHER BILL. 
 
 I am not very accommodating or oblig 
 ing, and as a result I am somewhat un 
 popular. A good many people say I am 
 riot only grouchy, but that I am also 
 mean and selfish. If I have those char 
 acteristics they may be attributed to my 
 brother, Bill. Bill is one of those whole- 
 souled, good-hearted fellows who is every 
 body s friend. When Bill was a boy and 
 went to Sunday school he never brought 
 fewer than four boys home to dinner with 
 him. Frequently he brought eight. The 
 result was that by the time Bill s guests 
 had satisfied their hunger there never 
 was any fried chicken or cherry pie left 
 for the members of the family. 
 
 Bill s habits did not change when he 
 grew up, and the house was always full 
 of company of his inviting. The guests 
 occupied the house and the family 
 camped around in the woodshed and the 
 
 (113)
 
 114 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 barn. When any of his friends needed 
 money he went out and borrowed it for 
 them. He was always paying interest on 
 two or three notes at the bank given for 
 money to help some friend out of a hole. 
 When one was going anywhere with Bill 
 the start had to be made the night be 
 fore, for Bill always had to stop and shake 
 hands with so many people that he in 
 variably missed the train. 
 
 Bill is a erackerjack in his line and 
 makes a good deal of money, but his next 
 month s salary is always carrying a 
 ninety-day mortgage. He married into 
 a large family in order that he might 
 have opportunity to entertain a lot of 
 relatives all the time. One night last 
 winter he met a lodge brother who flagged 
 him with the signal of distress. The 
 weather was cold, and Bill took him to 
 the shelter of his own vine and fig tree. 
 The weather continued inclement, and 
 upon his host s pressing invitation the 
 lodge brother remained two or three
 
 Brother Bill, 115 
 
 days. One morning Bill arose to feed 
 the furnace and discovered that his 
 guest had gone without the formality 
 of saying "good-by." Coincident with 
 his leave-taking Bill s overcoat and $40 
 which he had been carrying to pay the 
 rent disappeared. The same day Bill 
 had a notice from the bank calling his 
 attention to the fact that a casual ac 
 quaintance whose paper he had indorsed 
 for $300 had defaulted payment. 
 
 Bill s house is full of useless books, rugs, 
 antique clocks and other debris bought 
 because he is so polite and accommodat 
 ing that he hates to turn down the agents 
 who call on him. Bill s picture is in 
 every biographical record and "Promi 
 nent Men of the West" volume ever is 
 sued west of Denver. It isn t egotism on 
 his part, for he is really a very modest 
 fellow, but he is so kind and "house- 
 broke" that he hasn t the heart to turn 
 a canvasser down. 
 
 Old Bill will read this sketch and
 
 116 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 laugh. Then he will start down the 
 street, turning aside every few moments 
 to shake hands with somebody or to make 
 a little loan to some friend. When he 
 returns accompanied by a guest for din 
 ner he will urge his wife to write a letter 
 to some of her girl friends or some rela 
 tive extending an invitation to make 
 them a visit. 
 
 Bill is popular. If he ran for office he 
 could probably get every vote in his 
 town. But he will never have a dollar 
 so long as there is a chance to give it 
 away and his nose will always be on the 
 grindstone. I am not popular, but I 
 have seen so many instances of Bill s as- 
 sininitv that I don t mind it.
 
 HER FIRST REAL TRAGEDY. 
 
 The first of life s real tragedies has 
 come to Patty Stewart. For Patty has 
 lost forever the dearest illusion childhood 
 holds. 
 
 At school one day just before last 
 Christmastide a group of playmates, 
 older in years and wiser in material 
 things, took Santa Claus from Patty and 
 left her nothing. 
 
 Taking Santa Claus from a child is 
 theft complicated with extreme cruelty. 
 For the moment one might as well take 
 from the Christian his God. 
 
 Around the Santa Claus myth are 
 builded the most beautiful things in the 
 life of a child. The real sweetness and 
 light of this existence lie principally in 
 its illusions. 
 
 Reality is often harsh, and has, always, 
 acute angles and inharmonious grouping. 
 Illusion is as soft as the south-wind and 
 
 (117)
 
 118 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 as delicately tinted as the breath of 
 spring. 
 
 They say childhood is untroubled, but 
 the days that are to come will bring to 
 Patty Stewart no tragedy so keen as that 
 precipitated by the blundering tongue 
 which tore her faith in Santa Claus from 
 its moorings.
 
 THE PRINCE BUSINESS. 
 
 Nearly every unattached girl in this 
 town is looking for a Prince. Which is 
 all right. Nothing inferior to a Prince 
 in the matter of title is good enough for 
 any girl. 
 
 Where the unattached girl falls into 
 error is not in the matter of taste, but in 
 matter of geography. She believes the 
 only place she can meet a Prince is at the 
 seaside, in the mountains, or at the home 
 of a girl friend in some other town. 
 There is always too great a disposition to 
 overlook the members of the royal family 
 right here at home. The Princes are 
 distributed pretty equally, and one finds 
 them quite as plentiful in Leavenworth, 
 Des Moines or Peoria as they are at the 
 seaside or in the mountains. 
 
 The idea that Princes are restricted to 
 certain localities, or that the home-grown 
 sort is inferior to the imported variety, 
 
 (119)
 
 120 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 is error. No matter where she finds him, 
 the girl will discover, in time, that her 
 Prince smells of tobacco and is profane 
 when occasion warrants. She will find 
 that he knows the different brands of 
 intoxicants well enough to call them by 
 their first names, and that he changes his 
 hosiery reluctantly. And she will also 
 find that in the privacy of his apartments 
 he prefers an old pair of slippers and his 
 shirtsleeves to the royal robes. 
 
 If he doesn t, the chances are that he 
 isn t a Prince. 
 
 There is just as much idiocy, just as 
 many split infinitives, and just as much 
 that is reprehensible among the men who 
 frequent the drawing-rooms along Fifth 
 avenue as there is among those for whom 
 the shades in the front parlors in Topeka 
 are drawn on Sunday evenings. 
 
 No town or community has a copy 
 right on royal blood.
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOY. 
 
 I. 
 
 My friend the boy, who has been away, 
 is in love. He talks a great deal about 
 the Girl calls her a Queen, and wonders 
 what she can see in him. The gang was 
 "on," and when he showed up in the lo 
 cal room they began to josh him about 
 the Girl, but he said he couldn t talk 
 about her before a crowd. And the 
 gang, appreciating his delicacy, dropped 
 it. After dinner the boy and I drilled over 
 to the State House grounds and lopped 
 down under the trees. And then he told 
 me all about it. 
 
 She s a Baltimore girl, a junior in col 
 lege, and her folks live in one of the old- 
 fashioned houses that stand back from 
 the street. Once, when the torrent of 
 humanity leaped and swirled around a 
 corner, they met face to face, and then the 
 torrent separated and left them standing 
 
 (121)
 
 122 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 alone just he and she in all the wide, 
 wide world alone. The boy told me this 
 not in these words, for all this clatter 
 is mere figure of speech, but he told me 
 that although he felt quite unworthy of 
 her he hoped some day to have her with 
 him for all time. 
 
 fie told me more much more. How 
 his love had brought soft, exquisite col 
 ors into his life, and shaped his determi 
 nation and strengthened his manliness. 
 But this is not especially interesting 
 the mere story, I mean. I tell it only 
 because humanity likes to touch the hand 
 of a man who has found his great joy. 
 For when the torrent swirled and sep 
 arated and left them standing face to 
 face, the sweetest, finest, most comforting 
 thing the boy will ever know r came into 
 his life. 
 
 And if it lasts if the girl proves true, 
 and the boy doesn t forget -it isn t worth 
 while to worry about the boy any more. 
 The game may go against him, the wheel
 
 My Friend the Boy. 123 
 
 stop on the red when he plays the black, 
 but nothing will matter much. For he 
 has now all that is really worth striving 
 and fretting for. And if it goes away 
 there will come in its place a pain as bitter 
 as his joy was keen. And he will stand 
 alone groping for something he cannot 
 find, crying for something that will not 
 come, his mental faculties so numbed by 
 the pain that everything else will seem 
 shriveled and trivial. We may not all 
 find and keep this treasure. There are 
 blanks in this lottery of joy. If mine is 
 a blank I d like to stand close to the 
 boy this boy or some other boy who 
 has drawn a capital prize. 
 
 II. 
 
 My friend the boy is going back to 
 Baltimore to-day. Back to the old-fash 
 ioned house that stands away from the 
 street and to the Girl who is watching at 
 the window. To the boy it will be 
 farther to Washington and Baltimore by
 
 124 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 fast train than it used to be from Omaha 
 to Sutter s Mill by ox team. The Lake 
 Shore Limited will crawl along like the 
 last spring wagon in a funeral procession, 
 and the B. & O. Royal will make a land 
 terrapin look like a streak of chain light 
 ning. Between Chicago and New York 
 the hours will seem a day long ; between 
 New York and Baltimore every minute 
 will be an eternity. 
 
 The boy hasn t seen Her since June. 
 All summer and fall he worked away in 
 a stuffy little office in a Kansas tank 
 town, where the wind blew the naked 
 dirt in great clouds up and down the 
 main street and the smoke of smelters 
 clogged the atmosphere. Under the tin 
 roof above his head it was always hot and 
 dry or hot and sticky. Most of the peo 
 ple of the tank town were not his kind 
 and their diversions did not appeal to 
 him. But the boy didn t mind. For he 
 was looking forward to Her. All through 
 the long days of the summer and early
 
 My Friend the Boy. 125 
 
 fall Love sat smiling across his desk. It 
 caressed his forehead with cooling touch 
 as he sank to slumber, and it bade him a 
 cheery "good-morning" from his dresser 
 mirror when he tied his cravat next day. 
 This is what Bill, the police repor 
 ter, calls "using the tremolo stop." Bill 
 doesn t care much for the tremolo stop, 
 but I do. It is the sweetening of this life 
 the one essential flavoring of the things 
 that are. And because I have no Great 
 Joy of my own I am going to get up be 
 side the boy when he goes out this winter 
 to ride the air or bridle the clouds. For 
 
 " Of the world s great things but four there are, 
 Women and horses, love and war." 
 
 III. 
 
 My friend the boy is back from Balti 
 more, and he brings the best sort of news 
 about the girl who lives in the old-fash 
 ioned house that stands back from the 
 street. It seems that she has promised 
 to marry the boy, and for him there are
 
 126 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 roses blooming in the garden, the lilacs 
 are out in the front yard and the pan- 
 sies are peeping through the beds border 
 ing the path to the gate. 
 
 Down in a little town in Kansas the 
 boy and I slept together the other night, 
 and he told me the Whole Story. He 
 might have been talking yet, but the 
 traveling gentleman in No. 5 adjoining 
 kicked on the noise along about 4 o clock 
 in the morning, and we had to quit. The 
 traveling man told the porter confiden 
 tially that he hadn t had a wink of sleep 
 all night and it looked as though he wasn t 
 going to get any. 
 
 This is the first girl the boy ever loved, 
 and of course he made a mess of it. 
 There was, it seems, another "lobster" 
 hanging round, and the boy was on the 
 anxious seat. He was so anxious that 
 he botched his work during the day and 
 couldn t sleep at night. Finally, he went 
 over, determined to settle matters. He 
 couldn t get his courage up, and went
 
 My Friend the Boy. 127 
 
 home humiliated and dissatisfied. He 
 tried it again, with the same result. On 
 the third essay he blundered through it, 
 and found that his goal line had never 
 been in danger. 
 
 And now the boy is planning harder 
 than ever for the future, and he thinks 
 he can save about $500 this summer, 
 anyway. I hope the boy s dreams may 
 all come true. But I am eight years 
 older than he, and I know some things 
 he has not learned. I know he may wake 
 some morning to find grief sitting in a 
 chair by his bedside and trouble peering 
 over the footboard. Meanwhile here s 
 hoping hoping that fate will step so 
 lightly in his presence that he ll never 
 wake up.
 
 THE GIRL IN "GOOGLY-GOO." 
 
 The Girl sifted wearily into the res 
 taurant and sat down across the table 
 from the Man who was eating a midnight 
 lunch. The feather in her hat was 
 broken and awry, her hair was in dis 
 order, and her jacket was pitifully cheap 
 and coarse. There was a haggard, de 
 jected look on her face- a face that 
 might have played havoc with men s 
 hearts under different circumstances. The 
 Man recognized her : she had stood fourth 
 from the left lower entrance in the chorus 
 of the "Googly-Goo" company at the 
 theater that night. 
 
 Meanwhile, other members of the cho 
 rus had sifted as wearily in, and had sat 
 down to the various tables about the 
 room. They were typical of their kind, 
 which is to say that they were poorly 
 dressed and unattractive off the stage. 
 Some were talking loudly, but most of 
 
 (128)
 
 The Girl in Googly - Goo. " 129 
 
 them were quiet and unobtrusive. The 
 Man knew the kind and gave them little 
 heed, but there was something in the face 
 of the Girl opposite that attracted and 
 held his sympathy. 
 
 She was a little thing: she could not 
 have been more than nineteen or twenty, 
 and for all her cheap, tawdry clothes and 
 the slovenly hair there was about her the 
 indefinable touch which only good breed 
 ing can give. It may be that the Girl 
 recognized the sympathy in the Man s 
 face. It may be that the reserve which 
 dammed the flood-gates of her soul had 
 finally given away before the torrent of 
 her woe. At any rate, she looked across 
 the table and asked the man if he lived 
 in Topeka. It was not the place or oc 
 casion for a question of that sort, but it 
 did not suggest to the Man the thing it 
 might have suggested, and he answered 
 her kindly. 
 
 "What I want to know," continued 
 the Girl, "is, could an honest girl get a
 
 130 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 job in this town and earn her living? I 
 want to cut this out. I can t stand it 
 much longer. I ran away from my home 
 in Michigan last spring and joined a com 
 pany that played the town. I had hung 
 around the theater and met two or three 
 of the men, and I was crazy about the 
 stage. I had always been crazy about 
 it, for that matter. I could sing pretty 
 well and dance a little, and I had been 
 in a good many amateur entertainments. 
 The home papers always praised me a 
 good deal, and it spoiled me for anything 
 else. 
 
 "Well, I joined the company at a town 
 twenty miles away, and to this day my 
 people don t know what became of me. 
 The company kept going up to July in a 
 hand-to-mouth sort of way, and I man 
 aged to live, but it was awful. During 
 the summer I got an occasional engage 
 ment at one of the summer theaters, but 
 there were a lot of times I went hungry. 
 In the fall I caught on with Googly-
 
 The Girl in Googly - Goo. " 131 
 
 Goo, and it seems to me we ve played a 
 thousand one-night stands since. 
 
 "I get $15 a week. My board never 
 costs less than $7 ; sometimes it costs 
 $10. Laundry bills and incidentals eat 
 up most of the balance. I can t even 
 dress myself comfortably on what is left. 
 I spend my time between a cold, cheer 
 less room at a cheap hotel, the day coach 
 on the train, and the dirty dressing- 
 rooms of some third- or fourth-class the 
 ater. Between times I am cursed and 
 abused, and every man I meet seems to 
 regard me as lawful prey. I ve stayed 
 honest and decent, but I can t go back 
 home. It s a little town, where every 
 body knows everybody s business, and 
 the gossip about me would drive me rnad. 
 I simply can t face that, and I can t keep 
 this up. I d rather die than go on." 
 
 That s all there is to the story, but 
 there should be a lesson here for the girl 
 who is stagestruck. Incidentally, it may 
 be mentioned that the "Googly-Goo"
 
 132 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 company was "shy" one chorus girl when 
 it went on to Denver, and that up in a 
 little Michigan town there was one home 
 where Thanksgiving Day had a real mean 
 ing.
 
 A PILGRIMAGE INTO THE PAST. 
 
 One year I spent my two weeks off 
 differently. Mostly, when my loafing - 
 spell came round I had gone main-trav 
 eled roads. Sometimes I went to dawdle 
 in the sand at the shore. Again, I cut 
 deep into the north-woods, with no 
 thought other than of my appetite and 
 my fishing-tackle. Sometimes I followed 
 the August incursion to the cities, or paid 
 the price at lakeside or mountain resort. 
 
 But on that vacation the vacation I 
 spent differently- I went to follow for a 
 little while the long since effaced foot 
 steps of a Soldier Boy who crossed the 
 river at Shiloh, stood in the thinned 
 ranks at Stone River, double-quicked 
 across the field of Missionary Ridge, and 
 was a unit in the straggling blue line that 
 planted the flag on Lookout. 
 
 We who are under forty are callous to 
 the Boy in Blue. It is a far cry back to 
 
 (133)
 
 134 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 Lookout and Shiloh and Stone River. 
 To the generation born in the forty years 
 since the pride in it all is dimming, the 
 glory of it all is fading. I had grown 
 indifferent with the rest, and so I went 
 down to Lookout and Shiloh and Mis 
 sionary Ridge in memory of the Soldier 
 Boy who carried a musket through it all. 
 The birds twittered in the thickets, the 
 drowsy lull of the farm was about me, and 
 the soft wind of a September afternoon 
 fanned my cheek as I sat on a fallen tree 
 by the wayside and in fancy watched the 
 field of Shiloh grow red with blood again. 
 Standing on a stone on the brow of Look 
 out I followed the fortunes of the charge 
 across Missionary Ridge, and heard again 
 the rattle of musketry and the clank and 
 clash of bayonets in the fierce conflict 
 the blue and the gray had waged two 
 thousand feet beneath my seat. And 
 later in the day I walked up and down 
 the long, serried lines of headstones on 
 the little eminence in the valley, and
 
 A Pilgrimage into the Past. 135 
 
 looked out upon a landscape, peaceful 
 and quiet now and blackened by the 
 smoky finger of commerce, where fifty 
 thousand men, some in gray and some in 
 blue, had laid down their lives at their 
 country s call. 
 
 And then I knew why these things 
 were the Soldier Boy s pride and glory, 
 and why their light to him never dimmed 
 or faded. I understood, too, his last ex 
 pressed wish that he might go to his rest 
 under the white stone in the little country 
 churchyard with the flag of his country 
 wrapped about him. I hope he knows 
 of my tardy trip across the present and 
 into the past. I hope he knows, too, 
 that I came back with a deeper under 
 standing and a keener appreciation of the 
 faded coat of blue and the empty sleeve 
 swinging in the wind.
 
 THE TAKING DOWN OF HESTON. 
 
 This is a little story describing the man 
 ner in which Heston received what was 
 corning to him. It is not a thrilling 
 story, and it has no unusual angles ; but 
 because it happens to be true, and be 
 cause it points a fine, two-edged moral, 
 it is given here. 
 
 One night while Heston was sojourning 
 in a big town east of the Mississippi river, 
 Fate picked up the deck and dealt him a 
 Queen of Hearts. There wasn t any 
 game going on at the time and the deal 
 was a little irregular, but Heston and the 
 Queen made up their minds to start one 
 just to play the cards that had been dealt. 
 The lady picture-card in Heston s hand 
 was what the boys call a good looker. 
 She had big brown eyes, the willowy ef 
 fect in form, and the silken petticoat 
 rustle in her garments. Without sub 
 jecting this tale to unnecessary elonga- 
 
 (136)
 
 The Taking Down of Heston. 137 
 
 tion it may be stated that the game 
 opened that night was never closed for 
 three years. Sometimes it was operated 
 under the electric lights, sometimes in 
 the shadows of the front porch, and once 
 a year it was briefly interrupted to be 
 immediately resumed b}^ the shifty sands 
 and in the shade of the woody dells of the 
 Northern resorts. 
 
 The Queen came fully up to her ad 
 vance photographs. She was wonder 
 fully clever, sympathetic, coy enough to 
 satisfy and good fellow enough to please. 
 It was plain from the first hand that she 
 liked Heston immensely, and Heston re 
 ciprocated by falling sincerely in love with 
 her. Ahead of them the water was as 
 smooth as glass, and there was a spanking 
 breeze behind. She was of age, her folks 
 liked Heston anyway, and her girl friends 
 were undisguised in their admiration. 
 They got along perfectly, never quarreled, 
 and were as considerate of each other as 
 chance acquaintances at an afternoon
 
 138 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 reception. When Heston asked her to 
 marry him she didn t ask for time or spar 
 for wind. She just fell over into his arms. 
 And so their courtship drifted along in 
 idyllic fashion for three years. The 
 Queen was steadfastly true, and Heston, 
 considering his opportunities for being 
 otherwise, was reasonably square and 
 honest with her. 
 
 But about this time the thing began to 
 cloy a little on Heston. He liked a fight 
 ing game, and this one had been so easy 
 that it failed to satisfy his savage in 
 stinct. The Queen had never given him 
 any reason to be jealous. Everything he 
 was even suspected of wanting had been 
 handed him on a platter. Nobody had 
 objected to him ; nobody had knocked. 
 A pottering scientist couldn t have found 
 an obstacle in Heston s way with the aid 
 of a microscope. He knew that when it 
 came to comparisons he was dirt under 
 the Queen s feet. But things had shaped 
 themselves so that all the zest of the chase
 
 The Taking Down of Heston. 139 
 
 had been eliminated, and he liked best 
 that for which he had to fight. 
 
 Untoward events helped widen the 
 chasm Heston was digging between him 
 self and Her Gracious Majesty. He had 
 attended to his employer s business so 
 industriously and with such intelligent 
 zeal that he found himself out of a job, 
 and came West to look for a new one. 
 With the new job he found new faces, 
 and in a month or two there was a new 
 photograph on his dresser. The Queen 
 wrote frequent bright, gay and gossipy 
 letters, which Heston occasionally read 
 and infrequently replied to briefly. Af 
 ter a while the Queen, who was smart, 
 even if she wasn t many-sided in her 
 knowledge of men, saw how things were 
 going. And so one day Heston took a 
 package out of the postoffice containing 
 his ring and a dignified, but pathetic 
 little note breaking the engagement. 
 
 There were no reproaches, no accusa 
 tions. The note was even jocular in a
 
 140 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 way. But beneath its surface there was 
 visible a woman s sorrow. The note 
 bothered Heston a little, not that he 
 cared much about the Queen. He was 
 too busy with some Princesses and a few 
 Houris and Seraphs. But he knew he d 
 been a dog, and rather regretted it. He 
 wrote the Queen a nice letter, which he 
 didn t at all feel, and the incident prac 
 tically closed. Once in a while for 
 months after, he exchanged letters with 
 her, but there was no recurrence of the 
 old symptoms, and after a while even the 
 occasional letters ceased. 
 
 That was two or three years ago. 
 Meanwhile things had not gone so well 
 with Heston. He had his troubles. The 
 game broke badly for him, and the Prin 
 cesses, Houris and Seraphs were not there 
 with the comfort and sympathy. So it 
 is not to be wondered that his heart 
 turned instinctively to the Queen. He 
 remembered her wonderful cleverness, her 
 never-failing powers of entertainment,
 
 The Taking Down of He ston. 141 
 
 and above all, her kindly sympathy. 
 And in time his desire to see her over 
 came his scruples as to what her own at 
 titude in the matter might be. He had 
 heard nothing from her for a couple of 
 years, and wasn t even sure she lived at 
 the old place. But without telling her 
 anything about it, he took a layoff and 
 made the trip East to see her. 
 
 The maid w r ho went upstairs said the 
 Queen would be dow r n in a minute. Pres 
 ently she came rustling into the recep 
 tion room, her face aglow and a smile 
 of welcome in her eyes. They talked a 
 w r hile in the old, informal, gossipy way 
 and the Queen planned a little dinner for 
 the following evening. Her frank cor 
 diality and apparent pleasure at the meet 
 ing disarmed Heston of any suspicion 
 that his hand might be worthless. So 
 he invited her to go to the theater that 
 evening. She accepted, and as Heston 
 wasn t sure he could get tickets for the 
 performance he made an appointment to
 
 142 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 come back in an hour or two and let 
 her know. When he got back to the 
 house the reception room had clouded up 
 and was beginning to rain. There was 
 another man, and the man was cross and 
 discourteous. The Queen tried to keep 
 the conversation going, but things grew 
 so chilly that Heston left after telling her 
 he had secured the tickets. 
 
 That night on the way to the theater 
 she was even gayer and more cordial and 
 friendly than she had been in the after 
 noon. 
 
 "And why," said Heston, "are you so 
 extraordinarily nice to me tonight ? What 
 have I done to deserve these selections 
 from the conservatory? 
 
 "Well," said the Queen, and there was 
 the light of triumph in her eye, "I m 
 being nice to you because I do not expect 
 to see you again." She let it soak in for a 
 couple of blocks, and then she added: "I 
 am going to marry Mr. Farrell this win 
 ter."
 
 WHEN A MAN IS WORTHLESS. 
 
 Generally speaking, when a man is 
 worthless it is charged up to whisky, 
 poker, cigarettes, or blondined women. 
 It is my observation that the front- 
 parlor habit spoils more young men than 
 all four other vices mentioned. A young 
 man with girl on the brain is more thor 
 oughly worthless than the young man 
 who drinks. The girl habit takes more 
 time than poker and costs more money. 
 Left to itself, the blondined woman vice 
 is its own cure. But once the front-par 
 lor habit gets its hooks into a man he 
 never shakes it off until he marries or is 
 barred by age. The "girl business" 
 causes him to neglect his work, sends his 
 mind "wool-gathering" and paralyzes his 
 usefulness. 
 
 I am not condemning the girl. Every 
 thing in this world worth a man s best 
 endeavor has a woman in it. Her in- 
 
 (143)
 
 144 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 fluence for good cannot be overestimated. 
 The trouble is that not one young man in 
 ten can do the front-parlor circuit in 
 moderation. I do not amount to any 
 thing, principally, I think, because I 
 have always had "girlitis." For fif 
 teen years my mind has been on the front 
 parlor instead of on my work. I have 
 drunk whisky in moderation, and have a 
 passing acquaintance with poker. I have 
 had a working knowledge of all the other 
 vices. But none of them ever took a 
 job away from me or prevented promo 
 tion and a raise in salary at the end of the 
 year. 
 
 I never pottered over my work during 
 the day or watched the clock for the last 
 hour before quitting-time because of the 
 booze I expected to drink that night or 
 the poker game I expected to sit into. 
 But I have given many a piece of impor 
 tant work a lick and a promise I ve 
 watched the minute-hand crawl over 
 many an hour made weary by the thought
 
 When a Man is Worthless. 145 
 
 that a slim young thing in a fluffy gown 
 was waiting in the front parlor for me. I 
 never expect to get over the habit. Truth 
 to tell, I don t want to. The rustle of a 
 woman s skirts is the finest music I know. 
 But reform in this country always begins 
 at the wrong end. The reformers should 
 give whisky a rest and tackle "girlitis." 
 That s the vice we re really suffering 
 from.
 
 ON LICKING NICK HARTLEY. 
 
 I think the greatest disappointment of 
 my life was the fact that I was never 
 able to lick Nick Hartley. I had plenty 
 of opportunities, but Nick was so much 
 bigger and stronger than I that I was 
 always afraid to take the chance. Nick 
 was a fat, husky lad with a bulldog jaw, 
 who lived in the Meeker neighborhood. 
 He was three or four years my senior, 
 and I don t suppose there ever was a time 
 in his life when he could not have taken 
 me down and tied me hand and foot. He 
 used to keep me in a state of perpetual 
 terror. I don t remember that he ever 
 abused me specifically, but he knew I 
 was afraid of him and he nagged me and 
 bullied me whenever he had a chance. 
 
 It got so that whenever Nick and I 
 were coincident at a "literary," spelling 
 school, or other neighborhood entertain 
 ment, I promptly hid out. He had me 
 
 (146)
 
 On Licking Nick Hartley. 147 
 
 completely "buffaloed." I used to put 
 in hours nursing my plan of revenge. I 
 figured that I would, in course of time, 
 catch up with him in the matter of phys 
 ical development, and when that time 
 came I proposed to get him into a big 
 crowd and punch his head off. I had the 
 whole thing systematized, even to the 
 phraseology in which I expected to call 
 him to an accounting. And when I had 
 worked out the preliminary plans I would 
 sit and gloat over the discomfiture which 
 would possess the hated Hartley when I 
 should lick the pea-green stuffing out of 
 him and walk majestically from the field 
 leaving him to the pity of his friends and 
 the jeers of mine. 
 
 But I never caught up with Nick. He 
 always held the "edge" on me in the 
 matter of muscle, and I knew intuitively 
 that I should get well thumped if I tried 
 for revenge. Finally our ways separated 
 and I lost track of him, but my failure 
 to put the "fixin s" on him has always
 
 148 At the Grass Roots. 
 
 been a source of keen disappointment to 
 me. I have an idea that Nick developed 
 into a fair, useful and industrious citizen, 
 and that he is now a respected member 
 of his community. But if he is around 
 anywhere handy I wish he d come up 
 some day and let me take two or three 
 pokes at his jaw. I couldn t hurt him 
 much, and it would be a great accommo 
 dation to me.
 
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