5 OWfl COUNTRY 
 
 MAC 
 

 
 ;^c ^^ 
 
 -" 
 
IN SUNFLOWER LAND. 
 
I 
 
 N SUNFLOWER LAND 
 
 STORIES OF GOD S OWN 
 COUNTRY BY ROSWELL 
 MARTIN FIELD 
 
 F. J. SCHULTE & COMPANY 
 CHICAGO . . MDCCCXCII 
 
Copyright, 1892, 
 BY FRANCIS J. SCUFLTK. 
 
 ALL RHtHTS KESKHVKP. 
 
S 
 
 To MY WIFE. 
 
 JM713378 
 
tUljcit tl)c Book <ontam0. 
 
 THE OLD CRANK - 
 WHAT BROKE UP THE LITERARY - 
 
 HE PLAYED WITH THOMAS - - 53 
 
 TUBES OF KANSAS 67 
 
 How THE LORD REMEMBERED CURLY - 81 
 
 THE INVOLUNTARY MARRIAGE - 97 
 
 COLONEL BOLLINGER - * 109 
 
 THE DEAF EAR 12 5 
 
 THE CONFESSION OF A CRIME - - 143 
 
 THE OLD MAJOR S STORY - 163 
 
 SWEETHEART 1~~ 
 
 THE POLITICAL WANDERINGS OF JOSEPH MACON 19. ? 
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION - 207 
 
 THAT AWFUL Miss BOULDER 227 
 
 THE LUCK OF SILAS SCOTT - 247 
 
Qld 
 
THE OLD CRANK. 
 
 WESTWARD from the Mississippi, between the 
 thirty-sixth and fortieth parallels of latitude, in 
 the very heart of the greatest nation of the earth, 
 lie two empires. Not empires, indeed, in the com 
 mon significance of man s imperial sway, with the 
 gay gildings and trappings of the court, and the 
 autocratic rule of royalty, but empires of nature, 
 glorious in the results of a few brief years of 
 experiment, more glorious in the incalculable possi 
 bilities of development awaiting the homeseeker. 
 Wherever the traveler goes in these great empires, 
 in wagon, boat or railway car, he sees the monarch 
 of the realm, turn where he may. Far to the north 
 and east, on through the south and west, this jolly 
 monarch keeps at the side of the flying train, to the 
 end of his dominions, where the roads begin to 
 lead to the clouds and the cool air rushes down 
 from the mountains. No traveler asks who this 
 jolly monarch is. No man forgets his allegiance 
 to powerful, affluent, smiling old King Corn. 
 
 If Corn is king, then Sunflower is the queen, for 
 hand in hand they go over the wide rolling prairies 
 in their dress of golden yellow, the one typifying 
 
10 
 
 the spirit of industry, the other content with its 
 lofty bearing and its regal beauty. A worthy 
 queen is the stately Sunflower to old King Corn. 
 
 And, in the main, very happy and contented are 
 the favored subjects of this prosperous monarch. 
 For twenty-five, fifty and seventy years of experi 
 ence have shown them that he is steady and reli 
 able, faithful to those who call upon him, and 
 never failing those who cultivate him. So these 
 subjects, with such deviation as national and 
 political exigency has prescribed, have gone their 
 ways, content with present abundance and careless 
 of outside comment ; have lived their lives in their 
 own manner, sung their songs, and cherished their 
 traditions until modern progress came to the fail- 
 dominion and knocked at the gate; That was the 
 beginning of the new Missouri and the new 
 Kansas. Whether it destroyed the charm of the 
 older life, or by its benefits atoned for the inva 
 sion, they may say who will. But is it not true 
 that the literature, the poetry, the romance of a 
 country turns to humanity in its simple, original 
 type, and finds its material where the rushing 
 spirit of the century has produced the least efface- 
 ment ? 
 
 A man who has traveled much through this 
 land of King Corn, and whose business has brought 
 him into close contact with the inner life of the 
 people, once waggishly remarked that Missouri 
 
The Old Crank. 11 
 
 and Kansas are inhabited by two classes of human 
 beings, Missourians and Kansans. It might have 
 been replied, with Horatio, that " there needs no 
 ghost come from the grave to tell us this," but the 
 jocose gentleman spoke with a deeper significance 
 than the mere words might convey. The fact that 
 underlies the statement, and the fact that im 
 pressed itself upon him, is that the Missourian 
 and the Kansan, each in his way, have far more 
 than the ordinary amount of State pride. The 
 Missourian is unaggressive, quiet, but not a whit 
 less proud than the Kansan. He knows perfectly 
 well the ridicule that has been heaped upon his 
 State. He has heard all the songs, all the railroad 
 and circus jokes at the expense of the "Pikers," 
 and, for that matter, he repeats them with a good 
 deal of relish. For he realizes the remarkable re 
 sources of his State, its rank in the Union, its 
 illimitable possibilities, its steady and sure growth, 
 and its exemption from the afflictions that have 
 disturbed other less favored commonwealths. He 
 knows that the " Piker " is rapidly passing away, 
 and that, in a few years, " Joe Bowers " will be a 
 myth, and his descendants will repudiate him. 
 Perhaps, even now, the Missourian, as he shrugs 
 his shoulders at the last joke perpetrated by the 
 untraveled Eastern man, thinks to himself that 
 the two jocular bears on the State seal might be 
 
12 TJte Old Crank. 
 
 credited with the appropriate remark, "He laughs 
 best who laughs last. " 
 
 The Kansan is a natural fighter. His State 
 had its baptism in blood, and its children have 
 grown up in the atmosphere of battle. It is 
 true of humanity that we always think the most 
 of those things that have cost us the greatest 
 trouble. It is possible that a tendency to exag 
 geration springs from this same cause. The old- 
 time Kansan is attached to the State he fought 
 for and bled for. There is sincerity even in his 
 exaggeration, and drought, hot winds and grass 
 hoppers, one after the other, cannot silence his 
 tongue or shake his conviction that he lives in 
 God s own country and in the particular locality 
 that the Creator would select for his terrestrial 
 residence. Ko reasoning, no logic can confound 
 the Kansan. Figuratively speaking, you may 
 knock him down, but you cannot knock him out. 
 As an instance in point, it is related that one day, 
 after a seemingly endless stretch of the most hor 
 rible weather, the sun came out. The air was soft 
 and balmy, the sky took on the deep summer blue, 
 and all the conditions were as perfect as the most 
 exacting could demand. The Kansas man was 
 equal to the occasion, and began to descant on the 
 beauties of the Kansas climate. "Now, this," he 
 said, "is a typical Kansas day." 
 
 "But how about yesterday, and the day before, 
 
The Old Crank. 1:5 
 
 and the day before that, aiid last week, and the 
 week before ?" asked the stranger within the gates. 
 
 "Oh," answered the Kansan, perfectly una 
 bashed, "that is the kind of - - weather we used 
 to have back in Indiana." 
 
 What can be said to an exuberance, a loyalty 
 and a confidence like that ? Why can -the world 
 wonder that a State peopled by such enthusiasts, 
 and advertised with such devotion and pride, has 
 grown beyond the limit of precedent. 
 
 Every school history of the present day tells 
 under what stormy and peculiar conditions Kansas 
 began to shape itself forty years ago. From the 
 outset it was a Mecca for the eccentric people now 
 commonly known as cranks, and from that day to 
 this not an ism has presented itself to the sister 
 hood of States that Kansas has not felt its full 
 force. How far these strange people have left 
 their impress on the State, and to what extent they 
 have bequeathed to their descendants an inherit 
 ance of whims and fads and fleeting popular fan 
 cies, let those answer who can. This tale has only 
 to do with the result of a certain chain of circum 
 stances, the product of peculiar conditions. De 
 pend upon it the hero will stand on his record 
 and consent to be judged at the final day by his 
 merits. 
 
 The people who knew him, and had looked him 
 over in all his important bearings and ramifica- 
 
14 TJie Old ( rani . 
 
 tions, agreed that he was just a plain, old-fash 
 ioned, evcry-day Kansas crank. 
 
 From this it must not be inferred that every 
 body who happens to live in Kansas is a crank, 
 and it is not to be contended that everybody who 
 happens to be a crank lives in Kansas. In fact, 
 it is not altogether assured that the Kansas crank 
 is more dangerous or uncomfortable that the Mas 
 sachusetts crank, or the Mississippi crank, the 
 crank who infests the prairies of Illinois, or the 
 crank who lives in the sage-brush and alkali regions 
 of Nevada. There may be more of him, his ideas 
 may be a little more generally distributed, and he 
 may be more interesting as a panorama of eccen 
 tricities, but doubtless he is a very lovable and 
 amusing person, is this Kansas crank, when you 
 do not chance to rub up against his pet theories 
 and regulations of life. 
 
 It does not follow that the old Kansas crank was 
 born a crank. In all probability he passed a mod 
 erately happy and uneventful childhood in Ohio 
 or Indiana, and came to Kansas in the fifties 
 suppose we say 57. Those were wild times on 
 the border, and it is worth the trouble and the 
 money to entice an old crank across the prohibi 
 tion line, and fill him full of good red liquor to 
 loosen his tongue, that he may "shoulder his 
 crutch" and talk about the past ; how he "fit with 
 old John," and how many Democrats he sent to 
 
The Old Crank. 15 
 
 the judgment bar. All these things are peculiar 
 to the old crank, but they concern us not at this 
 particular point. 
 
 When the war broke out the crank started to the 
 front. He was not much of a crank in 1861, but 
 he was a Union man and a fighter from the top of 
 his bristling hair to the soles of his heavy boots, 
 and the crankier he became the harder he fought, 
 which may be explained on the simple principles 
 of indigestion. He was not one of your sixty or 
 ninety-day fighters. He enlisted for the war, took 
 in every important skirmish that came his way, 
 and went with Sherman to the sea. There is a story 
 to the effect that when he reached the sea the old 
 crank was consumed with regret, and would fain 
 have marched the entire distance back on the 
 same gentle and philanthropic mission. 
 
 At the close of the war he returned to Kansas, 
 and, incident to a peaceful agricultural life, was 
 elected to the legislature on an anti-monopoly 
 platform. No man that is, no Kansan can 
 be said to have achieved a modicum of worldly dis 
 tinction and delight until he has been elected to 
 the legislature. The crank was true to his prin 
 ciples : he was chosen as an anti-monopolist, and he 
 walked to Topeka. That was the discharge of the 
 first public duty of the crank. 
 
 One day the crank was in Emporia. He was 
 getting along in years, and his lot was lonely. 
 
1G The Old Crank. 
 
 Political honor had not crowded upon him, and he 
 yearned, or thought he yearned, for the rest and 
 quiet of domestic life. As chance would have it, 
 or, rather, as fate invariably directs it in this modest 
 town of Emporia, he was persuaded to attend a 
 " social " at the State normal school. Now there are 
 various kinds of amusement in this carnal world, 
 but the decision is, from the examination of such 
 data as can be collected, that a " normal social " is, 
 of all diversions, the most unoffending and innocu 
 ous. It is related of a certain eminent Methodist 
 divine, who is now with John Wesley in the man 
 sions, that, gazing upon the deep solemnity of one 
 of these "socials," he paraphrased Scripture in 
 saying : " Behold festivities indeed in which there 
 is no guile." 
 
 As the crank entered upon the scene of splendor 
 the grand march was in progress, and the happy- 
 company, two by two, paraded the hall, singing the 
 Kansas national hymn: "John Brown s body lies 
 a-mouid rin in the grave." The heart of the 
 crank was stirred. The old war spirit came back, 
 and in the "Glory, glory, hallelujah," he let out 
 his voice with a boom that shook the rafters. 
 And the crank was further attracted by the fine 
 figure of a woman who seemed to be one of the 
 leading spirits of the entertainment. She was, per 
 haps, thirty years of age, tall, willowy, sharp-feat 
 ured, with a high forehead, and the unmistakable 
 
The Old Crank. 17 
 
 air of a school-ma am. Her attire was severely 
 chaste. She was dressed in dove-colored alpaca, 
 high-fitting at the neck, with plain Avalst and full 
 skirt. Her only ornaments were a pair of mussel- 
 shell ear-rings, and a striking cameo pin at her 
 throat. In her hair, which fell over her temples 
 and curved down and gracefully behind her ears, 
 she had placed a modest wild verbena with shoe 
 string foliage. 
 
 In the opinion of the crank to see her was to 
 love her. To her mind, there never was a more 
 striking illustration of a proper man. Their court 
 ship was brief and fervent. The lady, with the 
 austere simplicity of advanced maidenhood, re 
 hearsed the minute details of her arduous life, and 
 the crank went over and over again the great and 
 irrepressible conflict of the rebellion, wherein he 
 had played a bloody and conspicuous part. And 
 the bride elect looked on her hero with kindling 
 eyes, and, perchance, wished, with Desdemona, 
 that "heaven had made her such a man." And 
 so, in the fall, when the golden tint was on the 
 Kansas forests, they were married, and extended 
 their bridal tour to the State Fair at Topeka, 
 where, hand in hand, "they looked at the fat stock, 
 and carefully noted the agricultural products and 
 the latest dairy improvements. 
 
 Well, the old crank and his wife went back to the 
 farm, and a pretty middling sort of farm it was, 
 
18 The Old Crank. 
 
 with its acres of grain, its pleasant orchard and 
 the little brown frame house near the road. This 
 house was originally disposed to be whitish, but 
 the old crank slapped on a coat of brown paint ; 
 something, he said, to be a perpetual reminder of 
 old John. It was plainly furnished, it is true, 
 but peace and contentment abode therein, save 
 when the old crank went on a rural "high," 
 which he occasionally did in those unregenerate 
 days. And the school-ma am, out of the prompt 
 ings of an artistic nature, procured a Ilamlin cab 
 inet organ, from which, after much internal remon 
 strance and apparently piteous protest, she evolved 
 "The Storm," and "Lincoln s Funeral March," 
 and various gems from a collection of war songs, 
 which besought the boys to " rally round the flag" 
 and to "hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree," 
 with reminiscences of coming home to die, dear 
 mother, and of sitting in a prison cell, and of 
 " marchin through Georgy. " And when the neigh 
 bors came in and began to air their accomplish 
 ments, the old crank would turn to the good wife 
 and say : " Marthy, touch us up Gen ral Persifer 
 F. Smith s march." And at the conclusion of 
 this spirited number he would look at the humili 
 ated braggarts with a quiet gleam in his eye, as 
 one who would say: "What do you think o 
 that ? " 
 And they had a little library, too. But the old 
 
The Old Crank. 19 
 
 crank "allowed" he didn t go much on cheap, 
 popular literature,, while he could get the Kansas 
 agricultural reports, with an occasional invoice of 
 Congressional Records. Wilder s Annals lay 
 conspicuously on the table, and a very well-thumbed 
 and dirty page was that which announced the old 
 crank s election to the legislature. And there 
 were also lives of famous Union generals, and the 
 Kansas herd-book, and later on the great campaign 
 record of Elaine and Logan. And there were 
 certain treatises of a spiritual nature from a Wes- 
 leyan standpoint, for, as was the custom of the 
 country, the old crank was a stanch Methodist, a 
 class-leader and an exhorter, and, when engaged in 
 fervent spiritual work, his voice could be heard 
 over the bending corn a third of a mile away, 
 heaving wrath and dispensing salvation. 
 
 As time went on, the good wife encouraged the 
 old crank to dabble a little in pictures and decora 
 tive art. Their first venture was a popular 
 chromo of old Osawatomie. To this was added a 
 stirring picture of General Grant erecting a log- 
 cabin. Then followed a framed certificate of life 
 membership in the Bible society; and then, in 
 quick succession, a series of religious scenes and 
 devotional allegories : John Wesley s Death-bed, the 
 three Christian Graces, and Faith clinging to the 
 cross. And one day the good wife brought home 
 "Fruits and Flowers," which she had acquired at 
 
20 The Old Crank. 
 
 an auction, and the gallery was pronounced com 
 plete. But in her deft feminine way she went 
 methodically about further to beautify the home ; 
 and when the old crank sent out the parlor furni 
 ture, tastefully upholstered with horse hair, she 
 worked tidies crocheted in wondrous tints of yel 
 low and green ; and one merry Christmas morn 
 the old crank rolled out of bed to stare at " God 
 Bless Our Home 1 delicately wrought in crewel. 
 Beautiful wax flowers carefully covered with a 
 glass globe rested on a marble- top table, and a 
 dish of luscious wax fruits looked down from the 
 mantel. 
 
 To those who gained the full confidence of the 
 old crank he showed his secret treasures, his pre 
 cious relics of old John. There was the deadly pike 
 with which John Brown went forth to battle for 
 the Lord, and there was the scarf or tippet which 
 he had dropped in a sudden flight. And there 
 were twenty other mementoes, each with its appro 
 priate story. But last, and most precious of all, 
 was a hideous human skull, taken from the loath 
 some remains of a Plattc County Democrat, whom 
 old John had cut off in the flower of his iniquity. 
 And the old crank would roll that skull about in 
 his great horny hands and cry : " His enemies shall 
 lick the dust ; his name shall endure forever !" 
 
 The old crank was a Granger. It came right 
 along in line with his principles. And very con- 
 
The Old CranL 21 
 
 sistont he was, and little found its way into the 
 premises that did not come straight from the 
 Grange store. And he knew a thing about labor- 
 saving machinery, and experimented with wind 
 mills and rakes and harrows and pumps and clothes- 
 wringers, and devices for setting hens, and ingen 
 ious contrivances for destroying potato-bugs, while 
 little by little they accumulated until they occu 
 pied a separate shed. And when the grasshoppers 
 came and made a clean sweep of vegetation, the 
 old crank went out to gaze at the ruin, and he 
 turned and looked at the shed, and said, ruefully : 
 "Marthy, we ve got them darned things yet. 
 Even the "hoppers wouldn t touch em." 
 
 The Greenback wave swept over the land, and 
 the old crank was the first to send in his allegiance. 
 Mighty were the speeches he made at the local 
 political gatherings, and powerful and irrefutable 
 were his arguments, in the opinion of his admir 
 ing neighbors. And in the councils of the Grand 
 Army of the Republic he was the acknowledged 
 chief, and no camp-fire blazed without his presence, 
 and not a pot of beans was cooked that did not feel 
 his practiced touch. 
 
 But if there was one subject to which the old 
 crank s soul went unrestrainedly out, it was pen 
 sions. He believed in pensions, for he enjoyed one 
 himself. He had proved beyond cavil that he had 
 lost two-seventeenths of one eye. They gave him 
 
22 The Old drank. 
 
 8 a month. Then he found that he \vas minus 
 three-eighths of the lobe of a lung. They made it 
 $12. Then he discovered that he was subject to 
 four-elevenths of dysentery. They raised it to $20. 
 Then he stumbled across rheumatism ; then his 
 hearing became impaired, the result of the burst 
 ing of a shell at Corinth,, and at the time of his 
 death he was engaged in proving that he was 
 the victim of chronic catarrh contracted in the 
 Wilderness. 
 
 Throughout the State of Kansas there was no 
 more ardent Prohibitionist (in theory) than the 
 old crank. He believed in prohibition because it- 
 was "suthin new and progressive/ and because 
 the Democrats didn t believe in it. The old crank 
 hated a Democrat with all the fervor of his strong 
 nature. He hated Missouri because it was gov 
 erned by the Democratic party. "When he went 
 "back east," as he occasionally did, he pulled down 
 the shutters of his window in the car at Kansas 
 City, and neither stirred out nor looked out until 
 the Illinois line was reached. And once, when the 
 train was delayed twelve hours by a wreck, he 
 refused to leave the car to procure refreshment, 
 for, as he subsequently explained to his constit 
 uents, he "didn t believe in encouragin rebel 
 institutions." 
 
 Capital punishment was another phase of human 
 industry in which the old crank did not believe. 
 
The Old Crank. 23 
 
 That is, he did not believe in official executions. 
 But when a couple of frisky fellows made too free 
 with the horses of his immediate neighborhood, 
 the old crank turned out with the boys and hanged 
 them to a cottonwood, explaining that he had 
 every reason to believe "they re Democrats, any 
 how." And female suffrage was another of his 
 hobbies. He registered every woman on the place, 
 and on the morning of election he gathered them 
 together and said : " To register and vote is the 
 sacred duty of every man and woman in Kansas, 
 free, glorious Kansas. So we ll now go up and 
 vote for old Bill for mayor." And they did. The 
 old crank saw that they did. 
 
 In a national election the old crank s fidelity to 
 the Republican party never waned. Crank though 
 he was, there was no mugwumpishness mixed with 
 his politics. He was red-hot for the nominee every 
 time. When Blaine was nominated the old crank 
 went stark, staring mad. He organized a Blaine 
 club. He went to all the rallies. He made war 
 speeches. He paraded with the boys and spilled 
 coal oil down his back with nightly regularity. 
 In short, he went in to save the country. But 
 when the news came that Blaine was defeated it 
 nearly broke the old crank s heart. "Marthy," 
 he said, " I ve seen the hoppers come an nigh eat 
 us out o house an home. I ve fought the drought 
 an potato-bugs. I ve been down with the malarv, 
 
^4 The Old Crank. 
 
 an felt hard times press on us, an I ve uercr com 
 plained. But now I cry out with Job: The earth 
 is given into the hand of the wicked: he covereth 
 the faces of the judges thereof. Oh, that I had 
 given up the ghost and no eye had seen me. " 
 
 And on the day of Cleveland s inauguration the 
 old crank dressed up in his blue uniform, and took 
 down his army musket, and went into the parlor, 
 and sat under the picture of old John, and told 
 Martha to call him " when the boys march by on 
 their way to the front." And the good wife 
 hustled the children off to school, and told the 
 neighbors not to mind him, for the old man was 
 getting sort of childish. 
 
 Not many weeks thereafter the summons came. 
 
 The old crank was taken down with bronchitis 
 
 true to his principles he called it brown-chitis 
 
 serious complications followed, and it was evident 
 that the end was near. It was a glorious June day 
 in Kansas, and a June day in Kansas is one of 
 the glories of this fleeting life. The old crank 
 lay on the bed where he had rested for twenty 
 years. His faithful wife sat by and held his hand, 
 and the pious Methodist parson whispered words 
 of encouragement. A light sparkled in the old 
 crank s eye. Did he catch that glimpse of the 
 celestial beauties which is said to be granted to the 
 departing faithful ? 
 
The Old Crank. 25 
 
 "Is everything bright aiul beautiful, James ?" 
 said the good wife. 
 
 "Tollable," replied the dying Christian, with a 
 faint suggestion of disappointment in his tone, 
 "not as bright as sunny Kansas, but tollable." 
 
 Then the old crank sat up in bed. " I see him, 
 Marthy," he cried, "I see him. I d know him 
 among a million. It s old John, just as we ve 
 seen him in the pictur in the Historical Society 
 rooms at Topeky, with a halo of glory around his 
 head an a lot o little nigger children implorin his 
 blessin . He s standin at the pearly gates, an 
 seems to be giviir gen ral directions, sort o passin 
 on the papers of candidates. An I see lots o Kan- 
 sans climbin up the golden stairs, an imps o 
 darkness dartin out to worry an molest em. I 
 know em. They re Democrats." 
 
 "Ad astra per aspera," said the minister, 
 solemnly. 
 
 "Amen," replied the weeping wife. 
 
 "And I think old John knows me," cried the old 
 crank, exultingly, "for he has said somethin to 
 the sentry, an now he smiles an stretches out his 
 arms, an the Democrats have fled away. Sing me 
 one o the old war songs, Marthy, Tramp, tramp, 
 tramp. " 
 
 The good wife, her voice broken by her tears, 
 hummed the familiar refrain, and the old crank 
 fell back upon the bed. 
 
26 The Old Crank. 
 
 "Tell the boys," he whispered, "that I ve seen 
 him. I ve seen old John. His body lies a- 
 mould rin in the grave, but his soul goes marchin 
 on/ " 
 
 The old crank s lamp went out. 
 
WHAT BROKE UP THE LITERARY. 
 
 No doubt existed in the minds of the community 
 that Pikeville had a good deal to be proud of. For 
 was it not recognized as one of the oldest and most 
 eminently respectable town^ in the fine old com 
 monwealth of Missouri, enjoying," as the mayor 
 said in his welcoming address to a visiting delega 
 tion of Boston capitalists, "all the culture and 
 refinement of a long-established Southern aristoc 
 racy, quickened and vitalized by Eastern immigra 
 tion "? Pikeville "pointed with pride " to those 
 splendid old families, the Camdens, the Crawfords, 
 the Dallases, the Lawrences and the Mercers, who, 
 in turn, " viewed with alarm " the inroads of a 
 vulgar "boom," which, however, had left Pikeville 
 the center of a prosperous railway system and with 
 the advantages and improvements of a modern 
 city. 
 
 Yet if the question had been put point blank to 
 Pikeville : " On what do you base your hope of 
 greatest renown and well-being ?" Pikeville would 
 have risen as one man and replied : " Our Lit 
 erary." 
 
 Now, this "literary" was not a plant of rapid 
 
30 \\liat Broke Up the Literary. 
 
 and immature growth. It was rather the result of 
 a slowly-developed and well-matured decision. It 
 came along partly as the sequence of the boom and 
 the stirring influence of Eastern immigration, and 
 partly through reason of the increased feminine 
 literary activity that was epidemic in the country 
 at large. The immediate cause was the arrival of 
 Miss Sophronia Merrick, of Massachusetts, who 
 had come to Missouri for scholastic missionary 
 work, and had been induced to establish a school 
 in Pikeville, thereunto moved by the charm of the 
 town, the excellence of the water and the courtly 
 hospitality of the people. Miss Merrick was 
 abundantly qualified to lead in literary endeavor, 
 as she had taken a thorough collegiate and post 
 graduate course ; had been an active member of the 
 learned Browning, Goethe, Dante and Ibsen socie 
 ties of Boston, and could show papers of honorary 
 membership in many of the best organizations for 
 the promotion of human thought. While not a 
 particularly engaging person from a cursory mas 
 culine point of view, Miss Sophronia was much 
 esteemed for her mental qualifications, and as she 
 minded her own business, and minded it very well, 
 the generous old families of Pikeville soon came to 
 overlook her unhappy accident of birth in Massa 
 chusetts. 
 
 Miss Sophronia s intimate friend was Miss Alinira 
 Putney, formerly of Vermont. Ezra Putney had 
 
What Broke Up the Literary. 31 
 
 moved to Missouri a few years before to go into 
 the fancy stock business, and to exchange a bron 
 chial affection for regular and well-defined touches 
 of malaria. Miss Almira did not possess in the 
 full degree the ripened intellectual charms of Miss 
 Sophronia, but her atmosphere had always been 
 good, and in sundry contributions to the local 
 paper she had manifested an agreeable acquaint 
 ance with much that is praiseworthy in literature. 
 Miss Almira had, moreover, not a little of the 
 sturdy independence of the old stock, and in her 
 pursuit of knowledge had imbibed much of the 
 classic and modern thought, which, however con 
 formable to the requirements of a person of 
 wide reading, is not recognized and approved by 
 the Methodist Episcopal Church, to which the 
 greater part of Pikeville owed its allegiance. 
 
 The association, then, of two such spirits as Miss 
 Sophronia and Miss Almira could not fail to bring 
 about results most felicitous to the general wel 
 fare. Miss Sophronia had looked over the literary 
 condition of the town and had pronounced the 
 trend favorable. She had even delivered a lecture 
 to the ladies on the life, character, writings and 
 influence of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, prepar 
 atory to the formation of a Goethe club ; but Miss 
 Sophronia s enthusiasm for the cwig weiUiclic and 
 for ponderous and complex Teutonic philosophy 
 Jed her into such deep channels that the ladies 
 
32 WJttff /Jrukr ( /> I lie Literary. 
 
 were soon over their heads. Moreover, Mrs. Dallas 
 confided to the younger ladies that Goethe was a 
 u nasty man," and this idea soon prevailed to the 
 verge of a panic. But the lecture was not alto 
 gether a failure, for it stimulated the ladies to the 
 point of doing something. Several meetings were 
 held, and numerous plans discussed. An organi 
 zation was speedily effected, officers were elected, 
 and a constitution and by-laws adopted. Light 
 refreshments were voted, and, all the preliminaries 
 having been settled, the club took up the ques 
 tion of work. 
 
 In view of the inroads made upon previous femi 
 nine literary progress in Pikeville by the seduction 
 of progressive euchre, dancing, parties and picnics, 
 to say nothing of the sterner and oft-recurring 
 duties of revivals and protracted meetings, Miss 
 Sophronia and Almira suggested the study of 
 American literature. Posie Mercer, who had just 
 returned from the East, where she had pursued 
 special courses of psychology and china painting, 
 was anxious to take up Tolstoi. Virgie Cooper 
 declared a preference for Ibsen, if he could be 
 obtained in an expurgated and fumigated edition. 
 Sadie Boone, who was thought to be engaged to a 
 young man who traveled for a St. Louis hat house, 
 believed she could give her days and nights to the 
 study of Emerson alone. Winnie Schuyler, fresh 
 from a iinisliiiia: school, where thev called for butter 
 
What Broke Up the Literary. 33 
 
 in three languages, spoke for the literature of 
 France; and Mrs. Crawford and Mrs. Dallas, who 
 were sisters, and whose maternal grandfather had 
 lived in Yorkshire, were equally clamorous for an 
 English course, not to ante-date Chaucer, whose 
 spelling and grammar were notoriously poor. 
 
 The dispute was settled by a very interesting 
 occurrence. Joanna Brown, whose family had re 
 cently come to Pikcville from Kansas, was convers 
 ing with Sadie Booue and Daisy Camden when the 
 subject of the Declaration of Independence came 
 up. Miss Daisy chanced to remark casually that 
 the Declaration was promulgated at Guttenberg. 
 Miss Sadie thought Miss Daisy must be mistaken. 
 Miss Daisy was sure she was not mistaken, for she 
 had heard her brother talking about Guttenberg 
 the night before. Miss Sadie was willing to admit 
 that it was something that sounded like Guttenberg, 
 but she thought it was Gettysburg. Miss Joanna 
 was quite positive it was not Gettysburg, as her 
 father had talked about Gettysburg for the past 
 twenty years, and had never mentioned the Decla 
 ration of Independence. Just at this point Miss 
 Sophronia, approaching, was horrified. " If this is 
 the extent of your knowledge of your country," 
 she said, severely, "I think we may as well drop 
 all other subjects and take up American history." 
 The girls were too abashed to remonstrate, and 
 
34 WJntt Broke Up the Literary. 
 
 the motion was put and carried without an objecting 
 voice. 
 
 The decision of the class was most cordially 
 indorsed by the best thought of the community. 
 The editor of the Pikevillo Guard complimented 
 the ladies in an editorial of unusual felicity of 
 expression, and called them the daughters of Clio, 
 incidentally remarking that no other town in 
 Missouri could present such an aggregation of cult 
 ure, beauty and true womanliness. To this the 
 Midland Banner retorted with cutting sarcasm, 
 which involved both newspapers in a long and 
 acrimonious discussion, from which Pikcvillc and 
 the Guard emerged with added distinction and 
 renewed pride. 
 
 In the meantime the class was progressing fa 
 mously, and so skillful was the leadership of Miss 
 Sophronia, and so helpful the suggestions of her 
 experience, that tho young men of the town were 
 in a constant condition of mental depression and 
 becoming sense of inferiority. The essays were 
 not infrequently published in the Guard, and 
 although the Banner, by the sneaking and repre 
 hensible employment of parallel columns, sought 
 to prove that they wore copied literally from ency 
 clopaedias and histories, the Guard repelled the 
 accusation with such denunciatory vehemence that 
 the society voted the editor thereof a special reso 
 lution of thanks, and in turn was honored by the 
 
What Broke Up tlic Literary. 35 
 
 publication of an original complimentary poem, 
 containing many flowers of rhetoric and pearls of 
 thought. 
 
 And so matters ran along smoothly. The 
 attendance was large, the ladies were enthusiastic, 
 the tea was delicious, and the beaten biscuits and 
 the macaroons transcended criticism. One day 
 Miss Almira Putney rose to read an essay on the 
 Pilgrim Fathers. As was perfectly natural and 
 commendable, Miss Almira eulogized these gentle 
 men, long deceased, spoke of their troubles and 
 persecutions, of their strike for freedom of religious 
 conviction, of their heroism, their steadfastness of 
 religious integrity, and of the great impress they 
 left upon the country. When Miss Almira had 
 finished and the matter was before the society for 
 discussion,, Miss Daisy Camden observed that 
 while, of course, she could not speak from actual 
 knowledge, she had always understood that the 
 Pilgrims were a common job-lot sort of people. 
 Miss Almira, with rising color, desired to know 
 where she had procured such valuable information. 
 Miss Daisy promptly replied that she had been so 
 informed by her father, Judge Camden ; where 
 upon Miss Almira said " Oh ! " with a peculiar and 
 significant intonation. Miss Daisy requested the 
 privilege of informing Almira Putney that her 
 father belonged to the F. F. V. s, the first fam 
 ilies of Virginia. Miss Putney blandly asked per- 
 
36 \Yha1 ttrokc Up the Li/cntry. 
 
 mission to enlighten Daisy Camdcn ; that she also 
 belonged to the F. F. V. s, the iirst families of 
 Vermont. Miss Daisy laughed a very unnatural 
 and unpleasant laugh, and her dearest friend, Miss 
 Virgie Cooper, tittered. At this point Miss 
 Sophronia interfered, and warned the young ladies 
 that personalities would not be permitted. Miss 
 Daisy explained that personally she had the warm 
 est regard for Almira, and Miss Almira admitted 
 that she was devoted to Daisy. The matter then 
 dropped. 
 
 At the next meeting of the society Miss Evie 
 Dallas read a thoughtful essay on the depressing 
 influence of Salem witchcraft. Miss Dallas s 
 parents, as South Carolinians, had transmitted 
 to Miss Evie in natural inheritance a somewhat 
 one-sided view of Puritan character, and the 
 young lady, in the course of literary preparation, 
 interpolated many spicy personal opinions touch 
 ing the ignorant superstition of the Puritans, 
 particularly exemplified by Cotton Mather. 
 
 Miss Tosie Adair was astonished. She could 
 not conceive how anybody could have obtained such 
 opinions of Doctor Mather. 
 
 Miss Evie replied that she had consulted her 
 father, the junior member of the firm of Camden 
 & Dallas, and he had told her that Cotton 
 Mather was a crack-brained old fanatic, but that 
 
What Broke Up the Literary. 37 
 
 she had decided to mitigate this opinion as unlady 
 like. 
 
 Miss Tosie, with blazing eyes, presumed that 
 Miss Evie did not know that she was descended 
 from Doctor Mather through her mother,, whose 
 maternal grandmother belonged to the Mathers of 
 Connecticut. 
 
 Miss Evie reddened, and said that unfortunately 
 she did not, but since the matter had been brought 
 up she felt compelled to stand by the truths of 
 history. 
 
 To this Miss Tosie replied, with a sneer, that 
 since " history " was invoked she would admit that 
 the good people of Salem had been a little hasty ; 
 but at least they had acted conscientiously, think 
 ing they were pleasing God, and not from malig- 
 nance, which had led certain people in other parts 
 of the country to torture and kill poor, unoffend 
 ing black men. 
 
 At this there was a great sensation, and several 
 of the ladies said, " Oh I Oh ! " Miss Sophronia 
 called Miss Tosie to order and gently rebuked her. 
 
 Miss Tosie apologized to the ladies of the class 
 for anything that might appear unparliamentary, 
 but, as for herself and her family, they did not 
 wish association with anybody who maligned their 
 ancestors. The emphasis on "family" made Miss 
 Evie redden more deeply, and caused the ladies to 
 turn awav their heads and smile, for the preference 
 
38 What Broke Up the Literary. 
 
 for Miss Tosie s brother exhibited bv Miss Evie 
 had been town gossip for mouths. 
 
 When the perplexing and demoralizing sub 
 ject of the Puritans had been overcome by the 
 happy arrival of the eighteenth century, amicable 
 relations were completely restored. Miss Daisy 
 staid all night with Miss Almira, and Miss Evie, in 
 that deft, winning, woman s way, smoothed things 
 over with Miss Tosie s brother, and declared that 
 a visit to Connecticut was the dream of her lii e. 
 And so the even current ran along through the 
 French and Indian war, on and past the stirring- 
 scenes of the Ee volution and the troublous times 
 of 1812. It might be supposed that the various 
 political distinctions of the United States govern 
 ment would have troubled the ladies. Kot a bit 
 of it. Each member of the class had her particu 
 lar essay, and, recognizing the former disasters, the 
 audience always preserved a respectful demeanor, 
 and asked no questions. It was feared that Miss 
 Virgie Cooper s position on the Missouri Compro 
 mise might excite a little hostility, but as she 
 refrained from all personal opinions and adhered 
 closely to the text of the authorities, the danger 
 was averted. 
 
 In fact the ladies were felicitating themselves 
 that they had now progressed beyond all possible 
 collisions and outbreaks, and were sure of their 
 tempers and good humor. Moreover, such was 
 
What Broke Up flic Literary. 39 
 
 Miss Sophronia s tact, and so firm and adroit was 
 her administration, that every tendency toward 
 personalities was quickly repressed. But it chanced 
 that Miss Sophronia was invited to go to Midland 
 to address the young ladies of the Methodist 
 college on the centripetal quality of the Ego, and 
 in her absence the duties of the chair devolved 
 upon the vice-president, Miss Sadie Boone. Miss 
 Sadie entered upon the task with no little trepida 
 tion, for, while she was very pretty and popular 
 withal, she knew as little of parliamentary usage 
 as the sacred cow knows about the music of the 
 future. 
 
 Unluckily, that day Miss Winnie Schuyler had 
 prepared an essay on the missionary work of John 
 Brown in Kansas. Miss Winnie warmed to her 
 subject, and described the fearful odds against 
 which this heroic man contended in his glorious 
 struggle for freedom. She followed him to Vir 
 ginia, to Harper s Ferry, and, after he had been 
 executed with due solemnity, she invested him 
 with a martyr s crown and a halo of surpassing 
 brightness. 
 
 In the discussion that followed Mrs. Crawford 
 remarked that she supposed that everybody nowa 
 days knew that John Brown was a law-breaker and 
 a thief, and properly suffered a felon s death. 
 
 Miss Winnie replied that under the terms of the 
 
40 What Broke Up the Literary. 
 
 Missouri Compromise the extension of slavery had 
 been strictly prohibited. 
 
 Miss Daisy Camden thought that the extension 
 of slaver.y had nothing to do with the case ; that 
 John Brown was an old freebooter who pillaged 
 and murdered just for the love of excitement. 
 
 Miss Tosie Adair believed that Miss Daisy was 
 unduly influenced by the thought that she must 
 stick up for Virginia. 
 
 Miss Daisy emphatically responded that she was 
 not moved by any such consideration ; that she 
 merely repeated an opinion which she had heard 
 her father give. And she presumed that the ladies 
 would admit that her father was perfectly compe 
 tent to give an opinion worth respecting. 
 
 Miss Joanna Brown spoke with great agitation 
 and ill-concealed wrath. She gave the ladies to 
 understand that her father had known and fought 
 under Captain Brown in Kansas, and that she had 
 been named in honor of that good man. As a 
 babe she had been held in his arms, and she would 
 allow nobody to asperse his memory while she had 
 a tongue to defend him. 
 
 Miss Virgie Cooper jocularly answered that 
 nobody ever doubted that Joanna had a tongue, 
 and Miss Evie Dallas slyly remarked that as John 
 Brown had departed this life thirty years ago, 
 Joanna s remembrance could not be disputed by 
 
What Broke Up the Literary. 41 
 
 the ladies present. This keen feminine thrust 
 caused Miss Joanna to wince with pain. 
 
 Miss Almira Putney took the* floor. She 
 said that in the absence of Miss Sophronia 
 she had endeavored to keep quiet, but that 
 the outcropping of old rebel sentiment was be 
 coming offensive to an unbearable degree. In 
 view of the heated condition of the ladies, she 
 would move an adjournment, but she gave no 
 tice that at the next meeting she would throw 
 aside all reserve and produce authorities to place 
 the onus of the civil war on the rebels, where it 
 properly belonged. 
 
 In seconding the motion to adjourn, Mrs. Craw 
 ford protested against the use of the word 
 "rebels," and promised, on her side, to be present 
 with a counterblast of authorities. And so Miss 
 Sadie Boone, being on the verge of insanity, or 
 at least of tears, declared the meeting adjourned. 
 
 When the news of the rupture in the " literary " 
 spread about town, as it quickly did, all Pikeville 
 was in a nutter. Ten years before it would have 
 been impossible to start a discussion of this nature, 
 but immigration had wrought many changes, and 
 Pikeville had even enjoyed the novelty of a Repub 
 lican mayor. Still the old Southern element 
 strongly prevailed, and in this circle Miss So- 
 phronia was heartily condemned. " Of co se," said 
 Judge Camden, magnanimously, "the repo ts that 
 
42 What liruke Vp tJic Literar//. 
 
 my daughter brings me may be exaggerated, but I 
 reckon the Yankee school-teacher is a mischief- 
 maker." This candid declaration from the Judge 
 was regarded as particularly significant, for his 
 attentions to Miss Sophronia had been noted by all 
 the ladies as presaging a change in his domestic 
 relations. 
 
 Miss Sophronia was much distressed by the 
 unfortunate turn of events, and repaired to the 
 Presbyterian minister for advice. The worthy 
 man counseled her to address the throne of grace, 
 but., as she had already done that two or three times 
 without visible results, she despaired of active 
 Providential interference. At last she decided to 
 appeal to the ladies in open session, and trust to 
 their good nature and good sense. In the mean 
 time the most awful condition of affairs prevailed. 
 Miss Tosie Adair had so ingeniously poisoned the 
 mind of her brother that he had broken an engage 
 ment to take Miss Evie Dallas to the mite sociable, 
 whereat Miss Evie had spent the nig-ht in tears. 
 Miss Daisy Camden cut Miss Almira Putney dead 
 on the street, and Miss Almira, in return, told 
 Miss Daisy s best young man that she now believed 
 that Daisy was descended from Poeahontas because 
 she looked it. Miss Posie Mercer was found to be 
 authority for the story that Miss Winnie Schuyler s 
 grandfather was a common shoemaker in New 
 Hampshire, and Miss Winnie gave it out that a 
 
What Broke Vp the Literary. 43 
 
 young man from Boston, who had summered in 
 Pikeville, had mittened Miss Posie and gone home 
 in disgust because she spelled " "buggy " with one g. 
 To add to the general perturbation the Midland 
 Banner came into possession of .the facts, and 
 printed the most atrocious doggerel, satirizing the 
 ladies, and vulgarly calling upon the young men to 
 resort to arms, a specimen of low wit which the 
 editor of the Guard promptly and crushingly 
 rebuked. 
 
 When Tuesday afternoon came around, and the 
 society met at the residence of Mrs. Crawford, the 
 ladies appeared, their arms loaded with books. 
 Miss Sophronia saw with uneasiness that the Con 
 federates were ranged on one side of the room, and 
 the Union cohorts on the other. She also noticed 
 a number of little brothers on the sidewalk, and 
 gathered from their high juvenile voices and 
 occasional cries of "Eats "and "Come off," that 
 preliminary skirmishing had begun. The authori 
 ties were piled on the table and sofa. Here was 
 Kedpath s Life of John Brown, and here Sheahan s 
 Life of Douglas. Here Horace Greeley s Con 
 federate States, and Alex. Stephens^ War Be 
 tween the Slates, and Jeff Davis s Rise and Fall 
 of the Southern Confederacy, and Pollard s Lost 
 Cause, and Hill s War on the Border, and Sneed s 
 Fight for Missouri, and Johnston s Narrative of 
 Military Operations, and liord s War Memories, 
 
44 }\ haf Broke Vp the Literary. 
 
 and a dozen other volumes of less note. And last 
 of all came Miss Almira Putney, panting and 
 blowing, and bearing huge books of the Records 
 of the Rebellion, looking very wicked and very 
 confident. 
 
 Miss Sophronia sighed, and the look of trouble 
 deepened on her countenance. She gave an 
 appealing glance to Miss Almira, who had dropped 
 the Records on the carpet with a defiant bang, and 
 cleared her voice and said : 
 
 " Ladies, it has been assigned to me to prepare an 
 essay on the causes leading up to the attack on 
 Fort Sumter in our late deplorable civil war. 1 
 have not done so, for reasons that will appeal 1 per 
 fectly proper to you. The war, ladies, closed 
 twenty-five years ago. I think I may say, without 
 giving offense, that Miss Brown and myself are the 
 only ones present who can recall the slightest 
 phase of that terrible conflict. You, my dear 
 Daisy, were not born, nor you, Virgie, nor you, 
 Sadie, nor you, Winnie, Tosie and Almira, How 
 absurd, then, is it that now in this reunited 
 country AVC should be governed by the simulation 
 of passions that we have never felt, to the disrup 
 tion of our pleasant intercourse and the disband- 
 ment of our society." 
 
 "Almira Putney had no right to call us rebels," 
 said Miss Posie Mercer. 
 
 "Excuse me, but I had the right; and here" 
 
What Broke Up ilic Literary. 45 
 
 (tapping the Records significantly) "it is," replied 
 Miss Almira. 
 
 "And here," broke in Miss Yirgie Cooper, "is 
 Mr. Davis s testimony that you are all wrong." 
 
 " Bah ! " cried Miss Winnie Schuylcr ; " how 
 absurd to take the biggest traitor in the pack as an 
 authority on loyalty." 
 
 "Winnie Schuyler," said Miss Daisy Camden, 
 passionately, "how dare you call Mr. Davis a 
 traitor ? Did you ever see Mr. Davis ? " 
 "No, and I never wanted to." 
 "Well, I have, and he s no traitor, but a real 
 nice, polite old gentleman. I ve got his picture, 
 and his autograph, too. " 
 " Well, you can keep them. " 
 " Thank you, I mean to, and pretty well hidden 
 when there is anybody from Connecticut in the 
 neighborhood." 
 
 " If the ladies will remember that they are ladies, 
 and not lose their tempers," said MissEvie Dallas, 
 with emphasis, "I should like to read a chapter 
 from Pollard s Lost Cause." 
 
 " Let s see ; Pollard was another rebel, wasn t 
 he ?" queried Miss Brown. 
 
 "No, he wasn t a rebel," retorted Miss Evie, 
 angrily; "he sympathized with the Confederate 
 government." 
 
 " With the what kind of government ? " asked 
 Miss Brown, tauntingly. " With the Confederate 
 
1f; \\lml llrnkc I p the Literary. 
 
 government ? Wasn t that the government that 
 supported Quantrell and Anderson ?" 
 
 "At Jill events/ replied MissEvie, with tears in 
 her eyes, "it didn t support Red Legs, who came 
 over from Kansas and murdered my uncle John, 
 whom I never saw. - 
 
 " Well, if you never saw him, what are you crying 
 for ? " put in Miss Almira. " I don t believe he ever 
 wasted a thought on his posthumous relations." 
 " Ladies, ladies ! " said Miss Sophronia, 
 Miss Yirgie Cooper rose with great and impress 
 ive dignity. "I am not ashamed to say that I am 
 descended from rebels, or whatever you choose to 
 call them, Almira Putney. My grandmother 
 hung a Confederate flag out of her window in the 
 full sight of the Yankee troops, and my father 
 chased a Yankee ten miles into the next county. 
 I am not chasing Yankees myself, but I am not 
 bound to associate with them. Come, Daisy." 
 
 Miss Tosie Ad air took the iloor. " I am going 
 myself," she said, "and Winnie is going with me. 
 I have often heard about plantation manners, and 
 have been anxious for an exhibition. My curiosity 
 is satisfied." 
 
 "In handing in my resignation," spoke up Miss 
 Evie Dallas, "I wish to say that I am perfectly 
 shocked by the display of brutality on the part of 
 Northern women. I am glad that my experience 
 begins and ends here." 
 
What Broke Up flic Literary. 47 
 
 "So am I," snapped Miss Almira Putney. Miss 
 Almiru had a peppery tongue. 
 
 One by one the ladies picked up their books, 
 put on their gloves, bowed stiffly to the president 
 and the hostess, and left the room. And then 
 Miss Sophronia, the erudite, the profound, the 
 honorary member of the great Browning, Goethe, 
 Dante and Ibsen societies of the country, the cor 
 responding secretary of the Emersonian Daughters 
 of the Southwest, the founder of the Missouri 
 branch of the Society for the Centripetency of the 
 Ego, walked over to Mrs. Crawford, put her head 
 on her shoulder, and wept. 
 
 The most disastrous results followed the dis- 
 bandment of the society. Although the Guard, 
 ever alert to the interests of Pikeville, carefully 
 excluded all reports of the calamity from its 
 columns, the local feeling, was intense, and showed 
 itself in the high social circles. The young man 
 who traveled for a St. Louis hat house was invited 
 by Miss Sadie Boone to thrash Miss Joanna 
 Brown s brother. Having performed this valorous 
 feat, he boasted of it in a billiard room, and was in 
 turn soundly trounced by young Mr. Adair. 
 Hearing of the disgraceful proceeding, Deacon 
 Dallas sent word to young Mr. Adair that as he 
 frequented billiard halls he should come to his 
 house "no moV This sentence of proscription 
 sent Miss Evie to her bed for three days. Judge 
 
48 What Broke Up the Literary. 
 
 Camclen and ex-Mayor Schuyler came to blows in 
 front of the Methodist church, and the Coopers 
 and the Putiicys, who had occupied adjoining 
 pews for five years, declined to mingle as of yore in 
 the consolations of religion. 
 
 So things ran on from bad to worse for three 
 months. One evening Judge Oamden, whose fifty 
 years sat lightly on him, and who was esteemed 
 the likeliest widower in the country round about, 
 was walking jauntily to the post-office when he 
 encountered Miss Sophronia. 
 
 "Good evening, Miss Sophronya," said the 
 Judge, gallantly ; "a charming evening." 
 
 Miss Sophronia blushed a little, as an elderly 
 maiden should, and admitted that the evening was 
 indeed unexceptionable. 
 
 "Miss Sophronya," went on the jurist, "doyo 
 know, madam, that I feel that in some way yo and 
 I are responsible for the present strained relations 
 in this community ?" 
 
 The lady was more agitated than ever. The 
 Judge was a personable gentleman, and in every 
 way qualified to impress a maidenly heart not too 
 young. Moreover, she had been warned to look 
 out for the Judge. 
 
 " Feeling, as I said befo , that we are responsible 
 for this state of affairs, what do yo ? say, madam, 
 to a sacrifice on yo part to reconcile the North and 
 the South ? Will yo accept me, madam, as a 
 
What Broke Up the Literary. 49 
 
 hostage ? Shall it be Virginia and Massachusetts, 
 now and forever, one and inseparable ? " 
 
 Miss Sophronia was overcome. She did the 
 best thing possible under the circumstances, sat 
 down on a convenient gate step and gasped out: 
 " Why, Judge ! " 
 
 When it became known that Judge Camden and 
 Miss Sophronia were engaged, all Pikeville weaved 
 and tottered. Miss Daisy flew out to the Putneys, 
 fell on Miss Almira s neck and wept tears of sor 
 row and joy, and forgiveness, and remorse. Dea 
 con Dallas cordially invited young Mr. Adair to 
 supper, and Miss Evie was at her best. The Put 
 neys and the Coopers occupied the same pew at 
 prayer-meeting, and the representative of the hat 
 firm presented to Mr. Brown one of his very best 
 samples as a token of perfect reconciliation. 
 
 "This country," said the Judge, "is all right. 
 What it needs is one or two statesmen to keep 
 things smooth and level, and by mutual conces 
 sions to hold the ship of state to its co se." 
 
 But when the Judge stood up in the crowded 
 church, and saw the smiling faces of his old rebel 
 and Yankee friends, and heard the parson s solemn 
 question : "Do you take this woman to be your 
 wedded wife ? " he answered : 
 
 " I do," - and with a droll emphasis that set the 
 ^congregation tittering, "but no mo literaries," 
 
Placed with Thomas. 
 
HE PLAYED WITH THOMAS. 
 
 THE boys had gathered in John Kingman s 
 grocery. It wasn t much of a grocery, but, for 
 that matter, Elk Grove wasn t much of a town ; so 
 accounts balanced. Why Elk Grove was called 
 Elk Grove is a question as hard to answer as the 
 fair Juliet s impatient query, "Wherefore art thou 
 Romeo ?" Some people ask foolish questions with 
 no expectation of a satisfactory answer. The few 
 houses that composed the town were dumped out 
 on a wide and cheerless prairie in Western Kansas, 
 and, while it is possible that in bygone ages an 
 elk may have passed along on his way to a more 
 congenial stamping-ground, there never was any 
 scientific reason for supposing that a grove could 
 by any chance have been a feature of the place. 
 One argument was that the town originally was 
 Elk Grave, so called from the discovery of bones 
 supposed to belong to the cervine family, and that 
 when the Santa Ee road put up a little station and 
 made out a new time-table a typographical error 
 changed the Grave to Grove, an indignity which 
 the haughty and autocratic magnates refused to 
 rectify. This explanation may be taken for what 
 
 53 
 
54 He Played with Thomas. 
 
 it is worth,, but it is cited merely to show how the 
 railroad power in Kansas has ridden arbitrarily 
 over the intentions and desires of the people. 
 
 Evidently the road favored not only offering a 
 slight, but rubbing it in as well, for it persisted 
 in treating Elk Grove as a whistling-station, and 
 trains seldom stopped save to put off a tramp or 
 repair the engine. Indeed, it began to be whispered 
 about that the conductors saved up their tramps 
 for Elk Grove, and it was noticed that when the 
 engineer pulled out he wore a grin hideous in its 
 malignant cunning. Several indignation meet 
 ings were called, and it was resolved to carry the 
 matter to Topeka, but the subsequent reflection 
 that the railroad owned the legislature and the 
 entire machinery from Governor down to janitor 
 put an end to that scheme. So the boys soothed 
 their feelings by rallying at John Kingman s gro 
 cery and drinking success to prohibition and con 
 fusion to tramps and railroad conductors. 
 
 On the night sacred to the incidents of this tale 
 the rally was a little larger than usual. The 
 Hanks boys were there, and the Blilers ; Bill 
 Cook and his cousin Tom ; Sam Chesney, the 
 toughest man in the district; Joe Ardway, with 
 a record of three men ; Captain Matthews, the 
 marshal, and two cowboys, visiting the town and 
 always agreeable to anything that promised exer 
 cise and relaxation. John Kingman was in good 
 
He Played with Thomas. 55 
 
 spirits, and as he shoved the dried apples behind 
 the counter and put a few more boards on the 
 cracker boxes, lie intimated that the liquor was 
 accessible. 
 
 As might have been expected from so sprightly 
 and jovial an assemblage, the conversation turned 
 humorously on the attitude of the railroad toward 
 Elk Grove^ and the still more perplexing attitude 
 of the town toward tramps. Joe Ardway contended 
 that Captain Matthews, as town marshal, was 
 derelict in his duty in failing to take extreme 
 measures against the output of through travel. 
 The marshal replied that his duties were circum 
 scribed; that he regretted to say that tramps as a 
 rule had been perfectly peaceable, and that he 
 would not be justified under the statutes and his 
 oath of office in shooting a man whose only offense 
 was breathing. 
 
 To this position one of the visiting cow gentle 
 men, in a perfectly calm and dignified tone, took 
 exception. He pointed out that a tramp without 
 home and money was necessarily a wretched being, 
 whom it would be a kindness to put out of his 
 misery. He believed it was the duty of mankind 
 to alleviate pain and suffering, and he knew of no 
 medicine so quick and sure -in action as a bullet 
 administered with a steady hand and an unerring 
 
 eve. 
 
 This opinion excited a general discussion. It 
 
56 lie Played with Thomas. 
 
 was cordially indorsed by Sam Chesney and the 
 Blilers, and gently criticised by Bill Cook. Mr. 
 Cook believed that it was the sense of the com 
 munity to breathe a spirit of toleration, lie 
 admitted that tramps were no good, and deserved a 
 little touching up, but he couldn t countenance 
 anything worse for a first offense than hanging 
 not hanging to death, of course, but just long 
 enough to give a good choking and a scare. And 
 he quoted from the beatitudes: "Blessed are the 
 merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." For Mr. 
 Cook was quite a scholar, in his way, and, rumor 
 said, had taught in Sunday-school back east. 
 
 The calm judicial manner and scriptural quota 
 tion were not without a quieting effect on the 
 audience, already slightly inflamed by the potency 
 of Mr. Kingman s hospitality, and the convention 
 had settled down to the discussion of the minor 
 penalties of mob law, when three sharp whistles 
 signaled the approach of the night express from 
 the west. Bill Cook shrugged his shoulders, the 
 Bliler boys laughed, and Joe Ardway looked signifi 
 cantly at Captain Matthews and grunted : 
 " Tramps ! " 
 
 Mr. Kingman was equal to the emergency. He 
 lighted the lantern and passed it to the marshal, 
 who took it and walked out without a word, the 
 boys falling in in single file. AVhen fifty yards 
 from the station, they saw the conductor on the 
 
Ho Played with Thomas. 57 
 
 platform raise his foot, give it a careless, easy 
 swing, and a dark object shot from the train and 
 rolled over into the ditch. Somebody called out, 
 " Go ahead ; " a sardonic laugh floated back from 
 the cab ; the bell rang, and the express puffed off to 
 the east. 
 
 The night was dark, and the marshal flashed his 
 lantern vigorously before the dark object was seen 
 wiggling up the sides of the ditch like a copper 
 head in a cactus. " I ve got him," said Sam Ches- 
 ney. " Come up to the hotel, young feller, and 
 join in the festivities you ve interrupted." 
 
 So back to the grocery the party went, the 
 shivering tramp surrounded by his captors, who 
 regaled him with fragmentary discourse touching 
 the last public execution in Elk Grove. And 
 when Kingman had lighted another lamp in honor 
 of the occasion, they shoved him into the middle 
 of the room for general examination. 
 
 He was not a young fellow after all, but a middle- 
 aged man, the picture of woe and degradation. 
 lie was emaciated, ragged and dirty beyond the 
 usual limitations of the tramp. His clothes were 
 marvelous in their infinite variety. Hunger and 
 disease showed in his sunken eyes and cheeks, and 
 he tenderly passed a trembling hand over the con 
 tusions produced by his fall and the conductor s 
 boot. 
 
 " Well," said Joe Ardway, " what do you want ? " 
 
58 Ho Played with Thomas. 
 
 " It occurs to me, gentlemen," replied the tramp, 
 "that it is not what I want, but what you want. 
 However, since you are so kind as to put it that 
 way, I will say, without delay, that I would like a 
 drink." 
 
 The boys were immediately impressed with the 
 reasonableness and good sense of this request, and 
 Kingman poured out a grown man s supply, which 
 the tramp seized eagerly and gulped down to the 
 last drop. 
 
 "Now," said Mr. Ardway, winking at the boys, 
 " p Yaps you don t know that there is a law ag in 
 tramps in this town ? " 
 
 The tramp smiled in a sickly manner that might 
 have been a confession either of ignorance or 
 indifference. 
 
 "Well, there is, a very good and just law. It 
 passed this house ten minutes before your train 
 got in, and it means death." 
 
 Still the tramp sat silent and unmoved. After 
 a moment he spoke, with a sort of weary despond 
 ency of tone : 
 
 " I don t suppose it would make any difference 
 to me or anybody else how soon death comes to me. 
 I haven t long to live at the most, and a few days 
 more or less don t matter." 
 
 Mr. Ardway gave the boys another wink. "I m 
 glad to see you resigned, and we ll make it as easy 
 for you as we ran. There ain t no particular hurry, 
 
He Played with Thomas. 50 
 
 and if there s anythhr you d like to say or do spe 
 cial before we begin, you can go ahead." 
 
 The tramp looked listlessly about him. On the 
 shelf behind the counter, just over George Biiler s 
 head, was a violin. It belonged to Kingmairs 
 oldest boy, who played for his father s customers 
 whenever they were musically inclined. A flash 
 of joy came into the tramp s eyes, and he said, in 
 a tone that was almost tender : 
 
 "I see a violin up there. It has been many 
 months since I have held one in my hands. I 
 think I should like to play again to-night." 
 
 " Oh, come off," said Mr. Chesney ; " this ain t no 
 musical conservatory." 
 
 " That s all right, Sam," interposed Mr. Ardway ; 
 " if he wants to give a concert it ain t gentlemanly to 
 object." Then to the tramp: "We didn t know 
 when we saw you get tin oft at our humble depot 
 that you was a concert artist." 
 
 "I played the violin for many years," said the 
 tramp, "when I was with Thomas." 
 
 " Oh, see here, what are you givin us ? There 
 wasn t no violin-playing in the army, and you 
 don t look as if you d ever had spunk enough to 
 fight a rabbit." 
 
 The boys looked at Tom Hanks approvingly. 
 Tom had a war record, and knew every division 
 and brigade commander by name and history. 
 
 "I didn t say I ever was in the army," said the 
 
60 He Played with Thomas. 
 
 tramp, humbly. "I meant that I played with 
 Thomas, the orchestra leader, you know." 
 
 "Oh, that s different," grunted Mr. Hanks, and 
 he looked at the boys as if to intimate that he 
 was on personal terms with the Thomases of all 
 creation. 
 
 " I was a happy fellow in those days, gentlemen," 
 went 011 the tramp, almost caressing the fiddle that 
 George handed to him. "It was back in New 
 York, and I was young and ambitious. Perhaps 
 you don t care for music. At all events, you ve 
 probably never played in a great orchestra with 
 your blood tingling and a crash of harmony all 
 around you." 
 
 "I m sorry to say," put in Mr. Ardway, dryly, 
 "as how most of us gave up our music when we 
 were young, although we are reckoned right lively 
 connysuers. " 
 
 " It was glorious," said the tramp, without seem 
 ing to notice the apology. " Here stood Thomas, 
 waving the baton, and here I sat at his left, in the 
 first row of the violins. Down below me, and 
 stretching back and to the right and to the left, is 
 the brilliant audience, with eyes fastened on us, 
 and not a rustle to disturb the music. We open 
 with the overture to Rienzi." 
 
 The tramp had been tuning the instrument as 
 lie talked. Then he squared bark and fiddled 
 
Ho Played with Tlwm.as. 61 
 
 away with such rapidity and vehemence that the 
 boys looked on astonished. 
 
 "Your tekneek seems to be all right/ said Bill 
 Cook, who had acquired a musical education at 
 concerts in Dodge City, " but I ain t much stuck 
 on that tune." 
 
 The criticism appeared to bring the tramp back 
 to a realization of his position. He laid down the 
 fiddle and sighed. " I don t know why it is, but 
 when the fit strikes me I feel like playing a whole 
 programme. But what s the use ? If you don t 
 have the brass and the reeds and the great volume 
 behind you, how can you convey the grand inspira 
 tion of Wagner ? " 
 
 "Sure," said Mr. Cook, who felt that his reputa 
 tion demanded that he should say something. 
 
 "This may be very choice," broke in Mr. Ches- 
 ney, impatiently, "but if you had such a soft snap 
 why didn t you freeze to it ? " 
 
 "That s just it," bitterly replied the tramp. 
 " What did it ? Why, whisky, of course. I don t 
 preach any temperance sermon, but whisky cost 
 me my place and reputation, set me adrift, brought 
 me West, subjected me to hunger and cold and 
 exposure, and brought on the disease that s about 
 finished me. I was trying to get back home when 
 the brakeman caught me. It was a chance any 
 body might take. The longing to go home was 
 too strong to resist, and I thought if I could reach 
 
62 He Played with Thomas. 
 
 Topeka I might find friends to help me. But 
 perhaps it doesn t make any difference, for I can t 
 last long, anyway." 
 
 If anybody had looked in Mr. Cook s face he 
 would have seen a sort of twitching around the 
 corners of Mr. Cook s mouth and a pitying expres 
 sion in Mr. Cook s eyes. Mr. Ardway, too, had a 
 much gentler tone when he said : 
 
 "It s the opinion of this meeting that your 
 tunes are out of date. You ain t up to the times, 
 and you ain t no credit to Kansas. It wouldn t be 
 right to send you back without some signs of 
 progress. Can t you play the Washerwoman s 
 Dance or a heel and toe, or something with music 
 in it ? " 
 
 The tramp struck up a lively air, and the boys 
 grinned and kept time with their feet on King- 
 man s barrels. Then the music came slower and 
 slower, and the boot accompaniments stopped. 
 The tramp s eyes were closed,, and his mind had 
 wandered again. It was a simple melody he 
 played, but it touched the boys, and no city 
 audience could have listened with more profound 
 attention to the orchestra of which the tramp had 
 been a part. Twice lie played it with increasing 
 fervor, and then he changed the theme and 
 played, one after another, the airs that are popular 
 in all sections of the country, and that, somehow, 
 are alwavs associated with home and childhood 
 
Ho Played with Thomas. 63 
 
 and better days. And old John Kingman listened 
 in amazement. He could not believe that the 
 beautiful tones he heard came from his boy s old 
 fiddle. Still the tramp played on, until Captain 
 Matthews, who sat near him, swore that he saw 
 two tears come from his closed eyes and roll down 
 his cheeks. 
 
 Sam Chesney drew a long breath. " That s the 
 sort," said Mr. Chesney. Mr. Ardway held a hur 
 ried consultation with the Blilers and the Hanks 
 boys and Bill Cook. Then he said, with great 
 gravity : 
 
 "Stranger, it s the vote of this meeting that 
 you ve had a run of uncommon hard luck, and 
 been imposed on by circumstances. If a man 
 wants to go home and die/there ain t no kick com 
 ing to Elk Grove. So we ve decided to make a 
 pool and buy a ticket to Topeka, and start you off 
 in style. Kingman s got a store-room back here, 
 where there ain t nothing portable, and you can 
 get a shakedown to-night and a square meal in the 
 morning. You ll be expected to turn up after 
 breakfast and fiddle us a few of them good old 
 tunes, and we ll have the ladies down to hear you. 
 Then we ll fix you out and flag the train and start 
 you off." 
 
 If there was any doubt about the tears in the 
 tramp s eyes when Cap. Matthews watched him, 
 there was none now. " Believe me, gentlemen," 
 
04 He Flayed with Thomas. 
 
 lie said, " I am not entirely unworthy of your kind- 
 ness, even if I never repay you. I wasn t always 
 what I am now, and what I am you can see I shall 
 not be very long." 
 
 Mr. Chesney escorted the tramp to his lodging 
 in the rear of the grocery, and Mr. Kingman and 
 Mr. Ardway brought in a quilt and a pile of empty 
 sacks, with an old army coat for a pillow. After 
 the others had gone out Mr. Chesney lingered. 
 
 "I say, stranger," he said ; "what was that tune 
 you played just after the jig ? " 
 
 The tramp pondered a moment. His face 
 brightened. "That was the Ave Maria." 
 
 " What s the Avvy Mareea ? " asked the puzzled 
 Mr. Chesney. 
 
 "The Ave Maria," replied the tramp, "is a 
 prayer to the Mother. I played it a hundred 
 times when I was with Thomas." 
 
 Mr. Chesney helped old John lock up that 
 night. Then the two men took the lantern and 
 went around and looked in at the window. The 
 tramp was lying on the quilts, and a peaceful look 
 was on his thin face. Once he stirred and smiled 
 in his sleep. "He thinks he s playing the Avvy 
 Mareea," said Mr. Chesney. 
 
 And they tiptoed away, lest their presence 
 might alarm the Mother, 
 
of Ransas. 
 
TUBES OF KANSAS. 
 
 EVERYBODY knew Tubbs. Along the line of 
 the Santa Fe, from the old historic city of Law 
 rence, with its prim Puritan air, and its college 
 atmosphere, far beyond Dodge City, where the 
 playful cowboy " rounds up the tenderfoot," and 
 disturbs the night with the joyous crack of the 
 revolver, his name was a household word, and his 
 deeds were a family lesson. 
 
 Tubbs was not a founder. He came from a long- 
 line of distinguished Tubbses, every one of them a 
 Republican and every one a Methodist, "for which 
 God in Ilis infinite wisdom and mercy be praised," 
 said Tubbs, with great unction. 
 
 More than thirty years ago Tubbs went to the 
 first political convention at Topeka, and never 
 thereafter missed a rally of the cohorts. " Forty 
 years a voter, and, thank God, never a vote for a 
 Democrat," said Tubbs. And a heavenly smile 
 lighted up his face, and a sweet expression of rest 
 gave evidence of the tranquil spirit within. The 
 quality of Tubbs s Republicanism was not strained. 
 At each succeeding political contest the old man 
 67 
 
08 Tubh* of Kansas. 
 
 enunciated his principles : " I m for the nominee 
 an ag in the Democratic party." 
 
 " What do you think about tariff reform ? " 
 anxiously asked a doubting neighbor. 
 
 "Is it in the platform ?" queried Tubbs. 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Then I m ag in it. When you ve lived in Kan 
 sas as long as I have, young man, and voted the 
 straight Republican ticket as many years, you ll 
 stand by the platform just as we used to stand by 
 free soil in the dark days." 
 
 AVhereat the party leaders would smile and say : 
 " Yfis, we can bank on Tubbs. " 
 
 Tubbs lived in one of the outlying counties, a 
 man of property and influence. He raised stock 
 enough for his own uses, and his vast acres of corn 
 and wheat smiled in every direction. By way of 
 innocuous diversion he looked after the spiritual 
 welfare of his neighbors at the periodic Methodist 
 awakenings. And he read, as he had read for 
 years, straight Republican literature, and was not 
 quite positive in his own mind that the war was 
 over, and that the rebels had been reduced to a 
 proper state of subjection. 
 
 For social gayeties, in the general sense of the 
 word, Tubbs cared little or nothing. "Dancing 
 and such like frivolities," he was wont to say, "are 
 ag in the perfect letter of the law, and contrary to 
 the teaching of the spirit." But Tubbs had 
 
Tubb* of Kansas. 60 
 
 married a woman who knew a thing or two about 
 domestic discipline and was not disinclined to 
 resent too close application of the doctrine of per 
 fect holiness when it interfered with her worldly 
 ambitions. For, although the country was new 
 and society was in its formative stage, she already 
 had aspirations to be recognized as the society 
 leader of the county. So, when the new house 
 was built, and the furniture had come from the 
 city, she determined to give a ball that should 
 settle the local leadership then and there. That 
 ball is still the talk of the country roundabout, for 
 Mrs. Tubbs, with a keen appreciation of the crisis, 
 "laid herself out," as the local papers had it, and 
 "accomplished a triumph worthy the best efforts 
 of Lucullus." But at nine o clock, as the festivi 
 ties were beginning to alarm the wondering live 
 stock, the mysterious absence of Tubbs was noted 
 and whispered about. Search was instituted, and 
 lantern parties organized, and the old man w T as at 
 last discovered in the barn, fast asleep in the hay 
 mow. For, as he subsequently explained, "a 
 working man has no business turning night into 
 day, and cavorting about on pleasure after nine 
 o clock." This mark of disapproval did in no way 
 interfere with the pleasure of the merrymakers, 
 but it vastly increased Tubbs s standing and power 
 in the councils of the church. 
 
 One day the arch-tempter, who had been hang- 
 
70 Tubb* of Kansas. 
 
 ing around for years trying to get a good whack at 
 Tubbs, came to him in the form of a neighbor, a 
 late arrival, of Mugwumpish tendencies, and a 
 Baptist, two reasons why Tubbs regarded him with 
 suspicion and distrust. "You re all off on this 
 tariff question, Tubbs," said the evil one. Tuhbs 
 smiled a little haughtily, but with certain Christ 
 ian toleration, as prescribed by Wesleyan discipline. 
 
 " Of course," went on this wily tempter, " I don t 
 mean to argue the matter with you, because I can t 
 cope with you in argument, but if you don t mind, 
 I ll just leave these papers and pamphlets with yon 
 and let you skin em over for yourself." 
 
 "If them are Democratic papers," said Tubbs, 
 suspiciously, "you can take em along. I ain t 
 goin to have the folks on this farm pizened by 
 that kind of truck." 
 
 But later in the day Tubbs picked them up, " jest 
 to see," he said, apologetically, to himself, "what 
 the blamed fools have to say, anyhow." And from 
 glancing he fell to reading, arid from reading lie 
 went to thinking, and the result was that he sought 
 his bed that night in great anguish of spirit. 
 
 From that fateful hour Tubbs felt that he was a 
 changed man. And none was quicker to see it 
 than the wily neighbor, who never talked politics, 
 but who pursued his advantage by dexterously 
 throwing tariff reform documents in Tubbs s way, 
 and scattering Democratic and Mugwump papers 
 
Tnbbs of Kansas. 71 
 
 over the farm where Tubbs could run across them 
 without compromising his standing as an old 
 John Brown. Republican. And Tubbs read and 
 thought, and read again, and his perplexity in 
 creased, and the dark shadow rested on his soul. 
 
 "It ain t right, Tilly," he said to his wife. 
 "It s speshis, but it troubles me. It ain t good 
 Methodist doctrine for Kansas, and it s ag in all 
 the glorious and blessed results of the war, but, 
 dang me, if it doesn t seem like common sense." 
 
 "All this comes of trying to think for yourself," 
 answered the wife, severely. "A man who helped 
 put down the rebellion and gave one hundred 
 dollars to build the first Methodist church in the 
 county ain t got no business foolin around with 
 rebel newspapers." 
 
 "You re right, Tilly," said Tubbs, meekly, "but 
 I can t quite make it out. If Plumb was here he 
 could straighten me in ten minutes, and Barney 
 Kelly could put me back in the fold, but my feet 
 were almost gone and my steps had well nigh 
 slipped/ 
 
 Time passed. Tubbs kept his own counsel and 
 prayed, with all the fervor of his strong nature, to 
 be delivered from the snares of the tempter. He 
 felt that he wasn t true to Kansas ; that he was 
 " goin ag in the platform ; " that he was violating 
 one of the cardinal principles of his life and polit 
 ical training, to vote the ticket and ask no ques^- 
 
72 Tubbs of Kansas. 
 
 tions. To add to his perplexity and unrest he was 
 made chairman of the county delegation to Topeka, 
 and he watched, with anguish, his wife as she laid 
 out upon the bed his Prince Albert coat and black 
 striped trousers, and carefully brushed his high hat 
 of many years service. 
 
 When Tubbs reached Topeka his first act A\^as to 
 call around at the Santa Fe general offices to pay 
 his respects, in accordance with the unwritten law 
 of delegates to the State convention. .And, as he 
 shook hands with the high officers of state, and 
 heard their kind and affectionate inquiries as to 
 himself and family, and received instructions for 
 the approaching contest, he thought of his doubts 
 and his hours of unbelief ; of the heretical doctrine 
 that he had devoured on the farm ; and the still, 
 small voice of conscience seemed to say: "Tubbs, 
 you ain t true to your trainin ; you ain t true to 
 Kansas. " 
 
 In the cool of the evening Tubbs strolled about 
 the town, uneasy and full of^ remorse. It seemed 
 to him that every man on the street pointed a fin 
 ger at him and cried : "There goes a traitor who 
 thinks for himself ! " Even the evolutions of the 
 flambeau club and the stirring and beautiful songs 
 of the Cyclones and Coyotes brought no diversion 
 to his troubled spirit. And at nine o clock he with 
 drew from the noisy throng and sought a little 
 room on a back street, wherein he went hastily to 
 
Tubbs of Kansas. 73 
 
 bed and dreamed that he was the Benedict Arnold 
 of the century and was delivering the country over 
 to the English free-traders, to the great indigna 
 tion of a highly protected ram, which was mak 
 ing for him with terrifying speed. And when he 
 awoke in a great state of fear and perspiration it 
 was four o clock. And he arose and dressed, " for, " 
 says Tubbs, "I can t lay in the mo-ruin ." 
 
 So Tubbs went down to the tavern, where he 
 found the other members of the delegation sitting 
 up against the office wall, waiting for the roosters 
 to herald the advance of the king of day, and 
 discussing a modification of the prohibition law to 
 suit emergencies. To them, with evil and malicious 
 intent, came a godless young man from a lost city 
 in Missouri, and said : " Boys, I ve got a prime 
 article down in my grip." And with one accord 
 those statesmen arose and shouted, u Where ?" 
 
 When Tubbs had taken a long and steady pull 
 he felt better. And after breakfast two or three of 
 the leading railroad magnates and statesmen of 
 Kansas dropped around and talked to him pleas 
 antly and convincingly. Unburdening himself, 
 he told of his troubles and his doubts. Then con 
 versation became general, and Tubbs went up 
 stairs and took another longer and steadier pull, 
 and declared that he was ready for the conflict. 
 
 Looking at Tubbs in the convention hall it 
 would have been difficult to recognize the sad, 
 
74 Tiibb* of Kansas. 
 
 troubled old man who left his farm perplexed 
 by free-trade pamphlets and tariff reform here 
 sies. Tubbs was in his element. The old Kansas 
 spirit was on him. 
 
 "Again Afarengo s Held was won, 
 And Jena s bloody battle." 
 
 Again he was ready to fight for John Brown, 
 or sheep, or tin plates, or cotton ties, or anything 
 else that might be suggested. Again he was sur 
 rounded by congenial spirits, and again the 
 watchword was " Hooray ! " 
 
 Tubbs fairly bubbled over with excitement. 
 And when it seemed that his enthusiasm must 
 have reached its height, the Coyotes, the sweet 
 singers of that glorious day and generation, came 
 forth and delivered themselves of a beautiful 
 patriotic melody, of which the concluding deli 
 cately sentimental lines ran as follows: 
 
 " When old Cleveland lays him do\vn to die, 
 And sees this grand army in the sky, 
 
 He ll have nothing to do but roast and fry 
 
 Keep in the middle of the road." 
 
 "Hooray!" shouted Tubbs. "Glory, hallelu 
 jah ! " 
 
 The burst of enthusiasm excited by this fine bit 
 of typical Kansas poetry having subsided, Tubbs 
 arose and called upon that grand statesman and 
 powerful advocate, Mr. llamfat, to "address the 
 meetinV Mr. Ham fat came forward with alacrity. 
 lie had made the question of the tariff a life-long 
 
Tubbs of Kansas. 75 
 
 study, and was prepared to demolish all unfriendly 
 criticism. 
 
 "When," said Mr. Hamfat, "the hour of twelve 
 has come, the American workingman uncovers his 
 d inner-pail protected dinner-pail and takes 
 out a slice of fresh, white American bread pro 
 tected bread." 
 
 " Hooray ! " shouted Tubbs. 
 
 "Then he brings out a nice roll of fresh country 
 American butter protected butter." 
 
 "Hooray!" yelled Tubbs. 
 
 " Then he draws forth a fine large slice of Ameri 
 can beef protected beef." 
 
 " Hooray ! hooray ! " gasped Tubbs. 
 
 "Ha! what have we here?" exclaimed Mr. 
 Hamfat, peering theatrically into space, and 
 clutching the air as if the dinner pail danced 
 before him. " Pie ! " 
 
 Tubbs tumbled in a fit, and the convention 
 went wild. Whoever has not seen a Kansas polit 
 ical gathering in a moment of enthusiasm can have 
 little idea of the excitement of that climax. Ban 
 ners and handkerchiefs were waved in every part 
 of the hall, the band played "Rally Round the 
 Flag," and the delegates stood on their chairs and 
 cheered, and sang, and whooped, and shed tears, 
 and behaved altogether in a highly boisterous and 
 indecorous manner. Tariff reform, agitation of 
 
?fi Tubbs of Kanxax. 
 
 months, was upset by that one word "pie." Mr. 
 Hamfat s logic had wrought its perfect work. 
 What mattered the trifling formality of platform 
 or ticket to those statesmen who were cheering for 
 "pie"? Mr. llamfat descended with the lofty 
 assurance of a man who has driven the last nail in 
 the coffin of argument. 
 
 And that was the last of Tubbs as a rational being. 
 From that moment he sang, and danced, and 
 whooped, and indorsed everybody and everything. 
 lie heard the firing on Sumter for the nineteenth 
 time. He railed at the Democratic party, and he 
 drew such frightful pictures of Bacchanalian orgies 
 at the White House under a Democratic admin 
 istration that even the experienced superintendent 
 of the State insane asylum came over and watched 
 him with professional curiosity and solicitude. 
 And he moved that every candidate be nominated 
 by acclamation, and that the platform be adopted 
 without reading, and fell on Brother Kelly s neck 
 and wept, and said : " I was as a sheep gone astray, 
 but I have returned to the fold, and have conse 
 crated my life anew." 
 
 But they put Tubbs on a way freight and sent 
 him home, where he was received by Tilly with 
 feminine sniffs of suspicion and certain forcible 
 expressions of disapproval. And some hours later, 
 when in a measure he had calmed down, Tubbs 
 remarked, apologetically : 
 
/WV/AS of A ((n*(t*. 77 
 
 "Tilly, it does a feller ti powerful heap o good 
 to go up to Topeky and hear the perlitical issues 
 ably discussed." 
 
the fcord Remembered 
 
HOW THE LORD REMEMBERED CURLY. 
 
 IT was three o clock in the afternoon,, and there 
 was a small commotion in Star Alley. The new 
 boy had come around to get his papers. True, in 
 the general cut and fit of the new boy s clothes 
 there was nothing iconoclastic. His trousers were 
 decidedly in the nature of the prevailing style of 
 the young men of his class, being much too short 
 in the legs and considerably too spacious in the 
 seat and at the knees. His shoes bore the aspect 
 of having been married, not mated, and the toe- 
 ends thereof seemed to threaten a general erup 
 tion. His shirt was unpretentious enough to 
 disarm Arabian hostility,, and the coat that loosely 
 covered it could not in any way be accepted as a 
 reflection on the taste of his companions. In fact, 
 on the principle that a well-dressed boy is the boy 
 whose dress excites no comment, the new-comer 
 was, in the judgment of the alley, a well-dressed 
 boy. 
 
 But when Micky Finn, who was the acknowledged 
 leader .of "de gang," called attention to the new 
 boy s hair, there was a general murmur of disap 
 probation. Indeed., this hair was quite a revela- 
 
82 Ifow the Lord Remembered Curly. 
 
 tion in its way. It was fair and soft and hung in 
 curls down to his shoulders, each curl standing 
 out as if a mother had lovingly twisted it in her 
 fingers. And it was this hair that gave great 
 often se to the motley company waiting for the first 
 edition, and caused such rude exclamations and 
 personal interrogations as " Ketch on to de freak ! " 
 "Look at mamma s pet !" "It s one of de seven 
 Sutherland sisters ! " " Why don t it go to de 
 musyum ?" accompanied by certain swaggering 
 motions of a threatening nature. 
 
 The new boy was not in the least abashed or 
 intimidated by this outcry, but stood blinking 
 lazily at the crowd with a look on his face that 
 was construed by Micky Finn as far-away, and, 
 therefore, insulting to an eminent degree. Micky 
 bristled up. 
 
 " Who curled your hair ? " he asked. 
 
 "My mother," answered the new boy, calmly. 
 
 It was a respectful answer, but Micky didn t 
 like it. He came a little nearer and said, threat 
 eningly : 
 
 "You ll have to cut it." 
 
 "I sha n t," said the new boy. 
 
 A gasp went through the crowd. It was the 
 first open rebuke the leader of the gang had 
 received since he laid Tommy Timmins low. 
 Micky himself was a little dazed at the bold 
 impertinence. He stepped up briskly and slapped 
 
How flic Lord Remembered Curly. 83 
 
 the new boy in the face. For a minute there was 
 a confusion of legs and arms and boots and curls, 
 and from the dust arose wails from Micky, who 
 was receiving in all parts of his small anatomy 
 painful punches from the vigorous fists of " mam 
 ma s pet." And when one of the pressmen ran out 
 and pulled off the new boy the Finn dynasty had 
 perished. The king was dead. Long live the 
 king! 
 
 It is only just to the new boy to say that he 
 bore his honors with becoming humility, and 
 accepted the crown and the succession with no 
 trace of undue exhilaration. lie told the com 
 mittee of notification, Patsy Haley and Reddy 
 Dobbs, that his mother called him Jamie, and he 
 admitted, very frankly, that he didn t like the 
 name. But the boys had already dubbed him 
 Curly, and Curly he shall be to the end of this 
 chapter. 
 
 As the days went by Curly grew in the confi 
 dence and esteem of the gang. Even Micky was 
 his stanch lieutenant. And one night when the 
 leader of the opposition crowd offered to wipe 
 Curly off the face of the earth, Micky then and 
 there threw himself into the breach as a vicarious 
 sacrifice. But Curly refused to be deprived of his 
 prerogatives, and with great ardor and almost 
 unseemly haste he thrashed his incautious dial- 
 
84 How the Lord Remembered CuTly. 
 
 lenger, and transferred the cliampionsliip to "dc 
 West Side." 
 
 In all projects for mental recreation and improve 
 ment Curly was the leading spirit. After the 
 papers were off and sold he would put himself at 
 the head of the gang and pilot the way to the 
 Varieties, where Mile. Spaghetti, the charming 
 queen of song, was a stellar attraction of the first 
 magnitude. And there lie and his companions 
 would sit through the performance, munching pea 
 nuts and other nutritious luxuries, listening crit 
 ically to the musical numbers and commenting in 
 the hearty, unbiased way of the juvenile connois 
 seur. And after the show they would repair to 
 their favorite chop-house, which they designated 
 by the somewhat misleading title "declub," and 
 partake of such viands as only a boy s stomach can 
 successfully withstand. 
 
 There was great excitement in Star Alley when 
 the play-bills announced that, in consequence of an 
 imperative demand for her presence in the East, 
 prior to her return to Paris, Mile. Spaghetti would 
 take a positively final farewell benefit. The man 
 ager begged leave to announce that for this occa 
 sion, by superhuman efforts and at fabulous 
 expense, he had engaged the services of Mile. 
 Natalie, the world s greatest skirt-dancer. JIc 
 also desired to add, incidentally, that with a reck 
 less, almost fatal, disregard of the terrible financial 
 
How the Lord Remembered Curly. 85 
 risk involved, he had stipulated for the appearance 
 of Zuleika, the peerless Mistress of the Air, who 
 would leap from a .Hying trapeze and turn three 
 distinct somersaults before alighting in the net. 
 Other startling attractions would be offered in 
 addition to the great charm of the beneficiary her 
 self, who would not only sing her wonderful 
 creation, "La Palonia," but would appear inner 
 most dazzling protean specialties. 
 
 In the interval between the sale of the first 
 edition and the appearance of the second, Curly 
 called a meeting of the gang and announced that 
 the fraternity would be expected to honor the great 
 Spaghetti in a body, lie argued with great earnest 
 ness that the gang had always encouraged true and 
 conscientious art, and he submitted that the efforts 
 of the manager in catering broadly and liberally to 
 an advanced popular taste merited marked and 
 substantial recognition. These remarks, which are 
 generalized with only the faintest suggestion of 
 Curly s eloquence, were greeted with great enthu 
 siasm and indorsed by a full bench. 
 
 It was, therefore, with the utmost surprise that 
 on the afternoon preceding the only Spaghetti s 
 farewell triumph the boys in the alley noted the 
 absence of Curly. The last edition, and then the 
 postscript, came out on the street, and still the 
 leading patron of art was missing. At a quarter 
 before eight there was a call of the roll at the 
 
86 How the Lord Remembered Curly. 
 
 usual rendezvous, and all responded save one. 
 That one was Curly. With heavy hearts the gang 
 filed into the theater, and took its elevated position 
 of honor. But the entertainment had been robbed 
 of its chief glory. In vain the erstwhile Queen of 
 Song warbled her most bewitching lyrics. In vain 
 the peerless Natalie shook her skirts and disported 
 to the pleasing strains of the augmented orchestra. 
 Gloom reigned in the critics corner, and, finally, 
 when the lithe Zuleika swung gracefully from the 
 trapeze, the disgusted Patsy Haley stood up and 
 bade her, in tones of wrathful scorn, "come off de 
 perch." That was exactly what she intended to 
 do, but so disconcerted was the Mistress of the Air 
 by the shrill, piping command that she came off 
 too soon, and instead of turning three distinct 
 somersaults, as per three-sheets, she landed a con 
 fused, disheveled and disgraced mass in the out 
 stretched net, and the boys, with many cutting 
 expressions of ribaldry and wrath, went over to the 
 club and banqueted in solemn silence. And the 
 consensus of opinion gathered then and there was 
 that the benefit had been a failure, and that the 
 beautiful Spaghetti was an "old stiff." 
 
 Another day passed, and Curly had neither ap 
 peared nor sent word of comfort. The gang was 
 becoming demoralized, and there were indications 
 of an onslaught from the Philistines of the East 
 side. Micky Finn rose up to meet the emergency. 
 
How the Lord Remembered Curly. 87 
 He admitted that Curly might be wrestling with 
 diphtheria or even contending against scarlet 
 fever, but something had to be done right away. 
 So, having disposed of his papers at a slaughter 
 sale, he summoned Patsy Haley and Reddy Dobbs 
 and organized a committee of investigation. 
 
 Curly and his widowed mother occupied unpre 
 tentious apartments in a well-filled tenement-house 
 at a convenient distance from the madding crowd. 
 For purposes of ventilation and other reasons, hy 
 gienic and economic, these apartments were at a 
 considerable distance above the telegraph wires, and 
 commanded a fine view of the packing-house dis 
 trict and the bend of the Missouri River where it 
 travels away from Kansas at a regular speed of four 
 miles an hour. The boys knew little of Curly s 
 mother beyond the fact that she was a sewing- 
 woman with strong religious tendencies which, 
 thus far, had not been transmitted to her son. 
 However, so great was the awe inspired by the very 
 thought of a person with authority over Curly that 
 they had no sooner climbed the three narrow nights 
 leading to Curly s suite than their courage failed 
 them. They paused at the end of the long, gloomy 
 hall and emitted those peculiar sounds by which a 
 boy signifies to another boy that he is wanted. 
 
 Great was the satisfaction of the gang when the 
 door opened and Curly s head protruded. Then 
 Curly s body followed, and directly Curly s legs car- 
 
Hoic the Lord Remembered Curly. 
 
 rierl him down the hall to his lieutenants, by whom 
 he was received with fitting demonstration of affec 
 tion. 
 
 " Wot s de matter, Curly ? " asked Micky. 
 
 "Mother s sick." 
 
 "Well, ain t yer had no doc ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Why ain t yer had no doc?" demanded Patsy 
 Haley, sternly. 
 
 "Because," answered Curly, desperately, "I 
 ain t had no money. First it was de rent, and 
 den it was t ings to rat, and we got broke before 
 we knowed it. " 
 
 A faint voice called from the chamber, and Curl v 
 disappeared with more rapidity than he had come. 
 The boys looked at one another, and Micky blurted 
 out: 
 
 " How much yer got, Patsy ? " 
 
 " T irty-t ree cents." 
 
 " How much yer got, Reddy ? " 
 
 "Twenty-four cents." 
 
 "And I ve got forty-one cents. Dat makes 
 ninety-eight cents tor pay for a doc fer Curly s 
 mudder. We owe it to him, anyhow. When my 
 dog was took up Curly paid ter git him out. \Vhen 
 you got stuck on der extry papes, Recldy, Curlv 
 took em off yer hands. When Patsy lost all his 
 money on craps Curly paid for his supper and took 
 him to der te-ayter. So we ll hire de doc." 
 
How the Lord Remembered (Jvrly. 89 
 
 "But no doc ain t goiii to come for no ninety- 
 eight cents/ scornfully said Reddy. 
 
 " Wot s de reason he ain t ? " replied Micky. " l)e 
 boom is off, and docs is liable tercomcfer wotcley 
 can get. An I knows one dat ll come anyhow. 
 It s Doc Streator. I seed him out at de ball game 
 Sunday afternoon, an he s de right stuff." 
 
 Doctor Streator sat in his office discussing Presi 
 dential possibilities with a friend. It had been a 
 prosperous day with .the doctor, and he felt con 
 vivial and friendly. And when he said " Come in," 
 and three small and not over-prepossessing boys 
 entered, he was more cordial than might have been 
 expected. 
 
 " Well, what do you want ? " 
 
 " We want yer to come and see a sick woman," 
 said Micky. 
 
 " How much money have you got ? " 
 
 Ninety-eight cents." 
 
 "You don t suppose Fm going down into the 
 footpad district for ninety-eight cents, do you?" 
 
 Micky grinned. "Yer said yer d go any time I 
 asked yer." 
 
 " I did, eh ? When did I say that ? " 
 
 "Out at de ball game one Sunday afternoon." 
 
 The doctor s friend leaned back and laughed. 
 "So you patronize Sunday ball games,- do you, 
 Streator ? Tell us about it, kid." 
 
 " It was de great game between Minneapolis and 
 
00 Ilo w the Lord Rein on be red Curly. 
 
 Kansas City fer tie championship," said Mickey. 
 " Me an Curly an licddy here an* Patsy had made 
 a sneak over de fence when de cops wasn t lookin . 
 De grand-stand an bleachers was all full, an de 
 people was pourin down inter de field. We stood 
 near de doc an two or free udder swells in de 
 nint iimin when Minneapolis was two runs 
 ahead." 
 
 "Yes, I remember that inning," said the doctor. 
 
 "Gunny came ter de bat," resumed Micky, "an 
 made a hit. Den Swartzell, what can t hit a bal 
 loon mostly, knocked one over de second bag. 
 An Holland hit a slow one inter de infield, an de 
 muckers was so excited datcley tumbled all over it, 
 an Gunny come home. Den little Xic sent anud- 
 der easy one, an he an Holland got put out on de 
 double play. About did time Round-de-AYorld 
 Jimmy he gits foxy an waits, an gits a base on 
 balls. An everybody was so excited dat dey breaks 
 inter de diamon an hollers an yells, an Elmer 
 Smith a-standin at de plate, swingin his but an 
 waitiii fer a good one. An I seed de doc a-wavin 
 his hat an hollerin with de rest of em. De Min 
 neapolis pitcher got rattled, an it was ten minutes 
 before de cops could get de doc an dc rest back 
 interline, while dey kep on hollerin : Hit er 
 out, Elmer ! An fin ly Elmer got one just where 
 he wanted it, an hit er out fer free bags, way ter 
 de center-field fence, an Swartzell an Jimmy come 
 
How the Lord Remembered Curly. 91 
 
 streakiii in, an we knowed de game was won. An 
 we all broke inter de diamon ag in an turned flip- 
 flaps an hollered. An de doc was jumpin around 
 an flingin his arms, an he hit me chug in de eye. 
 An den he gave me ten cents an told me dat if I 
 ever wanted him I should call on him an say : 
 Minneapolis." 1 
 
 The doctor threw himself back and chuckled at 
 the reminiscence, and his friend opened his mouth 
 and showed such a wide expanse of palate, and 
 laughed so uproariously, that the three boys fell 
 back in evident alarm. The doctor was the first 
 to recover. 
 
 "As a man of my word," said he, "I must see 
 this thing through. Come on, boys ; we ll go and 
 take a look at the <mudder." : 
 
 "And I ll go along, too," said his friend. "Per 
 haps here is an opportunity for genuine philan 
 thropy. Don t you worry about the bill, boys," 
 he added, kindly ; "I ll look after that myself." 
 
 " Dat s de room ; de t ird one to de left," whis 
 pered Micky, as the party stopped to breathe on 
 the third landing. And as the two gentlemen 
 knocked on the door, he drew the other boys aside 
 and said, decisively : 
 
 "Yer heered de doc s friend say dat Curly s 
 mudder ought to have some delic cies. Wot s de 
 matter wid our gittin em ? " 
 
 The proposition struck the boys favorably, for 
 
92 lion 1 ! the Lnrd Remembered Curly. 
 
 the idea that a gentleman could in any way rise to 
 an appreciation of delicacies,. as the poorer classes 
 understood them, was altogether too absurd to be 
 encouraged or entertained. 
 
 The doctor was saying, " Merely a case of debility 
 and low fever, brought on by over-work and insuf 
 ficient and improper nourishment," when the three 
 boys entered the room, bearing burdens of tribute. 
 
 "What s that?" he asked, sharply. 
 
 "Dem s delic cies," answered Micky, with pride 
 and confidence. 
 
 "For the Lord s sake, look here, Streator ! " said 
 his friend. And he drew forth first a cold pig s- 
 foot, then a tin saucepan of beans with a huge 
 chunk of pork in the middle, half a jelly-cake, 
 three or four greasy crullers, a Vienna sausage, 
 liberally sprinkled with horse-radish, and a lemon 
 pie. Curly was visibly affected by these unmis 
 takable evidences of affection, and his eyes rested 
 lovingly on the pie. 
 
 "For a low fever," said the doctor, thoughtfully, 
 " I cannot conscientiously recommend this sort of 
 diet." And as the boys faces fell, he added : "A 
 little quiet celebration in the hall in the way of a 
 supper for this young man here doesn t seem to be 
 out of the way." 
 
 80 the boys took Curly into the passageway 
 and stuffed him full of beans and pigs -l eet and 
 jelly-cake and lemon pie, and told him of the dis- 
 
J/ow tlic Lord Remembered Curb]. 93 
 
 grace that had overtaken the Mistress of the Air,, 
 and related the thousand and one things that had 
 upset the alley since his departure, and unfolded 
 a sinister plot to do up the other gang as soon as 
 he was able to assume the command. 
 
 And the doctor talked cheerily to the mother,, 
 and promised to have her up and out in three 
 days. And his friend left a five-dollar bill on the 
 bible, and intimated that other tokens of a friendly 
 interest would be speedily forthcoming. And the 
 poor mother, being a very weak and foolish 
 woman, could only cry softly and mumble a few 
 inarticulate words about the blessing of Heaven, 
 which the two gentlemen did not, or pretended 
 they did not, hear. 
 
 But when the whole party had gone off down 
 the stairs the mother called Curly to her, and ran 
 her lingers through his tangled hair, and said : 
 "I told you, Jamie, that the Lord would remem 
 ber those who trust in Him. You will not forget 
 to thank Him and bless His name." 
 
 Curly went to the window. Far down in the 
 street three sturdy little figures were trudging 
 along, the happiness in their big hearts banishing 
 the remembrance of their empty pockets. And 
 he turned to the sick mother and said, simply : 
 
 " An 7 de gang, mother, de gang ! " 
 
Jnuoluntari/ 
 
THE INVOLUNTARY MARRIAGE. 
 
 NEAJRLY forty years ago, when Thomas Beuton, 
 in a spirit of prophecy and a premonition of 
 brilliant futurity, had pointed to the Pacific Ocean 
 and exclaimed : " There is the east, there is 
 India ! " the restless fortune-seekers had begun to 
 drift into Kansas. Some passed on to the mount 
 ains, others to the far-away gold-fields of Cali 
 fornia, while the more prudent and conservative 
 remained Avheie the well-watered and fertile val 
 leys promised fields of golden cereals more attrac 
 tive and less illusive than the precious metal of the 
 new El Dorado. Many of these people are living 
 to-day, less adventurous, less hazard-loving than 
 when they first crossed the Missouri River, but full 
 of that same spirit and impulse that made a Kansas 
 possible. If they have lost their youth they have 
 not lost their pride in the memory of their youth, 
 and the tales they relate and the incidents they 
 recall are full of the quaint humor that adds 
 delight to the recital. 
 
 There were cranks in those days, the wildest, 
 maddest, most hopeless cranks; cranks of every 
 shade and every tendency ; cranks in religious 
 
 7 97 
 
98 Tic Involuntary Murriayr. 
 
 belief and in social customs ; cranks that criticised 
 the Lord and detied the devil ; cranks in politics 
 and in art ; cranks in manner and in dress. And 
 they all seemed to come together by a common 
 impulse and to move into Kansas. 
 
 That one crank should tolerate another was the 
 very essence of the true spirit of liberty. It was a 
 sort of chivalrous idea of freedom entirely con 
 sistent with the American spirit of progress, and 
 was founded on the conviction that time would 
 make the test and prove all things. Tim Murphy 
 exemplified this spirit. Tim had drifted into 
 Kansas in search of adventure,, and, in one way and 
 another, had found it until he settled down in the 
 reposeful dignity of a saloon-keeper. His tremen 
 dous strength and his fighting qualities added 
 greatly to his reputation, and, as he had thrashed 
 every pretender in the neighborhood, lie was much * 
 admired and respected. One day, while helplessly 
 intoxicated, he insulted a little Irishman, who 
 took advantage of his condition and knocked him 
 down between two whisky barrels. As often as 
 Tim would essay to rise, his small opponent would 
 hit him on the nose and tumble him back. At 
 last the bystanders interfered and held the little 
 man, whereupon Tim exclaimed, with maudlin 
 dignity : " Lave him be ; lave him be, and let him 
 sweat himself to death knockin me down." 
 
 This anecdote illustrates the tolerant spirit of 
 
The Involuntary Marriage. 99 
 
 the Kansan toward his associates, granted, perhaps, 
 in every instance save the one never-forgotten and 
 never-forgiven sin, slavery and pro-slavery senti 
 ment. 
 
 Into this strange jumble of social conditions 
 came Daniel Eastmann and his wife forty years 
 ago. A queer old couple, with much of the stern 
 ness of the Puritan and the vigor and aggressive 
 ness of the modern Yankee in their composition. 
 Unhappily, however, a little of the recognized 
 austere morality of the Puritan character was 
 lacking, as duly appeared. The Eastmanns were 
 not at the age when people look about for new 
 homes to be acquired only by ceaseless toil and 
 with threatening ills. But the old man was 
 strong and active, and capable of immense labors, 
 and his wife stood up under her share of the 
 responsibilities with no betrayal of weakness or dis 
 appointment. They had pushed on to the westward 
 in their search for an abiding-place, and, finding 
 nothing that promised contentment, had returned 
 to Kansas and settled down to the ordinary details of 
 pioneer life in one of the best and most prosperous of 
 the Kansas settlements. They were good-natured, 
 easy-going folk, and as they minded their own busi 
 ness in a strictly legitimate way, they were looked 
 upon as no undesirable additions to the commu 
 nity. For it was one of the privileges of the time 
 that the people in the main were too busv with 
 
100 The Involuntary Marriage. 
 
 their own affairs to waste the hours gossiping 
 about their neighbors. 
 
 Little by little, however, the rumor went around 
 that, notwithstanding the decorous behavior of old 
 man Eastmann and his partner, and despite the 
 undisputed nature of their relations, the couple 
 had never been married. The women were the 
 first to discover this delicate social question, and 
 to express their regret that in the hurry to get 
 along in life the old people had overlooked this 
 trifling formality. The men shrugged their shoul 
 ders and remarked that that was " Eastmann s busi 
 ness," and if Mrs. Eastmann was satisfied it was not 
 necessary to put too fine a point on the amicable 
 domestic arrangement. Moreover, they had no 
 children ; therefore, no damage could be done 
 except in the way of example, and as long as the 
 example was merely tolerated, not indorsed, it 
 would, doubtless, end right there. 
 
 For this magnanimous sentiment the old gentle 
 man did not evince any surprising amount of grat 
 itude. When he learned that his "arrangement" 
 had been subjected to discussion and, in instances, 
 to criticism, he boldly acknowledged the state of 
 affairs. lie called attention to the agitated con 
 dition of American society, to the numerous crazes 
 that were affecting the people, and intimated that 
 he had as much right to his whim as other people 
 had to theirs. Furthermore, with him it was 
 
The Involuntary Marriage. 101 
 
 strictly a matter of conscience, and he flattered 
 himself that he had at last come to a part of the 
 country where individual conscience counted for 
 a great deal. 
 
 This compliment to Kansas pleased the com 
 munity immensely. Moreover, it was not to be 
 denied that the delicate reminder as to "other 
 people s whims" smacked of a truth that was 
 irrefutable. So the little peculiarity was passed 
 over as an innocuous fancy, and the Eastmanns 
 were firmly established as a part of the social 
 fabric. Occasionally the old man would partake 
 too freely of the popular liquor of the day, and at 
 such times would discourse eloquently on the 
 iniquitous marriage laws of the United States, but 
 these orations merely amused the neighbors, and 
 did not in the least detract from his standing or 
 debar him from the privileges of social gayeties. 
 
 One night the Perkinses gave an entertainment 
 of unusual brilliancy, and as Perkins was some 
 what of a crank himself he made it a special point 
 that all the other cranks should be present. Inas 
 much as the cranks, of one kind or another, com 
 posed four-fifths of the population, it is easy to 
 imagine that the hospitable home of the Perkinses 
 was the theater of a large and brilliant collection 
 of human freaks. The Eastmanns were conspicuous 
 among the guests, not only through reason of their 
 entertaining social qualities, but on account of the 
 
102 The Involuntary Marriar/e. 
 
 exhilarating amount of liquor which the old man 
 carried where he felt it would do him the most good. 
 He was in an argumentative mood also, and the 
 marriage laws of the country were shown to be 
 unjust and inhuman in every corner of Perkins s 
 house. 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Duncan looked upon Eastman n 
 with sorrow stamped on his benevolent face. Mr. 
 Duncan was a holy man. He endeavored, by his 
 godly life as well as by his spiritual exhortation, to 
 bring his people into the strait and narrow path 
 and keep them there. The peculiar relation of the 
 Eastmanns had always been to this worthy man the 
 source of sincere grief and perplexing thought. 
 How to influence them to a realization of their 
 offense against Christian morality and the enlight 
 ened spirit of the age was the problem that con 
 sumed many of his moments. Eastmann, fond as 
 he was of argument and of defending his theories, 
 could never be brought to face Parson Duncan. If 
 they met on the street, the old man hurried on 
 with a half-respectful nod. If the preacher halted 
 before his gate, Eastmann slipped out of the back 
 door. To outsiders it appeared that the old man 
 was afraid of the parson, but Eastmann excused him 
 self on the ground that preachers had no sense and 
 weren t worth talking to. So matters had run 
 along for months, and apparently Parson Duncan 
 
The Involuntary Marriage. 103 
 
 was as far away from all hope of practical good as 
 ever. 
 
 When the parson looked around the Perkinses 
 rooms and saw the Eastmanns, something told him 
 that the hour had come. A social gathering is not 
 exactly the place for earnest missionary work, but 
 Parson Duncan went on the theory that he must 
 do his Master s bidding at any time or place, 
 according as it is written : " Whatsoever thy hand 
 fincleth to do, do it with thy might." In this 
 cheerful and godly resolution he was favored by 
 circumstances. Eastmann stood in the corner of 
 the room with a dozen grinning friends around 
 him. He discoursed on his favorite theme : liberty 
 of action and liberty of conscience ; and what he 
 lacked in argument he made up in declamation and 
 gesture. The parson quietly edged his way into 
 the circle, adjusted his spectacles, and listened. 
 And when the parson looked over his spectacles, it 
 was a trying and a critical moment for the devil 
 and the instruments of his mischief. 
 
 The old man scowled. Plainly, he was annoyed 
 by the parson s presence. Truly, the goodness that 
 shone round about that righteous man was a con 
 stant menace to even the smallest impropriety, and a 
 perpetual rebuke. But there was no dodging the 
 issue. He must go ahead or strike his colors, and 
 to a man of Eastmann s pride and doggedness sur 
 render was out of the question. Indeed, after the 
 
104 The Involuntary Marriage. 
 
 first surprise, he was gratified to note that he was 
 more fluent than usual, and with his renewal of 
 courage came a wealth of sarcasm and a fund of 
 wit that delighted his hearers and provoked many 
 outbursts of laughter. Mrs. Eastmann, standing 
 near, took no part in the conversation,, but her 
 smiles showed her appreciation of the old man s 
 argument and her sympathy with his opinions. 
 
 Parson Duncan was not a joker. Perhaps he 
 never willingly made a jest in his life, and as for 
 sarcasm, his gentle nature abhorred it. But he 
 was simple, and earnest, and straightforward, and 
 he never shrank from any contest that might seem 
 to lie within his duty. So when old Eastmann had 
 finished he took up the subject in his thoughtful, 
 considerate way, and argued the responsibility of 
 the individual to society, and the necessity of uni 
 formity in a perfect moral system. Furthermore, 
 he quoted freely from the Scriptures, instanced 
 the divine blessing on the marriage tie, and dwelt 
 on the solemnity and beauty of the marriage cere 
 mony with such fervor that Mrs. Eastmann cast 
 down her eyes, and others standing around were 
 visibly affected. 
 
 The news that Parson Duncan and old East 
 mann had at last locked horns spread with great 
 rapidity, and in a moment the guests had crowded 
 into the room where the discussion was at heat. 
 Kastmann s perversity and obstinacy increased 
 
The Involuntary Marriage. 105 
 
 with the size of his audience. He held the 
 good parson s words up to ridicule in a manner 
 that reflected great credit on his powers at repar 
 tee, but to the disadvantage of his standing as a 
 respecter of the cloth. The parson s troubled face 
 showed that he was pained by Eastmann s levity, 
 and when he spoke again his tone was more deci 
 sive, and boded no good for the enemy of the altar. 
 
 "It is really strange, very strange," said Parson 
 Duncan. "I cannot, even from your argument, 
 understand your aversion to the marriage cere 
 mony, as sanctioned by your country. You tell 
 me that you love this woman with whom you are 
 living." 
 
 "I don t deny that," answered old Eastmann, 
 with a grin. 
 
 "And you tell me further that you expect to 
 live with her as long as you are on earth, as every 
 husband is expected to do." 
 
 " That has always been my intention, and I guess 
 I ll stick to it." 
 
 The parson stood- a .minute, absorbed in thought. 
 "Remarkable, very remarkable," he muttered. 
 Then, turning abruptly to the woman, and speak 
 ing gently to her for the first time, he asked : 
 
 " Can it be true that you love this man who has 
 done you a wrong, or at least has encouraged you 
 in a false and unworthy belief ? " 
 
 The woman showed her confusion, and lowered 
 
106 The Involuntary Marriage. 
 
 her eyes. Recovering herself, she looked at the 
 parson steadily, and said : 
 
 U I have always loved him, sir." 
 
 " And do you, in the face of this error,, hope and 
 expect to live with him all your life ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes, sir." 
 
 "Then," exclaimed the holy man, with a ring 
 of triumph in his voice and a heightened color on 
 his face, " by virtue of my office, and in accord 
 ance with the laws that govern this Territory, I 
 pronounce you man and wife. Kiss your bride, 
 sir ! " 
 
Colonel 
 
COLONEL BOLLINGER. 
 
 DISPUTE it who may, contradict it who will, the 
 fact remains that the Ancient and Honorable Order 
 of Colonels has been for many years the pride and 
 glory of the people of the land of Corn. How and 
 where this order originated has never been 
 explained to the entire satisfaction of the Colonels 
 themselves. Some historians and archaeologists 
 have claimed that it was introduced into Missouri 
 by Colonel Daniel Boone when he left Kentucky 
 in a huff in 1795, and that Colonel Boone had 
 formed the parent chapter in Kentucky three 
 years before. Others assert that the modern Colo 
 nel did not exist, either by right of heritage or of 
 knighthood, until after Missouri had been incor 
 porated as a State. A third faction contends that 
 the order sprang into existence shortly after the 
 Mexican War, but achieved no prominence as a 
 political or social factor until the close of the 
 operations in 1860-05. Be all this as it may, the 
 order has attained a remarkable growth, and now 
 numbers thousands of members in Missouri and 
 Kansas, to say nothing of the branches in other 
 States and Territories. Perhaps next to the Louis- 
 109 
 
110 Colonel Bollinger. 
 
 villo chapter, the Kansas City chapter is the most 
 famous, both for its aggregation of wealth, culture 
 and courtliness, and for the display of those shin 
 ing social qualities which differentiate the true 
 Colonel from his fellow-man. 
 
 To guard against all possible misapprehension it 
 must be said that Doctor Webster s definition of 
 "Colonel" is very misleading. The Colonel, as 
 understood in the Missouri interpretation of the 
 word, is not the leader of a regiment or of a 
 column, and, in fact, has no martial pretensions 
 whatever. ISTor is the word used in the old 
 English sense and in the vulgar manner described 
 by Samuel Butler in Hudibras. The Missouri 
 Colonel is indeed a leader, but a leader of men 
 and measures in a purely civil or social way. A 
 clearer idea of this distinction may be gained from 
 a queer little pamphlet which was discovered in 
 one of the old slave counties of central Missouri 
 some years ago. This pamphlet purported to give 
 the constitution and by-laws of the Order of 
 Colonels, and, although it has never been officially 
 acknowledged, it cannot be denied that it is 
 wonderfully faithful to appearances. Herein it is 
 alleged that the order is a social, not a business 
 organization, and that business meetings are 
 strictly prohibited save in moments of rare emer 
 gency. The restrictions bearing on membership 
 are thus set down : 
 
Colonel Bollinycr. Ill 
 
 "Article I. Section 1. Once a Colonel, always 
 a Colonel. 
 
 " Section 2. Ko person who has participated in 
 military service shall be eligible to membership. 
 
 " Section 8. In time of war the Colonel shall 
 prepare for peace. 
 
 "Section 4. The pen is mightier than the 
 sword, and the priming-hook has distinct advan 
 tages over the spear. 
 
 " Section 5. Drink no longer water, but use a 
 little stimulant for thy stomach s sake." 
 
 Colonel Bellinger had been a Colonel for so many 
 years that it was popularly believed that he was 
 born that way. Indeed, Colonel Bollinger himself 
 smiled amiably and mysteriously whenever the 
 question was introduced in his presence. He 
 lived on a handsome estate near the city, and rode 
 a fine dapple-gray mule into town whenever affairs 
 of state were pressing. For the Colonel was quite 
 an oracle in his way, and his opinions were widely 
 sought, not only by his fellow-Colonels, but by 
 people of all conditions in life, more especially 
 political life. And while, as a lawyer, Colonel 
 Bollinger might have acquired great wealth by the 
 sale of his opinions, such was his overflowing good 
 nature that he would sit all day in front of a popu 
 lar caravansary, dispensing advice to all comers, 
 free as salvation, and pausing only for a few 
 moments on motion to adjourn to an excellent 
 
1 1 2 Colonel Bollinger. 
 
 place of refreshment in high favor with the 
 Colonels. And at night, well pleased with a day 
 profitably spent, and a trifle top-heavy from 
 excessive good cheer, he would mount the dapple- 
 gray mule and jog leisurely homeward, distribut 
 ing pleasant greetings and delivering appropriate 
 orations by the way. 
 
 Colonel Bellinger found great delight in the 
 society of Colonel Dunklin, with whom lie had 
 daily many convivial bouts and justs at knightly 
 repartee. Colonel Bellinger was much more im 
 pressive than Colonel Dunklin, being of full habit, 
 with great abdominal capacity, and with a voice 
 that on occasion could roar as fiercely as the Gac- 
 tulian lion or "as gently as the sucking dove." 
 Colonel Dunklin, on the other hand, had all the 
 mild outer characteristics of the typical Missouri 
 Colonel. He was tall and willowy. His hair was 
 rather long, and his eyes were full of pathos, He 
 wore the black slouch hat of the brigadier, the 
 long black coat, the shiny trousers with the broad* 
 flares that covered the tight-fitting boots, the vest 
 open down to the last button, the high collar and 
 the shoe-string necktie. Without he was the pic 
 ture of melancholy and humility, but inwardly, it 
 was whispered among the Colonels, he was full of 
 dead men s bones. 
 
 One fine day, as was their wont on all days, 
 regardless of meteorological conditions. Colonel 
 
Bollinger. 113 
 
 Bellinger and Colonel Dunklin were proceeding 
 arm in arm down the street with a certain little 
 back room as the definite object in view. Colonel 
 Bollinger was in an extraordinary flow of spirits, 
 and his cheery oratory excited the smiles and the 
 admiration of the people who paused to salute the 
 Colonels and receive, perchance, a sort of benedic 
 tion in return. Turning a corner rather sharply, 
 the Colonels were suddenly precipitated into the 
 arms of Mr. Tubbs of Kansas, who had come down 
 to the city in the interest of prohibition, of which 
 theory he was one of the most earnest apostles. A 
 moment of profound embarrassment followed, for 
 in the campaign of the previous fall Colonel 
 Bollinger had made a few Democratic speeches in 
 Tubbs s neighborhood, and in the excitement of 
 debate had likened Tubbs to several pleasing 
 varieties of the Mephitis Americana, or domestic 
 skunk. To which Tubbs had replied with spirit, 
 repelling the implied family connection, and stig 
 matizing the Colonel as a vampire, a hyena, a 
 buzzard, and several other birds and animals with 
 carnivorous proclivities. The incident had been 
 taken up by the party newspapers, and had led to 
 a violent denunciation of Colonel Bollinger, who 
 was berated throughout the State of Kansas as an 
 ex-rebel brigadier, a guerrilla, and a bushwhacker, 
 much to the detriment of his standing as a Colonel. 
 Colonel Bollinger first recovered presence of 
 
114 (.Lionel Bollinger. 
 
 mind. With a sweep of his arm which arrested 
 the attention of the passers-by, and with a tone of 
 the most engaging sweetness, he said : 
 
 " Ah, this must be Colonel Tubbs, of Kansas. I 
 am glad to see you in old Mizzoora, sir. Allow 
 me to make you acquainted with Colonel Dunklin, 
 one of the old guard, sir." 
 
 And before the still embarrassed Tubbs could 
 reply he went on : 
 
 "When we last met, Colonel Tubbs, over in your 
 country, sir, we had a passage at arms. Accord 
 ing to the brutalities of life we should still be ene 
 mies, but I cannot forget, sir, that you are now in 
 my territory, and the laws of hospitality forbid. 
 I may add that I am glad, sir, that we are so hap 
 pily met. My friend Colonel Dunklin and I 
 were stepping down for a little refreshment. Will 
 you join us ? You must join us." 
 
 Tubbs offered a feeble resistance and surren 
 dered. Moreover, it was now high noon, and 
 Tubbs was weary and dry. The three gentlemen 
 passed down the street, turned one corner, then 
 another, and disappeared behind a door which was 
 familiar to every Colonel in at least two States. 
 They passed unflinchingly by the elegantly pol 
 ished counter and into the room beyond. 
 
 The little old gentleman who was expectantly 
 taking down three tumblers stared at them in 
 astonishment. " I have been in business a good 
 
Colonel Bollinger. 115 
 
 many years," said he confidentially to his assistant, 
 "and I have had considerable experience with the 
 Colonels, from whom I derive not a little of my 
 princely revenue, but this is the first time that I 
 ever saw any of them pass this counter without 
 weakening." 
 
 "Colonel Tubbs," said Colonel Bollinger, as the 
 gentlemen sat down at the table, "if I am not 
 deceived in the habit of you Kansas gentlemen, it 
 must be hours since you breakfasted." Then, 
 addressing the negro waiter : " George, take the 
 gentleman s order." 
 
 Tubbs began to feel a little more at ease. " If 
 you don t mind," said he, half apologetically, "I 
 think I will try a whitefish. Not that we don t 
 have fish in our country," he added, hastily, "for 
 our channel cat is considered mighty good eatin , 
 but a whitefish, with a little whisky on the side" 
 here Tubbs lowered his voice " is my favor-ite 
 meal." 
 
 "Good, very good," replied Colonel Bollinger, 
 approvingly. "A whitefish is excellent eating, 
 especially with whisky, which destroys its fat and 
 deleterious qualities. George, bring a whitefish 
 and a whisky no, stop, a whitefish and three 
 whiskies, and two plates of bacon and greens, and 
 have three more whiskies ready on call." 
 
 All this time Colonel Dunklin sat in silence, 
 with his pathetic eyes fastened upon a placard on 
 
110 Colonel Bollinger. 
 
 the wall, the letters standing out with a clear-cut 
 cameo distinctness,, and forming the expressive and 
 suggestive sentence : " Lunch without drinks. 20 
 cents." 
 
 "I don t suppose that it is right for me," said 
 Colonel Dunklin, dreamily, "to dictate to a man 
 how he shall run his business, and I don t think 
 that twenty cents is too much for a lunch, if the 
 lunch is clean, well cooked and palatable. But 
 what bothers me is how anybody in the possession 
 of reasoning faculties can want a lunch without 
 drinks. " 
 
 "As for that matter," replied Colonel Bellinger, 
 "it seems absurd, from a mere financial stand 
 point, that a man should pay twenty cents for a 
 lunch and a drink when he can get two drinks and 
 a lunch thrown in for a quarter. The longer you 
 remain with us, Colonel Tubbs, the better you will 
 understand these grasping tricks of the trade." 
 
 The whitefish and the Missouri sauce had 
 diffused a gentle glow through Tubbs s system, 
 and had put him on friendly, almost bold, terms 
 with his companions. "1 should like to be a 
 Colonel very much indeed," he said, heartily, "but 
 the fact is I only got to be a captain in the war "- 
 
 At the word "war" the Colonels turned very 
 pale and laid down their knives, shuddering 
 violently. But Tnbbs, not perceiving, went on : 
 
 " The question is, if I became a Colonel, as I 
 
Colonel Bollinycr. 117 
 
 want to, ain t I likely to lose my standin as a 
 prohibitionist ? " 
 
 "Our attitude," answered Colonel Bellinger, "is 
 easily understood. It is always our intention, so 
 long as God gives us the strength, to throw our 
 influence against the ravages of prohibition. You 
 are undoubtedly conscientious in the stand you 
 have taken George, fill up the gentleman s glass 
 but we contend that all sumptuary laws are 
 calculated to strike a blow at the fundamental 
 principles of our system. While the personal 
 liberty of speech should be in no sense abridged, 
 we cannot, as a body, interfere with the inequal 
 ities of the law in other communities, except as 
 .pertains to personal welfare and comfort." 
 
 " You should, however, at all times," interrupted 
 Colonel Dunklin, " be well fortified against these 
 inequalities." 
 
 "Of course," said Colonel Bellinger, earnestly, 
 " that is understood. And so I would advise you 
 to be what we might -call a non-resident Colonel, 
 submit as patiently as possible, and continue to pro 
 cure inspiration in the facile way now popular in 
 Kansas. I admire you, sir ; I admire any man for 
 devotion to principle, however mistaken. George, 
 bring me three lumps of sugar and a very little 
 water. I will show you, sir, how to make an excel 
 lent Kentucky toddy." 
 
 As Tubbs sipped the intoxicant the Colonel so 
 
118 Colonel Bellinger. 
 
 skillfully prepared, lie grew more and more confi 
 dential. " I don t mind tellin you," he said, " that 
 I m a candidate for a Federal office. Now, if I am 
 a Colonel, wouldn t that hurt me ? " 
 
 Colonel Dunklin looked at Colonel Bellinger and 
 smiled. Colonel Bollinger carelessly threw a piece 
 of lemon peal into the cuspidor and said, with 
 dignity : 
 
 " The fact that a man is a Colonel is good and 
 sufficient reason why he is eligible for any office 
 whatsoever, per se. And if the office does not seek 
 him, he is perfectly justified in seeking the office. 
 And I hold that if the public service appears so to 
 require, he is free at any time to change his polit 
 ical views. In accordance with an ancient and 
 honorable precedent, if he is not a candidate for 
 office, he may drink socially with one who is, but 
 he is not to be subsidized, hampered or impeded 
 by such courtesy. For example George, bring 
 in three more of the same kind, and just a dash of 
 Angostura." 
 
 Tubbs s hand went down into his pocket, but the 
 Colonel waved him off with a gesture full of impe 
 rious eloquence. 
 
 " No, sir, not in Mizzoora. You are my guest, 
 sir, and shall pay for nothing in my presence. 
 George, you will see that the gentleman has what 
 ever he wishes, and that he wants for nothing." 
 
Colonel Bollinger. 119 
 
 George grinned, and Tubbs felt another weight 
 added to the burden of his obligation. 
 
 "And now, sir/ says Colonel Bellinger/ rising, 
 " I must bid you good day. I hope to see you 
 often in Mizzoora, sir, and to welcome you to the 
 extent of our poor hospitality." 
 
 Colonel Dunklin likewise stood up and looked at 
 Tubbs with his melancholy eyes. And both the 
 Colonels bowed with great elegance and dignity, 
 and shook Tubbs s hand and promised themselves 
 the honor of his society at an early day. And as 
 they passed out Tubbs could hear Colonel Bellin 
 ger s sonorous voice discoursing on the fineness of 
 the day and the glorious outlook for the mint 
 crop. 
 
 "After all," soliloquized Tubbs, as he leaned 
 back in his chair and gave himself up to pleasant- 
 reflections, "I sometimes wonder if we ain t too 
 hard on these Missourians. Of course they re . 
 dead wrong, perlitically, and they re all of! on the 
 great principles of prohibition. But they re gen 
 ial and friendly, and I ain t got a word to say 
 agin their hospitality. That whitensh was prime 
 and the liquors fust-class." And Tubbs closed his 
 ^eyes in an ecstasy of recollection. 
 
 From this agreeable reverie he was roused by the 
 arrival of George, who respectfully laid a slip of 
 paper before him. Tubbs picked it up with a 
 slight sinking in the pit of his stomach and read : 
 
120 
 
 "Whitefish, 60 cents ; cigars, 50 cents ; drink?, 
 82.10. Total, $3.20. What s this ? r 
 "Debill," 
 
 "But I don t owe no bill. This is Colonel Bol- 
 lingers matter. Yon heard what he said." 
 
 The negro grinned. " I reckon cle Knnnel done 
 fergit. De Kimnel mighty cur us dat way. lie 
 fergit a heap o times, when dc odder gcn men 
 have to pay." 
 
 Tubbs bowed his head for a full minute. When 
 he raised his face it shone with a new light and 
 was glorified by wisdom. 
 
 " George," said he, "take a good look at me. I 
 am from Kansas, and my name is Tubbs. If ever 
 you see me walkin into this robbers roost with a 
 Colonel anybody from Missouri, I want you to 
 kick me down to the river and into it. Here s 
 your three twenty." 
 
 An hour later Tubbs stood on the bluff that 
 looks far over into Kansas. In front of him was 
 the clear sky, and the fresh air, suggestive of 
 sobriety and virtue ; behind him the smoke and 
 dirt of the city, typifying deceit and fraud and 
 injured innocence. As he climbed into a cable 
 car to bear him across the river, another car came 
 up the hill, and a familiar voice cried out : 
 
 "Going home, arc you ? A pleasant journey to 
 
 you. Come and see me when you revisit the city." 
 
 Tubbs looked at Colonel Bellinger, who was 
 
Colonel Bollinrjcr. 1-1 
 
 waving a cordial farewell from the retreating car, 
 and almost fell from the grip in his astonishment 
 and wrath. 
 
 Well, I am " 
 
 But whatever he was, was lost in the clang of 
 the gripman s bell. 
 
Deaf Qar. 
 
THE DEAF EAR. 
 
 MR. LITTLEJOIIX JKXKS, in spite of many hours 
 of research and patient inquiry in the various 
 departments of his family connection, was never 
 quite able to discover at what time or in what way 
 he acquired a deaf ear. The traditions of the 
 household did not point to scarlet fever or measles ; 
 as a boy he was not allowed to go to the swim 
 ming-hole, that enemy of the organ of hearing, 
 and he was not even able to recall that the family 
 methods of punishment, while very ingenious and 
 numerous and altogether painful, and extending 
 over a large area of epidermis, included that 
 resounding salute on the side of the head which 
 is so undeservedly popular with thoughtless par 
 ents. So Mr. Jenks, admitting the unimpeach 
 able fact of his hardness of hearing, had all the 
 evidence in the world to prove that the affliction 
 was in defiance of human precedent and contrary to 
 physical laws. From the moment that young Lit- 
 tlejohn emerged from the nursery he was made to 
 feel that he had been hatched out of the duck egg. 
 A blithe, joyous lad. he was fond of his compan 
 ions and of his sports, but his was unhappily a 
 125 
 
l^J 77/6 Deaf Ear. 
 
 confidence that was ill-repaid by his playmates, 
 who took full advantage of his good nature and 
 his infirmity. He recalled in after life the mem 
 orable day when old Spanker took charge of the 
 district school, and by his marvelous instinct 
 detected the boys in a flagrant outrage on scho 
 lastic propriety. 
 
 "Who did this ?" queried old Spanker. 
 
 " Littlejohn Jenks," replied the boys, softly. 
 
 "Did you do this, Jenks?" 
 
 Xow Littlejohn had not heard a word of the 
 conversation, but a scheming little boy close at 
 hand whispered promptingly: 
 
 "Wants to know if yer sorry. 
 
 "Oh, yes, sir, if you please, sir," replied Little 
 john, smartly. 
 
 Thereupon old Spanker fell upon him with an 
 awful grip and a terrifying strap, and larruped him 
 up and down the row of benches, balancing to the 
 right and swinging to the left until the dignity of 
 the school-room had been fully maintained and 
 vindicated. It is due to old Spanker to say that 
 when the facts in the case were developed he made a 
 handsome apology, which Littlejohn did not hear, 
 but which was repeated to him many years after 
 by one of his schoolmates on the gladsome occasion 
 of old Spanker s funeral. 
 
 Such incidents as this soon gave Littlejohn a 
 reserve and a caution beyond his years. His buov- 
 
Tlic Deaf Ear. 127 
 
 ancv and confidence were replaced by timidity and 
 suspicion. He avoided his comrades and shrank 
 from his teachers, and as for the girls, he was on 
 speaking terms with few and on hearing terms 
 with none. He went through college very much 
 as a blind man would go through an art 
 gallery, and graduated just in time to receive the 
 blessing of his departing parents (interpreted to 
 him after the funeral), and to come into possession 
 of an income large enough to discourage any 
 improper appetite for labor. 
 
 As Mr. Littlejohn Jenks increased in years and 
 experience he decreased in hearing and confidence. 
 While his money and his gentle birth gave to him 
 an unquestioned standing in society, he was slow 
 to take advantage of its privileges, and slower still 
 to trust to the integrity of the encouraging smiles 
 that were not infrequently lavished upon him by 
 the mothers of marriageable young women. From 
 time to time he cherished the delusive hope that 
 his infirmity might be cured, and occasionally he 
 fell into the hands of specialists, who ran long 
 rods up his nostrils and into his ears, and gouged 
 his palate, and applied burning and torturesome 
 chemicals thereto, until what little nerve he had 
 was entirely dissipated. But, beyond the recol 
 lection of many hours of agony and the receipt of a 
 large and comprehensive bill, there were no 
 notable results. So Mr. Jenks at last abandoned 
 
128 Tit? Denf Ear. 
 
 hope and treatment and gave himself up to his 
 
 fate. 
 
 That a gentleman of Mr. Jenks s means and per 
 sonality, whose greatest charm was a most alluring 
 air of settled melancholy, should he allo \vecl to es 
 cape entirely the demands of society, was not to he 
 entertained. At times he yielded weakly to the 
 efforts made for his ensnaring, and those conces 
 sions were always the bitterest recollections of his 
 life. It was his misfortune to patronize a dining 
 over which the Reverend Mr. Pentateuch was re 
 quested to say grace. Perhaps from his connec 
 tion with the English church, Mr. Pentateuch was 
 accustomed to divide his blessings, as it were, into 
 first and second lessons. Be this as it may, Mr. 
 Jenks, in his anxiety to appear thoroughly at his 
 ease, noticed a half-smile on the pretty face of his 
 vis-a-vis,. and reciprocated with a look of such in 
 nocent ardor that the young woman was thrown 
 into blushing confusion. Just at this time Mr. 
 Pentateuch, having paused in deference to his long 
 established custom, was proceeding with the for 
 mula which trusts that "these viands may be 
 sanctified to our use," when, to the unspeakable 
 horror of the company, Mr. Jenks addressed the 
 young woman with the untimely and not altogether 
 original observation, " A penny for your thoughts." 
 The indignation of the clergyman and the pain of 
 the hostess only added to the mirth of the guests, 
 
The Deaf Ear. 129 
 
 and the rest of the grace was intelligible to the 
 Deity alone. 
 
 It was also Mr. Jenks s misfortune to be seated 
 invariably next to the visiting young lady, who 
 was unaware of his infirmity, and this led to many 
 unhappy results. As long as Mr. Jenks could do 
 the talking he was reasonably safe, for his conver 
 sation dealt exclusively with assertion that involved 
 no argument, and never trenched on the province 
 of the interrogatory. But Mr. Jenks was not a 
 gentleman of fluent speech or surging ideas, and 
 it always happened that, despite his most arduous 
 endeavors, the monologue soon languished. As 
 has been related, Mr. Jenks s engaging air of mel 
 ancholy often \\oii for him the confidence of the 
 ladies, and perhaps this is why Miss Alsopp, who 
 was placed contiguous to the deaf ear, felt irresist 
 ibly impelled to communicate to him the harrow 
 ing tale of her aunt, who had lost her life in a 
 burning vessel at sea. 
 
 "And it is related by Doctor Penfield, one of the 
 survivors," went on Miss Alsopp, "that during 
 that dreadful scene my aunt did not lose her 
 equanimity. Just before she was enveloped by 
 the flames she cried out with a loud voice, like the 
 martyred Stephen, and went to her rest singing 
 one of the sweet songs of the Christian faith." 
 
 Mr. Jenks had heard nothing of this heart-rend 
 ing story, but he gathered from the smiles of hi -3 
 
130 The Deaf Ear. 
 
 neighbor on the right, who was rallying her part 
 ner, that the tale had been a sprightly one. So he 
 leaned back and laughed heartily, and said : " Good, 
 good, very neat ! " The look of horror on Miss 
 Alsopp s face soon gave way to indignation. She 
 whispered to her neighbor, and in an unduly 
 short time it had spread around the table that 
 Jenks was uproariously drunk. Not until Mr. 
 Jenks was putting on his overcoat in the dressing- 
 room did he learn the particulars of his error, and 
 by that time the offended lady had demanded the 
 protection of a loathsome rival and disappeared. 
 
 This episode so weighed on Mr. Jenks s spirits 
 that never thereafter was he known to smile in 
 society. As he confessed in his diary, he took no 
 chances. In vain the company joined in a general 
 burst, in vain the brightest sallies were thrown at 
 him fortissimo. "It won t do," he said, with a 
 sad shake of the head ; "you see, by the time I 
 catch the joke and laugh, the company may be 
 talking about religion or death, and I m sure to 
 get the worst end of it. It s much better to wait 
 and do all my laughing at home." Which showed 
 that Jenks possessed the kindest heart and ten- 
 derest sensibilities. 
 
 Mr. Jenks s besetting weakness was music. It 
 was considered quite a Ion mot to ask Jenks if he 
 was going to see the concert. Not content with 
 patronizing all the celebrities of the day, Mr. Jenks 
 
The Deaf Ear. 131 
 
 studied the flute and violin, and sometimes yielded 
 to a polite request to play in company. These ex 
 hibitions were purely experimental, for Mr. Jenks 
 was at constant warfare with his accompanist, both 
 as to time and pitch, and produced the most extraor 
 dinary effects in his efforts to harmonize instru 
 ments a quarter of a tone apart, But as the com 
 pany never paid the slightest attention to Jenks s 
 performance, except occasionally to execrate it, 
 and went on with its conversation, perfectly satis 
 fied that the breach of etiquette would be lost on 
 the performer, no serious consequences resulted. 
 
 So the years went by, and Mr. Jenks began to 
 experience that unsettled feeling, that indefinable 
 longing and loneliness that come with protracted 
 bachelorhood. His companions had married and 
 prospered, as far as prosperity can come with mar 
 riage. He had officiated as attendant at weddings 
 and as godfather at christenings, until a genuine 
 rivalry had sprung up between him and his rector. 
 
 " We esteem you highly in the parish, my dear 
 Jenks," said the Reverend Mr. Surplice; "your 
 conduct is generally exemplary. But by this life of 
 singleness you deprive a girl of a worthy husband, 
 you neglect one of God s ordinances, and you 
 ahem you rob me of what ought to be a sub 
 stantial fee." 
 
 This clerical reproof set Mr. Jenks to thinking. 
 He confessed his loneliness and willingness to 
 
132 The. Deaf Ear. 
 
 embrace matrimony on favorable terms. He ad 
 mitted that, while lie scouted the idea so fre 
 quently advanced, that two can live as cheaply as 
 one, two loving hearts can spend money more 
 profitably than one. But where should he apply ? 
 He ran over the list of eligible young women of 
 his acquaintance, and sighed to think that the lot 
 had been carefully sorted and robbed of its chief 
 ornaments, ^s o, stop ! Agatha Brown remained. 
 He had known Agatha since she was a little blue- 
 eyed, waxen-cheeked maiden in pinafores. He had 
 followed her with regular remembrances up 
 through the candy, peanut, doll stages, beyond 
 the valentine period, even to the Easter ilower 
 epoch. He had noticed that Agatha was always 
 considerate, that she never laughed at his blunders, 
 and, come to think of it, he had observed lately a 
 disposition on her part to blush and tremble in his 
 presence. The more vividly he recalled those 
 blushes the more firmly was he convinced that 
 Agatha was created for him and he for Agatha. 
 Upon these hints, like the swarthy gentleman in 
 the play, he spoke. 
 
 "I have brought myself to believe, my dear 
 Agatha," said Mr. Jenks, as they sat in the little 
 parlor, from which, with rare instinct and acumen,, 
 the parents had withdrawn, u that in your heart 
 lurks some pity for niy lonely life. I feel, as does 
 every man in this trying moment, that, with my 
 
The Deaf Ear. 133 
 
 natural handicap and my lack of graces, I am 
 unworthy the affection of a good and pure woman. 
 But at least I am a man of means and am free 
 from all large and contaminating vices. I love 
 you, and I have taken this opportunity of asking 
 you to share my lot and monopolize my time and 
 my affections." 
 
 Pending this speech the gentle Agatha blushed 
 and trembled more violently than usual, and at its 
 close the tears that rose to her blue eyes gave them 
 the appearance of violets in a shower. But, like a 
 good and pure woman, she regained her compo 
 sure with marvelous celerity. 
 
 U I will not disguise from you, dear Littlejohn," 
 she answered, " that while I have never looked 
 upon you as a future husband, I have always been 
 sensible of your goodness, and have envied her who 
 might gain the wealth of your affections. And for 
 this reason I give myself Lo you with all hope and 
 confidence. How I shall endeavor to prove worthy 
 of vour great love you may trust in time to know." 
 So saying, she modestly turned away her head and 
 cast down her eyes. 
 
 Now Mr. Jenks, recognizing too late that he 
 had unfortunately placed Agatha in juxtaposition 
 to his bad ear, was striving by every means to 
 shift his location and to comprehend her reply. 
 But, despite his most tactical efforts, he was able 
 to catch onlv the last word, "know," which, 
 
134 The Deaf Ear. 
 
 through the criminally perverse orthoepy .of the 
 English language, he construed into a negative, 
 an impression greatly heightened by the young 
 woman s perceptible air of pity and regret. Mr. 
 Jenks was a man of pride, and, stunned as he was, 
 it was only for a moment. lie hurst into a cheery 
 laugh, and said, with affected jocularity : 
 
 " Don t he downcast, Agatha. I was only joking. 
 It s a little way I have. It s all right, even if 
 you don t love me." 
 
 Poor Agatha was in despair. " You you don t 
 understand," she gasped, and then she stood on 
 her toes and screamed " I love you," until it seemed 
 as if the entire neighborhood must be cognizant 
 of the fact. 
 
 " That s all right all right," replied Mr.. Jenks ; 
 "I don t blame you a bit. And the more I think 
 it over the more ridiculous the matter strikes me." 
 
 Mr. Jenks by this time was in the hall, putting 
 on his overcoat, while Agatha, struggling with 
 baffled love and tears and rage, was close behind, 
 reiterating her affection with maidenly saving 
 clauses. 
 
 "Good night, Agatha," said Mr. Jenks, magnan 
 imously ; "forget our little joke and be a sister to 
 rne." 
 
 Twenty-four hours later the blue-eyed maiden, 
 in pique and desperation, accepted a proposition 
 from a commercial traveler for a grocery house, 
 
The Deaf Ear. 135 
 
 and after the wedding bells had pealed Mr. Jenks 
 heard, with throbs of anguish, the true story of 
 his luckless courtship. 
 
 Time soothes all griefs, and Mr. Jenks, albeit he 
 had withdrawn from society and its empty pleas 
 ures, became reconciled to the mysterious ways of 
 Providence. The gentle Agatha, at the sugges 
 tion of her husband and in deference to his family 
 name and pride, had presented to the commercial 
 traveler two little images of herself, and as Mr. 
 Jenks saw them playing with their dolls and run 
 ning to meet their worthy but unsentimental sire, 
 his heart was stirred by strange emotions. " Shall 
 I," he reasoned to himself, "because of one bitter 
 and terrible mistake, longer endure this wretched 
 and monotonous existence ? Shall I not show this 
 presumptuous drummer that I too have paternal 
 instincts, which may be gratified by the cultivation 
 of -a respectful attachment and by the exercise of 
 a little patience ?" 
 
 The object of Mr. Jenks s second endeavor was 
 a vivacious young lady, in temperament and 
 charms very unlike the blue-eyed Agatha. Not 
 disinclined to flirt, and seeing in Mr. Jenks a suit 
 able mark for her seductive batteries, she led him 
 on by feminine arts until one evening, strolling 
 sentimentally along the river bank, he repeated to 
 her the formula which five years before he had 
 tried with such embarrassing results. Notwith- 
 
136 The Deaf Ear. 
 
 standing her merry words, Miss Daisy she was a 
 true Missouri girl had a kind heart, and was 
 visibly affected by Mr. Jcnks s earnestness. Her 
 agitation increased as she reflected on the conse 
 quences of her levity, and, although she assured 
 Mr. Jenks that she "could never, never be his 
 wife," a sympathetic tear of remorse stole down 
 her cheek. According to usage, Mr. Jenks did not 
 succeed in catching a word of the pronunciamento 
 of rejection, but, remembering his former error 
 and seeing her tears and confusion, caught her to 
 his breast and imprinted passionate kisses on her 
 hair and cheek and mouth, wherever they chanced 
 to fall. The frightened girl screamed lustily, and 
 a policeman rushing up, and spying a struggling 
 maid in the arms of a desperate villain, brought 
 Mr. Jenks to the ground by a few well-directed 
 blows from his insigne of office. For ten minutes 
 there was a commingling of hysterics and expla.na- 
 tions and official skepticism, but at last, the young 
 lady interceding, Mr. Jenks was allowed to depart, 
 and the heroine was escorted to her home under 
 police protection. 
 
 This second contretemps was too much for Mr. 
 Jenks s nerves. He withdrew permanently from 
 society, engaged a housekeeper of austere visage 
 and impregnable and unquestioned morality, and 
 gave himself up to the cultivation of flowers and 
 the gentle arts. Late at night the youths and 
 
The Deaf Ear. 137 
 
 maidens, returning from their evening pleasure, 
 could hear the melancholy notes of his flute or the 
 sad strains of his violin, and why they crossed the 
 street at that particular point was always chari 
 tably suppressed. But Mr. Jenks s life was not 
 the less worthy and beautiful because he was 
 deprived, in so sorrowful a measure, of one of the 
 most agreeable senses. He delighted in good 
 works, helped the poor and the needy, comforted 
 the afflicted, and cheerfully accepted all the spon- 
 sorial responsibilities which were thrust upon him, 
 and they were many. He was "uncle" to half 
 the children in the town, and at Christmas time 
 the most extraordinary boxes and mysterious pack 
 ages \vere smuggled in and out of the house, while 
 Mr. Jcnks could be observed running to and fro 
 in a state of nervous excitement. 
 
 As his hair whitened and the furrows showed 
 more plainly in his face, Mr. Jenks s responsibili 
 ties, ex officio, increased. Agatha s two little girls 
 had grown up and had two or more little girls of 
 their own, and over them the deaf old gentleman, 
 with capacious pockets in which confections and 
 oranges always lurked, exercised the privileged 
 sway of "grandfather." And it was a happy sight 
 to see the old man followed by a troop of laughing 
 children, pretending to be angry with them for 
 "making so much noise," and slily slipping bon 
 bons into their hands and dropping peanuts ami 
 
138 The- Deaf Ear. 
 
 almonds out of his pocket that they might excite 
 a scramble and more noise. 
 
 At last Mr. Jenks succumbed to the ravages of 
 time, and took to his bed. Disease made rapid in 
 roads on his enfeebled constitution, and it was 
 mournfully whispered about town that "old Jenks 
 had to go." In this emergency the new minister 
 perceived his duty, and went to the old man s bed 
 side to administer those consolations that are the 
 rightful property of the church. As he took his 
 station at the left of the bed, Mr. Jenks, failing 
 to catch the features of his visitor, conceived him 
 to be one of the physicians, for whom, as a class, 
 he had the most profound contempt. The new 
 minister was saying : 
 
 " In this hour of travail, my departing friend, I 
 may hope that you have learned to rely on the 
 glorious promises of the Word, and that from the 
 precious book you have been drawn to the Great 
 Physician, who healeth all our infirmities and 
 maketh us well." 
 
 "Makes what well?" snapped Mr. Jenks, who 
 had caught only the concluding words. " I took 
 the blamed stuff three times yesterday, and I m 
 worse to-day." And he turned his face to the 
 wall, requesting the nurse to show the man out. 
 But the new minister, however shocked by the appa 
 rent wickedness of the dying man, lingered on the 
 threshold and offered up a fervent petition for the 
 
The Deaf Ear. 139 
 
 pardon and conversion of the blaspheming infidel. 
 And now occurred a most singular and impress 
 ive phenomenon. When the doctor came and 
 looked at the patient with his experienced eye, he 
 said: lie will live three hours. 1 At the end of 
 that time there was apparently no change. An 
 imprudent friend, putting himself in communica 
 tion with the good ear, related what the physician 
 had predicted, and congratulated him on the hope 
 ful nature of his symptoms in weathering the 
 crisis. Mr. Jenks made no reply, but turned over 
 and quietly passed away. In an able essay, read 
 before the medical society, the physician contended 
 that the prolongation of Mr. Jenks s life was due 
 entirely to a misunderstanding ; that he had stood 
 near the patient s deaf car when he made the diag 
 nosis and the prediction, and that to this circum 
 stance only must be attributed the temporary fail 
 ure of medical science and the reversal of medical 
 precedent. Therefore he maintained that a deaf 
 ear, while not an infallible preventive of death, is 
 often a helpful factor in prolonging human life, 
 and is a fit subject for the most careful and ex 
 haustive experiments when the patient is appar 
 ently in articulo mortis. This essay created a 
 great sensation in medical circles. Scientific jour 
 nals took it up, foreign academies discussed it, and 
 the International Society of Physicians and Sur 
 geons sent a complimentary letter to the writer 
 
140 The Deaf Ear. 
 
 thanking him for his efforts and his discovery in 
 the field of science. 
 
 As Mr. Jenks s friends gathered around his bier 
 and looked upon his peaceful face, it was suggested, 
 not irreverently but with real solicitude, that his 
 right ear should be a little elevated, that when 
 Gabriel blew the trump the other inhabitants of 
 the churchyard might not have an unfair advan 
 tage. And when all the others had gone out, 
 Agatha, now a widow and a grandmother, with 
 little white curls that peeped out of her cap, and 
 with eyes that still retained their violet blue, 
 lingered a moment, just long enough to give one 
 fond look and to whisper, " I love you," as she had 
 said it many years before. 
 
 The new minister, still smarting under a recol 
 lection of the blasphemous scene in the sick-cham 
 ber, delivered a powerful address on the uncer 
 tainty of life and the necessity of preparation. 
 But when the coffin was lowered into the grave the 
 mothers led the children a little nearer, and with 
 their infant hands they heaped roses and forget- 
 me-nots and immortelles upon the casket, the 
 tributes of three generations to the old friend. 
 And what they said of the dead he living could 
 not have heard without a protesting blush. And 
 how they spoke of him and praised him in their 
 homes that night must have warmed that deaf ear 
 as it lav so cold and still beneath the flowers. 
 
THE CONFESSION OF A CRIME. 
 
 Dowx in one of the central counties of Missouri., 
 in the heart of the great corn-belt, pretty Lucy 
 Howard was raised." That she certainly was 
 " raised " is not to be disputed, for she is authority 
 for the expression, and can, if necessary, bring up 
 a formidable array of kinfolk and neighbors to 
 prove the assertion. Lucy s father lived in one of 
 the older towns of this section of Missouri, which, 
 for one reason or another, has escaped the immi 
 gration and other contaminating influences which, 
 in a measure, have afflicted the border counties. 
 Therefore society, despite the ravages of war, is in 
 a settled and placid state, and resembles more 
 closely the better condition of things in the old 
 South. Here the Missourian attains his greatest 
 courtliness, and life is characterized by the warm 
 est hospitality. And here the girls, rounded and 
 rosy-cheeked, develop into the most beautiful 
 womanhood, with all the charms and graces and 
 soft speech of the Southern clime. 
 
 Colonel Howard was a Southerner by birth, in 
 association and in every instinct. lie had been a 
 fire-eater, a rebel and a Democrat since early man- 
 
144 The Confewiou. of a Crime. 
 
 hood, and lie was proud of it. He was also inclined 
 to indolence, the result of paternal inheritance, and 
 he was not ashamed of that, for your true old- 
 school Missouri gentleman has fixed and stern ideas 
 concerning the elevating quality of labor. " This 
 constant digging and delving," said the Colonel, in 
 one of his many leisure moments ; " this perpetual 
 striving after money or rushing after a temporary 
 gain, makes us a nation of dyspeptic Yankees and 
 destroys all the finer and nobler impulses of an old 
 and tranquil civilization." 
 
 Lucy, naturally, grew up under languorous con 
 ditions, which, however, took nothing from her 
 beauty or her amiability and gentleness of charac 
 ter. Perhaps the stern tenets of the Christian, or 
 Campbellite, Church, to which her family Avas 
 attached, had left an impress on her mind in its 
 formative period, and had given her that stern 
 conscientiousness which so marked her rule of 
 life. In early girlhood she had gone to a sec 
 tarian college, where the girls wore ridiculous uni 
 forms and praised the Lord two or three times a 
 day for the pious work of Alexander Campbell, 
 and never conversed with a man, save on an occa 
 sional Saturday night, under the most distressing 
 conditions. 
 
 But nothing could mar Lucy s beauty or destroy 
 the contentment of her disposition. And when, 
 every Sunday morning, her sweet face peeped out 
 
The Confession of a Crime. 145 
 
 under the college sun-bonnet,, and her beautiful 
 voice rose above all others in the choir chamber, 
 the reason of the great outpouring of the young 
 men was clear. For everybody in the sanctuary 
 turned to look at Lucy, and all the young fellows 
 sighed for her day of graduation. Robert Calla- 
 way said not a word, for he had taken advantage 
 of the summer vacation to gather Lucy unto him 
 self, and like two orderly and well-conducted 
 young people they reveled discreetly in their 
 promises of love, and bided their time. 
 
 So Robert went off to the city to guide and in 
 struct the masses from the noble standpoint of a 
 journalist. And Lucy retired to her father s 
 house and bloomed with the roses in the sum 
 mer and the hyacinths in the winter, and culti 
 vated and exercised her glorious voice until all the 
 mocking-birds were distracted with vexation and 
 envy. And she waited very patiently for Robert, 
 and calmly rebuked numerous presumptuous ad 
 mirers for impertinent offers of marriage. And 
 Robert wrote regularly and cheerfully from the 
 city, and one day the bird sang in her heart with 
 tin unusual caroling, for Robert telegraphed that 
 he had obtained a "scoop " on his loathsome con 
 temporary, and was in high favor with the gentle 
 man whose most painful duty it was, occasionally, 
 to raise salaries. 
 
 But an end comes to all periods of waiting, ami 
 
14G The Confession of a Crime. 
 
 one fine night in late October the Colonel s old 
 house was lighted up from cellar to garret, and 
 friends and neighbors poured into the great parlor,, 
 while the darkies were rushing about in excite 
 ment, savory smells issued from the kitchen, and 
 the popping of corks was heard in the second 
 story back. And in front of the piano stood Lucy, 
 looking like a Vestal virgin in her robe of white, 
 with a flush on her cheeks, and just the faintest 
 twitching of her pretty mouth, and tears of moist 
 ure in her blue eyes. And she was telling Robert, 
 who clasped her hand, something that has been 
 told many times before and will continue to be told 
 long after these generations have passed away. 
 
 Back they went to the city, and Robert, who was 
 now on confidential and easy terms with that great 
 man, the cashier of the Independent, fitted up a 
 comfortable home which bespoke much love and 
 happiness. And in the main they lived like turtle 
 doves, with those occasional honest differences of 
 opinion which afflict all good married folk. For 
 Robert s journalistic training had led him into devi 
 ous w r ays, and had bestowed upon him a proud and 
 haughty mind, so that, when Lucy would gently 
 prod him as to his religious duties on the holy 
 Sabbath morn, he would occasionally rebel and 
 flippantly remark that he had "forgotten more 
 than Aleck Campbell ever knew." Whereat the 
 great tears would well up into Lucy s eyes, and in 
 
Tlie Confession of a Crime. 147 
 
 the end Robert, who had a kind heart, would be a 
 heavy financial sufferer by reason of his irrever 
 ence. And at times the domestic would take unto 
 herself the wings of the morning, and Lucy would 
 be compelled to go into the kitchen. These were 
 the sun-spots of their married life, for when Lucy 
 did not forget to put the baking-powder in the bis 
 cuits, she committed other and more serious indis 
 cretions, with the result that her meals, as Robert 
 genially expressed it, partook of the nature of 
 burnt offerings, as became a Christian household. 
 But with all their petty trials, they lived very hap 
 pily, and the increased breadth and vigor of the 
 tone of the Independent bore witness to Robert s 
 enlarged scope. 
 
 Toward the end of the first year of their mar 
 ried life, Robert, having been gently reminded by 
 the pious Lucy that it was Wednesday evening, 
 suddenly remembered that he had a most pressing 
 engagement at the office, one that under no cir 
 cumstances would admit even an hour s postpone 
 ment. The gentle girl sighed as he reached for 
 his hat and cane, and believed him implicitly 
 when he kissed her and, in respectful language, 
 cursed the claims of business that took him away 
 from the hour of prayer. But after he had gone, 
 and she had heard him madly whistling and 
 shouting as he dashed for a doAvn-town car, she 
 went to the piano and sang a few holy songs to 
 
148 The Confession of a Crime. 
 
 put her mind in a calm and religiously receptive 
 state. Then she called next door for her neigh 
 bor and old girl friend, Mrs. Boone, whose hus 
 band had likewise been mysteriously summoned to 
 the office, and together those two exemplary 
 women journeyed to the house of worship. 
 
 Now it chanced that evening that the Rev. Dr. 
 Moniteau delivered his first discourse of a series of 
 lectures on the duties of wives. Having buried 
 three, this excellent man was abundantly able to 
 grasp his subject intelligently and to present it 
 with forcefulness. "I ask you, my dear sisters," 
 he said ; he started to say brothers and sisters, 
 but caught himself, as there were no brothers 
 present "I ask you if you have been true to 
 your husbands in thought as well as deed. Have 
 you given to them the confidence and the love 
 that should exist at all times between husband and 
 wife ? I think that perhaps I may see before me 
 at this moment a wife who has been derelict in this 
 precious duty. Perhaps she is young and impul 
 sive and thoughtless, and thinks that her little sins 
 of omission and commission are too trifling to be 
 told to the man whom she has vowed to love, 
 honor and obey. Ah, my dear sisters, do not fall 
 into this grievous error. Remember that you may 
 have no secrets from your husband. Remember 
 that he is entitled to know your innermost heart. 
 If there rests in your mind to-night, sister, any 
 
The Confession of a Crime. 149 
 
 little error, however trifling, you may have with 
 held from him, go to him, throw yourself upon 
 his breast and say : My husband, I come to you 
 in love and confidence like a little child to its father. 
 I have kept back from you a fault. Let me tell it 
 and know that it is not treasured up against me. 
 And trust, dear sister, to his great affection and 
 forgiving love." 
 
 Poor Lucy occupied a seat directly in front of 
 the speaker. It had happened in his godless days, 
 before the light slimed round about him, journey 
 ing, as it were, to Damascus, that the Rev. Dr. 
 Monitean had acquired a glass eye. This eye 
 rested on Lucy with such fixed and awful inten 
 sity that she fell ail of a tremble, and her little 
 heart thumped against her ribs with the anguish 
 of an unpuncturcd felon. And at that moment 
 the ghost of an unexpected crime rose up before 
 her, and the thought was so horrible that she 
 almost, screamed out in meeting, and so dread 
 ful was the remembrance that she was entirely un 
 able to join in the congregational singing which 
 the Rev. Dr. Monitean led in particularly strident 
 tones. 
 
 As they walked home together Lucy said, timidly: 
 
 " Gertrude, what do you think of Dr. Moniteau s 
 advice ? " 
 
 "Think ?" snapped Mrs. Boone. "I think it s 
 all bosh. That s what I think." 
 
150 The Confession of a Crime. 
 
 "But, Gertrude," interposed Lucy, "oughtn t 
 we to tell our husbands everything?" 
 
 Mrs. Boone wheeled around. "Now look here, 
 Lucy Callaway, don t you make any mistakes in 
 the first year of your married life. Do you sup 
 pose your husband tells you all his escapades ? Do 
 you suppose I m going to sit up every night for a 
 month while John Boone goes over the story of 
 his ante-nuptial misdeeds granting that he d be 
 fool enough to tell me ? When he reeled off that 
 clumsy story about an f engagement to-night, 
 didn t I know that it was merely an excuse to get 
 out of going to prayer-meeting ? I shall tell him 
 so too, to-morrow, but not to-night, for that would 
 spoil botli our evenings." 
 
 " I can t answer for Mr. Boone," said Lucy, 
 decisively, "but Robbie would never deceive me." 
 
 Mrs. Boone looked at the girl compassionately. 
 "You re a good girl, Lucy," she said; "I don t 
 know a better. But take my advice and don t 
 make a fool of yourself." 
 
 "Nevertheless," answered Lucy, firmly, as the 
 ghost rose up again, " I shall examine my heart 
 to-night, and if I find any secret there I shall tell 
 Robbie at once." 
 
 However, when Robert came home and reported 
 the cares and vexations of the office with more 
 than his customary fervor, Lucy s courage failed 
 her. After all, it would be much better to make 
 
The Confession of a Crime. 151 
 
 the confession in the morning, when her nerves 
 were more composed and when her husband, 
 refreshed by slumber, would be in better condition 
 to bear up under the revelation. But in the morn 
 ing the conditions were even more unfavorable. 
 Breakfast was late and Robert was querulous. 
 Plainly it was no time to precipitate a crisis, and 
 the gentle Lucy confessed a feeling of relief when 
 her husband left the house and a stay of execution 
 was granted. 
 
 In the evening a social dissipation at a neigh 
 bor s interfered. The next day Robert went out 
 of town on business, and so the matter ran along 
 for a week. When Wednesday night came around 
 Robert was caught napping. He had arranged 
 with a friend at the office to call for him in great 
 haste a little after seven o clock ; but the friend 
 had overlooked the appointment, and, as no reason 
 able excuse presented, Robert put on the best face 
 possible and went to Doctor Moniteau s second lect 
 ure. The Doctor emphasized his previous address, 
 and his glass eye caught Lucy early in the action, 
 and held her fast. The ordeal was even more try 
 ing than the first awakening of conscience. And 
 to add to the discomfort of the poor girl Robert 
 said, with affected solemnity, before they went to 
 bed that night : "Lucy, I hope you will profit by 
 Brother Moniteau s observations. Remember that 
 
152- The Confession of a Crime. 
 
 a wife should have no secrets from her husband. 
 Repent and confess before it is too late." 
 
 The days that followed were like torture to the 
 young wife. A dozen times she was on the point 
 of throwing herself on Robert s manly breast, 
 but something invariably came up to thwart her. 
 In the afternoon, while Robert was down town, 
 she would have a sort of rehearsal, the pillow on the 
 sofa representing Robbie. But the pillow was so 
 obdurate, its wrath so terrible, and its invective so 
 relentless, that Lucy was completely annihilated, 
 and when her husband came home she was glad 
 enough to keep up her life of deception, and to 
 welcome the living presence in place of its inani 
 mate avenger. 
 
 At the third lecture the malevolence, the ter 
 rors, the offended majesty of the glass eye were 
 simply beyond endurance. It burned into Lucy s 
 soul and seemed to leave a deep opening through 
 which all might see her wicked heart. She bowed 
 her head in the pew and wept scalding tears of 
 shame and remorse. And when she left the 
 sanctuary her mind was fully made up ; she would 
 confess the next day. 
 
 When morning came she was much comforted to 
 find that her resolution was unshaken. "But," 
 the devil whispered to her, " there is no sense in 
 doing this thing hastily and blunderingly. Tact is 
 a woman s best weapon. It is all right to confess. 
 
The Confession <>f <i Crime. 153 
 
 but proper means of preservation and defense are 
 always allowable." fcjo Lucy allowed .Robert to 
 escape, and fixed that evening for the revelation 
 that might make her a widow or a corpse. 
 
 All day long, in conjunction with the devil, she 
 made her preparations to mitigate the horrors of 
 the evening. She put deft little artistic touches 
 all over the house, placed the new center-piece 
 on the dining-room table, and filled the flower-jar 
 with roses. Then she tied up a bunch of pansies 
 with a love-knot and laid them near Robert s 
 plate, for Robert was very partial to pansies. And 
 she went into the kitchen and superintended and 
 accomplished marvels of cookery : spring chicken 
 fried to a turn, with rich cream gravy; such beaten 
 biscuits as were never before seen in the city ; 
 luscious corn-bread that she had heard him say 
 his mother used to make ; the freshest and best 
 vegetables in the market ; a strawberry short 
 cake that was simply incomparable, and coffee 
 that gave out a delicious perfume a block away. 
 And she even took ten cents from her private 
 funds and bought him a nice cigar at the grocery, 
 the groceryinan assuring her that it was good 
 enough for the President. And at five o clock she 
 went to her room and put on her red China silk, 
 which Robert admired so much, and which, cut 
 low around the neck, showed off her beautiful 
 throat and revealed her exquisite arms. And she 
 
154 The Confession of a Crime. 
 
 hung around her neck the gold chain and heart 
 which Robert had given her when they were lovers 
 in the old Missouri town. And, all preparations 
 being completed, she plumped down on her knees 
 and asked God to give her strength for her task. 
 
 \Vhen Robert came home he was visibly moved 
 by the evidences of wifeliness. He complimented 
 the appearance of the house, admired the roses, 
 and pinned the pansies on his coat. As for the 
 dinner, he vowed it was a dream, and when he had 
 finished his second piece of shortcake he went 
 over. and took Lucy s face in his hands and kissed 
 her, and said, feelingly: 
 
 "My dear little wife, how pretty you are to 
 night ! " 
 
 And Lucy turned away that he might not notice 
 the tears that rose to her eyes, while he took 
 advantage of the moment to slip the President s 
 cigar into his coat-tail pocket and to substitute 
 one of his own in its stead. 
 
 They went into the library, and Robert, being in 
 that boastful stage that comes to a man after a 
 hearty dinner, complacently read to his wife the 
 proof-sheets of his great article on the influence of 
 arehaeologic research among the Zunis. And 
 although Lucy constantly labored under the im 
 pression that Zunis were in some way connected 
 with Doctor Kane and Sir John Franklin, she 
 listened with devouring interest, and kissed him 
 
The Confess ion of a Crime. 155 
 
 whenever he looked as if he had made a particu 
 larly good point. And as he looked that way 
 particularly often she was more or less constantly 
 employed. Then she sat down at the piano and 
 sang all her prettiest songs, as only she could sing 
 them; songs of love and broken hearts and little 
 barks on the ocean and little birds in the nests, 
 and a hundred other things connected with the 
 idealities of a perfectly lovely existence. And 
 Robert leaned back in his big arm-chair, and 
 looked so happy and so contented that Lucy said 
 to herself, in the extremity of her grief : "I can t 
 tell him now ! I can t tell him now I " 
 
 At last Robert said: "Let s call it a day/ 
 which was his customary way of announcing that 
 it was bedtime. So he departed to his chamber, 
 whistling a merry air that showed his heart was 
 light and his conscience free. But Lucy remained 
 behind with her secret and her sorrow, and 
 wrestled with herself, for she knew the hour of 
 confession was at hand. And presently Robert 
 returned, for he had forgotten to look after the 
 back windows, put out the gas in the dining-room, 
 wind the clock and perform other functions which 
 the Zunis fortunately escaped. He was in his 
 night-robe. 
 
 Now a man in his robe of night is not a pleas 
 ing spectacle. The artistic world is a unit on that 
 point. Lucy, whose temperament was entirely 
 
156 The Confession of a Crime. 
 
 artistic, had often deplored the conventionality of 
 fashion that shortens a gentleman s sleeping-gar 
 ment to a degree bordering on the scandalous, and 
 had often threatened to ornament Robert s gowns 
 with tucks and frills and other purely feminine 
 accessories. But this night she was occupied with 
 her grief to the exclusion of all inartistic views. 
 She only thought: "How noble, how manly he 
 looks ! How can I bring myself to forfeit my 
 darling s love!" And Robert was meanwhile 
 stubbing his toe on the stairs and writhing with 
 pain and an explosion of unprintable language, 
 utterly unconscious of these tributes to his manli 
 ness, his nobility and his qualifications as a darling. 
 It had been Lucy s intention to follow as literally 
 as possible the excellent instructions of the Rev. 
 Dr. Moniteau. But her preparations were so ex 
 haustive, and her second and final petition for 
 sustaining strength was so protracted, that Robert 
 had traveled at least two-thirds of the distance to 
 the land of unconsciousness before she could bring 
 herself to the point of claiming his attention. 
 And even then she was embarrassed by the dis 
 covery that it would be impossible to throw herself 
 on his breast as she had contemplated, for he was 
 reposing with his face on the outer edge of the 
 bed, rendering such proceeding not only ridic 
 ulous but impracticable. She found also, to her 
 horror, that in her agitation she had entirely for- 
 
The Confession of a Crime. 157 
 
 gotten the ministerial formula, and was compelled 
 to fall back on her own resources to bear her over 
 the crisis. She nerved herself, shut her eyes and 
 said : 
 
 " Robbie ! " 
 
 A stifled grunt gave the assurance that Robert 
 was, in a measure, awake to the importance of the 
 occasion. 
 
 "Robbie, I ve been wanting to tell you some 
 thing for a long, long time. It has been on my 
 mind constantly, but we have been so happy to 
 gether that I couldn t bring myself to tell you. I 
 knew I was doing wrong, but I didn t know how 
 wicked and deceitful it was until I heard Doctor 
 Moniteau s lecture on the duties of a wife. And, 
 Robbie, you know you told me yourself that a wife 
 should have no secrets from her husband, so, if I 
 am going to give you pain, dear, it is partly because 
 I am obeying your command. You have always 
 said that it made you happy to think that you were 
 my first sweetheart and you were. Robbie, in 
 deed you were. I never cared for any man but 
 you, and I know I should never have married any 
 body if I had never met you. But of course I 
 couldn t help it if some of the boys liked me, and, 
 really, Robbie, it wasn t my fault because Tom 
 Cooper kept tagging after me and pestering me 
 with his silliness. And one night this was long, 
 long before I met you, Robbie he was taking me 
 
158 The Confession of a- (, rinie. 
 
 home, and he he kissed me. I know it was 
 perfectly dreadful, Robbie, and I was very angry 
 and hurt at the time. I wanted to tell you about 
 it when we first became engaged, but I didn t dare. 
 And then we were married, and it was harder than 
 ever. And I suppose I should have taken it on 
 my conscience down to the grave if it hadn t been 
 for you and Doctor Moniteau. It isn t too late, 
 Robbie, is it?" 
 
 A dreadful silence followed the disclosure. Lucy 
 felt her heart beating wildly, and her brain 
 throbbed with mad and awful fancies. She saw 
 herself standing in the divorce court, telling the 
 story of her shame to an unpitying judge and a 
 crowd of vulgar and jeering spectators. And 
 Robbie sat near with sternly averted face, and her 
 old father and mother were bowing their heads in 
 humiliation and anguish. 
 
 " You ain t mad, are you, Robbie ? " 
 Again that ominous silence. But Lucy thought 
 she heard a faint movement of the pillow, and the 
 terrible story of Othello and Desdemona rushed 
 into her mind. What if this gentle Robbie Avere 
 indeed a fiend incarnate when his jealous passions 
 were aroused ? What if in his disappointment 
 and rage and wounded love he should rise up and 
 strangle her or smother her dying cries under the 
 soft repository of goose-feathers ! Lucy was chilled 
 with fright. Her impulse was to slip out of bed 
 
The Confession of a Crime. 159 
 
 and steal to a place of safety. But what would 
 she gain ? Life ? Was life without Robbie pref 
 erable to death ? Was death more to be dreaded 
 than that awful scene in the court-room and 
 countless years of biting remorse ? No ! If her 
 crime merited death it would be sweet to die by 
 Kobbie s hand. And she closed her eyes again 
 and endeavored to recall a little prayer for the 
 dyina; which she had seen in a prayer-book, and 
 which had made a marked impression on her 
 mind. 
 
 But still that fearful, agonizing silence. It was 
 beginning to be too much for Lucy s nervous sys 
 tem. Such misery the victim experiences when he 
 is strapped upon the bascule of the guillotine, 
 waiting for the knife to fall. The moonlight 
 struggled in through the slanting blinds and dis 
 closed the injured husband lying on his side, his 
 left arm under his head, his right carelessly resting 
 on the spread. Lucy raised herself, and, leaning 
 on her elbow, peered into his face. 
 
 The brute was fast asleep, 
 
0ld TVldjor s 
 
THE OLD MAJOR S STORY. 
 
 IT was down in the Current River country, and 
 at that period of development this was not a coun 
 try to conjure by. The villages were small, ragged 
 and depressing, with apparently no excuse for 
 being, save to break up the monotony of travel* on 
 the railway lying between Springfield and Mem 
 phis. We had ridden across a dreary waste of 
 miles from the fishing-grounds in a conveyance 
 the atrocious discomfort of which baffled all com 
 parisons, and had missed the train as a finishing 
 touch of misery. It needed only this to round oft 
 an excursion of pleasure that had been prolific of 
 everything except pleasure. The fish, if fish there 
 were, had refused to bite, but this deficiency had 
 been supplied by a large variety of insects, which 
 had welcomed us in a hospitable manner. We had 
 feasted on bacon and hominy, hominy and bacon, 
 until we had entirely forgotten the taste of all 
 other articles of food, and looked upon them as a 
 sort of tormenting dream. And the highwayman, 
 as we called him, who had all the external signs of 
 a Bald-Knobber, and all the natural outcroppings 
 of a bandit, and who had consented to convey us 
 163 
 
.104 The Old Major * 
 
 to the train, bad stipulated for a consideration so 
 ruinous that the pool was barely able to meet his 
 demands. At the same time it was deemed politic 
 to submit without a murmur. It is astonishing 
 how a few rocks and woods and ravines will make 
 cowards of brave men. 
 
 Four of us were in the party the General Pas 
 senger and Ticket Agent, who organized it, a 
 middle-aged lawyer with a good practice, a young 
 doctor with no practice, and the wretched author 
 of the tale. It was not at this crisis an agreeable 
 party, one that would shed luster on the civiliza 
 tion of the nineteenth century. We were tired 
 and hungry and cross, and, at the same time, wet 
 and dry, a paradox that every fisherman readily 
 understands and appreciates. The engine of our 
 train had slipped an eccentric forty miles down 
 the road, and was bulletined for four o clock in 
 the morning. The small hotel was a ghastly 
 picture of misery, and seemed so full of terrors 
 and unknown horrors that nobody dared go to 
 bed, although it was then nine o clock, promising 
 a long sleep before train-time. So we sat around 
 the miserable office and smoked pipes and tried to 
 drink the appalling stuff that the brazen-faced 
 hotel-keeper endeavored to palm off upon us, to 
 deaden our moral senses and to benumb our facul 
 ties. In this condition the meanness of our nature 
 
The Old Major s Story. 165 
 
 turned upon the unhappy Passenger and Ticket 
 Agent. 
 
 "I think/ mused the lawyer, "that the next 
 time I go fishing I shall employ a railroad man to 
 go along, to show me all the holes and rare places." 
 
 "I have always noticed," said the doctor, "that 
 railroad men are thoroughly informed not only as 
 to the best fishing-grounds, but as to the season 
 when the fish bite most freely." 
 
 "Did you ever observe," asked the lawyer, "that 
 a railroad man never takes a private fishing-party 
 on his own road ? " 
 
 "And did it ever occur to you," replied the 
 doctor, "that when the trip is a failure he remem 
 bers that there is a splendid, place on f our road ? " 
 
 In this agreeable strain was the conversation 
 continued until the Passenger and Ticket Agent, 
 a man of tact and resources, contrived to divert 
 our minds and steer the discourse into other 
 channels. 
 
 "Let me see," he began, "it was twenty-five 
 thirty thirty-one years ago that I first came 
 down into this country, and just thirty years ago 
 that I left it in a hurry. I was a mere boy then, 
 and I was trying to find rebels. Quite a party of 
 us at the time. I remember that General Lyon 
 was along, and that we found rebels in considera 
 ble quantities. We went back without Lyon, poor 
 fellow, but it was mighty lively for awhile." 
 
166 The OU Major * Wort/. 
 
 This started the conversation into a discussion of 
 the battle of Wilson s Creek and the campaign in 
 Southwest Missouri. Thence it was easy to drift into 
 opinions concerning war in general and the present 
 troubles. As was natural enough, those of us who 
 had never heard a cannon, save in the way of a 
 celebration, and couldn t tell the ping of a minie 
 ball from the splutter of a sky-rocket, were dis 
 posed to look on war as a cheap and easy way of 
 settling all political differences. The lawyer con 
 tended that the United States had been too 
 lenient with Chile, and the doctor was convinced 
 that nothing less than a thrashing would ever 
 bring England to a proper appreciation of the 
 Behring Sea troubles. 
 
 "Well, I don t know about that/ said the Pass 
 enger and Ticket Agent, gravely ; " war may be 
 important to settle some questions, but it s my 
 opinion that a man who has been through one war 
 never cares to see another." 
 
 "And you re right, sir, in that opinion. War, 
 in most cases, is a curse to humanity. In all cases 
 it brings sorrow and suffering." 
 
 Far over in a corner of the room we had seen, 
 when we entered, a man pushed back in a chair, 
 with a large, soft black hat pulled over his eves, 
 apparently asleep. As he spoke he tilted forward, 
 and took off his hat. He seemed to be sixty years 
 of age, with iron gray hair and beard, and a face 
 
The Old Major s Story. 1G7 
 
 of strength and intelligence. A soft, somewhat 
 smothered enunciation and the unmistakable cut 
 of black clothes revealed the Southerner. We 
 were a little embarrassed, for we remembered that 
 we had spoken freely of "rebels." But we invited 
 the stranger to come forward and have a drink, 
 and he did so, taking one of such ample propor 
 tions as to convince us that his motives were 
 friendly. 
 
 "You were speaking of war," he said, "though 
 I reckon you are most of you too young to know 
 by experience the meaning of the word. So, if 
 you ll allow me to order up another round, I ll tell 
 you a story." 
 
 "It s the Ancient Mariner," whispered the 
 lawyer. 
 
 "In which event there s no use in kicking," 
 replied the doctor. 
 
 The liquor having arrived, the stranger tossed off 
 another alarming potion with barely a movement 
 of the throat, a feat that lighted up the doctor s 
 face with admiration, while a covetous look stole 
 into his eyes as he thought of the great revelations 
 of an autopsy. Then the stranger said, with a tone 
 that was charming in its courtliness : 
 
 " Permit me to introduce myself. I am Major 
 Fannin, of Texas. Perhaps the title isn t impor 
 tant, but down my way everybody calls me Major, 
 and this is to be a war story." 
 
168 The Old Major s Story. 
 
 We assured the Major, with great gravity, that 
 in Missouri it was a luxury to address anybody un 
 der the rank of colonel, and we begged him to 
 proceed. 
 
 " I said, when I so unceremoniously and rudely 
 broke in upon you " We protested with much 
 waving of hands. " I said that war brings sorrow 
 and suffering. I know, for I have had both." 
 
 Strangely enough, we had not noticed until that 
 moment that the Major s left sleeve was empty. 
 Some men have the remarkable faculty of blinding 
 you to their deficiencies, and the Major possessed 
 that gift to an eminent degree. 
 
 " I am not going to offend you, gentlemen, by any 
 opinions concerning the civil war. I was a rebel, 
 as you call it, and one of the last to surrender. 
 But I accepted the verdict, and am as firmly 
 attached to-day to our common country as any of 
 you. We ll drink together, and Fll tell you what 
 war did for me, but we ll let the dead issues go. " 
 
 Then, after a pause : "When the war broke out 
 I was practicing law in a Texas town, married, and 
 the father of three children, the oldest a boy of 
 seven, the youngest a baby. The war fever seized 
 me as it took every man and woman in the South. 
 I m not going to say that I ever sat down seriously 
 to discuss principles or issues. It was enough 
 for me that my State had decided ; that my people 
 were all of one mind and opinion. It was a fever 
 
The Old Major s Story. 169 
 
 of the most malignant type, and consequences were 
 never thought of. In fact, I looked upon the war 
 more as a dress parade, and when I hurried off to 
 join my regiment I left my wife and family as gayly 
 as if I were starting on a business trip. That was 
 my first error and the cause of my first grief. How 
 could I foresee the storm that raged for four years, 
 swept away my kindred, drenched my country with 
 blood and brought misery to my home ? 
 
 "Our friend, here, spoke of coming down this 
 way to find rebels. I reckon I was one of the 
 rebels he found, for I remember Wilson s Creek 
 very well, and I remember chasing bluecoats for 
 some time after the encounter." 
 
 The laugh was on the Passenger and Ticket 
 Agent, which he acknowledged by ordering more 
 drinks. And the Major went on : 
 
 " It isn t necessary to the story to go into the 
 details of my service. After the Missouri cam 
 paign I went into Kentucky and fought at Mill 
 Spring. At Shiloh I saw my first great battle, and 
 there I was taken prisoner. Then I began to ap 
 preciate, for the first time, the magnitude of the 
 work we had undertaken and the extent of the 
 Federal resources. When I was exchanged I 
 joined Jackson s command, fought with him at 
 Antietam and was in the great charge at Chancel- 
 lorsville, where he met his death. A wonderful 
 man that, gentlemen, a soldier and God s noble- 
 
170 The Old Major s Story. 
 
 man, every inch of him. All this time I had re 
 ceived vague and unsatisfactory news from home. 
 My wife was as brave a woman as ever sent her 
 husband to battle, but I could read between the 
 lines a fainting spirit and a cry of despair. For 
 the first time in my life I believe I was a coward. 
 The night before the battle of Gettysburg I 
 dreamed that my family were starving, and the 
 shock of the dream unmanned me. Perhaps it 
 turned my luck, for the next day I received my 
 first wound ; I lost this arm. Then came weeks 
 in the hospital, and when I was able to get about 
 again they told me, what a thousand arms could 
 not replace, my little Jessie was dead. Jessie was 
 my second, my favorite child. I left her a healthy 
 little blue-eyed tot, just four years old. And the 
 day I went to the army she came up and put her 
 little arms around my neck, and lisped good-by 
 in her baby fashion. I kissed her as if I were go 
 ing down to my office, and turned my back on her, 
 never to see her again. They told me that she 
 died of a slow fever, but I knew better than that, 
 for my dream at Gettysburg came back to me. 
 Oli, it was hard, gentlemen, it was hard ! " 
 
 The old Major s voice broke and his lips were 
 quivering. The doctor was staring uncomfortably 
 at the ceiling, and the lawyer played nervously 
 with the glass before him. But the railroad man, 
 with that sort of comradeship that old soldiers 
 
The Old Majors Story. 171 
 
 have, that makes the man beholding love his 
 fellow-man the more, put his hand on the Major s 
 shoulder as if to steady and comfort him. The 
 Major recovered himself and went on. 
 
 "Well, the news from home, instead of breaking 
 me down, as they feared, put the devil in me. By 
 this time we had begun to realize that we were 
 righting against terrible odds, and that the Con 
 federacy was in a desperate way. Under ordinary 
 circumstances I would have been dismissed as 
 incapacitated, but the decimation of the army had 
 been so terrible that a man with a right arm and 
 two good legs was still worth preserving. All 
 through the battles of the Wilderness I hung on, 
 but Grant was pressing us, our forces were 
 dwindling and our supplies were giving out. Day 
 after day the cause grew more hopeless, and we 
 saw the end coming. It came at Appomattox. 
 That is a great and glorious word to you, gentle 
 men, but to me it brings up only a picture of 
 ragged ness and semi-starvation and misery. 
 
 " The conqueror told us to go home, and it 
 seemed to me that there was a touch of irony in 
 the word. Through the South I journeyed, the 
 beautiful South that I had loved and fought for. 
 How pitiable it looked, blackened by war, devastat 
 ed by soldiery, the fields neglected, the homes 
 going to ruin, the people as poor, as ragged and 
 as miserable as myself. This, then, was the fruition 
 
172 The Old Majors Story. 
 
 of our work, the glory of the soldier s trade ! As 
 I went along my heart grew heavier. Kind words 
 and sympathy I encountered, indeed, and such 
 material assistance as the people could afford. 
 And so I traveled until I readied my town, still 
 wearing my old gray uniform, dirty and ragged, 
 with long hair and beard and plenty of gray in 
 both. 
 
 "I stopped before my gate, and strangers met 
 me. They told me that Mrs. Fannin had moved 
 to a little house in the outskirts. Just then a boy 
 came by ; it was my son, for I saw his mother in 
 his face. lie was going home, and we walked on 
 together. Without telling him who I was, I drew 
 from him the story of the family trials, how mis 
 erably poor they had been, how the little sister 
 had died begging that she might see her father, 
 and wondering why he had never come back from 
 . the office ; how the servants had all run away 
 except old Enos and Mancly, and how they had 
 worked to keep the missus as Vpectable like as 
 Mass Henry would want/ So the boy talked and 
 I listened with my heart in my throat until we 
 came to the house, and I sent him in to tell his 
 mother that a poor soldier would like to get a 
 lodging and food. 
 
 " When my wife came to the door and I saw the 
 care and sorrow in her face, my knees trembled so 
 I could scarcely stand. She didn t recognize me, 
 
Tlic Old Major * Mori/. 173 
 
 of course ; Avhy should she ? 80 I spoke out and told 
 her that I was a discharged Confederate soldier 
 without friends, home or money, and I asked for 
 food. 
 
 " My poor man/ she said, I would give it to 
 you gladly, but I have hardly enough for my chil 
 dren. My husband, like you, went to the war. 
 God knows where he is to-day/ 
 
 " But, madam, at least you can give me a 
 lodging/ 
 
 " Her eyes were filled with tears. If I could/ 
 she answered, I would do it willingly, but where 
 can I put you away ? The house is small and 
 cramped, and I have no extra bed. I am a 
 soldier s wife, and am almost reduced to a soldier s 
 necessities/ 
 
 " While she was speaking a little dog that had 
 been my dead child s favorite came around the 
 corner of the house. He sniffed at me suspiciously 
 and then began to caper and jump with the live 
 liest manifestations of joy. My children had for 
 gotten me, my wife did not know me, but the 
 little dog could not be deceived. I saw my wife 
 start and look eagerly into my face, and I cried 
 out : 
 
 " Mary, don t you know me ? 
 
 "And just then old Mandy came to the door 
 and threw up both hands and exclaimed : 
 
 " Fo Clod, it s Mass Henry come back ! 
 
174 TJie Old Major 9 * Story. 
 
 u Well, we all went into the wretched little 
 house and sat down and cried for joy. The baby, 
 now the image of the little Jessie I had left, came 
 bashfully in and caught hold of my empty sleeve, at 
 which my wife cried the more. We sat up half 
 the night, and she told me all her griefs and 
 troubles, though I have always suspected that she 
 softened them as much as possible. And she 
 brought out a little package and kissed it and put 
 it into my hands without a word, I opened it. 
 It was a lock of little Jessie s hair." 
 
 The Major paused and studied the floor for a 
 moment. Then he said : " It was up-hill work, but 
 I have been successful. My sorrow ended with 
 that reunion. There isn t a happier home in 
 Texas, nor one that looks with greater abhorrence 
 upon the curse of war." 
 
 The lawyer whispered to the landlord. As he 
 came back with the glasses, the lawyer said : 
 
 " Major, you ve converted me. I ll give yon a 
 toast. Peace, enduring peace ! " 
 
 The old Major stood up, and very handsome and 
 soldierly he looked. He bowed to us as he said : 
 
 " And the Union ! " 
 
 The railroad man, who had fought at Wilson s 
 Creek, reached over and clasped his hand. 
 
Sweetheart. 
 
SWEETHEART. 
 
 FARMER ROOKS sat on the fence, smoking his 
 pipe and looking complacently over his acres, 
 which stretched away a mile to the south of the 
 important town of Primrose. 
 
 Every student of border history must be famil 
 iar with the chronicles of Primrose, its early scenes 
 of frontier deviltry, its famous rebellion against 
 Kansas State authority and its bloody county-seat 
 war with Hellbent, which cost thousands of dollars 
 and scores of lives, and was the moving cause of 
 one of the most prosperous graveyards between 
 Topeka and the Rockies. Farmer Rooks was not 
 a farmer in those stirring times. In fact, it would 
 be difficult to say precisely what his occupation 
 was. He had drifted into Kansas apparently for 
 the humor of the thing, and for a year or two 
 devoted himself to the liquor interest in the way 
 of consumption, and to such ephemeral pleasure as 
 can be gathered from association with cowboys in 
 their hours of relaxation. When the county was 
 organized and the question of a county seat came 
 up, young Rooks took the stump for Primrose, his 
 natuiul abilities and education giving him the 
 
178 Sweetheart. 
 
 qualifications for leadership. It was he who first 
 pointed out the absurdity and disgrace that would 
 attend the selection of a town with the name of 
 Hellbent. To counteract the effect of this speech 
 the people of Hellbent immediately called a public 
 meeting and changed the name to Bcntliell. But 
 the reform was not adequate, and a majority of 
 voters decided in favor of Primrose. Then the 
 bad men of Hellbent organized a raid, and one 
 dark and otherwise advantageous night swooped 
 down on Primrose and captured the records. 
 Eooks immediately called in his friends, the cow 
 boys, and returned the raid and the compliment. 
 And so the feud ran on for a year, until Hellbent 
 was practically depopulated and Rooks was a curi 
 osity of perforations. At last an honorable treaty 
 of peace was agreed upon, and Primrose was per 
 mitted to retain the spoils of conquest. 
 
 Jn return for his efficient services Eooks was 
 invited to claim any amount of honors and emolu 
 ments. But a man who has been probed in every 
 part of his body naturally loses a taste for active 
 life and harassing duties. So he compromised on 
 a testimonial banquet at the "Delmonico restau 
 rant," and went into the business of agriculture 
 on the outskirts of the town. His first grace^ 
 ful act was to go over to Hellbent and espouse the 
 belle of the defeated tribe, thereby completely 
 healing the breach and setting an honorable exam,-. 
 
Sweetheart. 179 
 
 pie to future Montagues and Capulets. As Prim 
 rose prospered, so also did Farmer Rooks and his 
 charming and thrifty bride, barring the one 
 deplorable grasshopper invasion and an occasional 
 hot wind that the ingenuity of man is not able 
 to circumvent. 
 
 In spite of her arduous duties and the many 
 pressing demands upon her time and attention, 
 the erstwhile belle of Hellbent found occasion to 
 present to her husband the most charming and 
 delightful miniature edition of herself. This inci 
 dent, though it was by no means unparalleled in 
 Primrose, which was beginning to experience a 
 steady and reliable increase in population, created 
 much local enthusiasm. The entire town jour 
 neyed to the Rooks farm, and the men shook 
 hands with the happy father, while the ladies made 
 minute observations and the most critical exami 
 nation, and all agreed that such a baby was a spe 
 cial dispensation of Providence and an unprece 
 dented manifestation of favor to Primrose. A 
 corner lot was immediately voted by the town 
 authorities, and called, by way of pleasantry and 
 gentle reminder, Rooks s First Addition. 
 
 Now, when it came to the point of naming this 
 important young personage, Farmer Rooks and his 
 wife had their first falling-out. The mother was 
 not too particular, and selected from her family 
 stock a large variety of names which Farmer Rooks 
 
ISO. SweclJieart. 
 
 rejected as being altogether commonplace and un 
 worthy. Like a loyal son, he would have remem 
 bered his own mother, but Hannah that was too 
 much. They lay awake nights quarreling over the 
 vexatious point. They sent into town for a dic 
 tionary, and went carefully and laboriously over 
 the Scripture proper names and the Greek and 
 Latin proper names and the Christian names of 
 women and the noted names of fiction, and even 
 the modern geographical mimes, but with no result. 
 The schoolmaster and the minister came to their 
 assistance, and the minister prayed very fervently 
 that God would aid them in making a decision ; 
 but, despite the assurance of assistance, the name 
 was as far away as ever. At one time Farmer 
 Rooks was favorably inclined to Leda, but the 
 schoolmaster, who was a very young man, blushed 
 a great deal and hastily convinced the father that 
 he was contemplating a great wrong to an innocent 
 child. Farmer Rooks admitted that he knew noth 
 ing of mythology, and warmly thanked the young 
 schoolmaster for extricating him from a grave 
 peril. 
 
 All this time the baby was growing and devel 
 oping at a famous rate, and seemed to look with 
 reproachful wonder out of its big blue eyes at the 
 unhappy parents, who bade fair to send her name 
 less through life. When Farmer Rooks went to 
 the field, he took the little dictionary with him, 
 
Sweetheart. 181 
 
 and over and over again the wondering horses 
 heard his "Abigail,, Adeline,, Adelaide, Agatha 
 git up, there ! Clara, Clarissa, Constance, Cora 
 w-h-o-a ! Arethusa, Asteria, Athena, Aurora 
 g long, now Ceres, Diana back! whoa!" 
 And at night the mother, washing the dishes, 
 would take up the sad refrain : " Octavia, Olivia, 
 Pauline, Penelope Hiram, did you fetch in the 
 wood? Sophia, Sophronia, Stella, Susanna 
 there s the baby, Hiram ! " 
 
 One day Farmer Rooks sat in the kitchen on the 
 wood-box. It was raining hard, the baby had no 
 name, and the world was very black. There came 
 a sound as of a falling weight, and a loud squall 
 proclaimed that the baby had tumbled out of 
 her crib. Then the mother s voice was heard : 
 " What s the matter, sweetheart ? Who s been 
 hurting mamma s little sweetheart ?" 
 
 Farmer Eooks jumped from the wood-box and 
 slapped his leg. "By gad, Nell, found at last! 
 You ve struck it this time. We ll call her Sweet 
 heart ! " 
 
 Great news always travels quickly, and twenty- 
 four hours had not elapsed before the whole town 
 knew that the baby had been named. At first some 
 carping complaints were heard. The minister s 
 wife argued that such a name would not tend to 
 the spiritual advancement of the child ; that she 
 would grow up in vanity and self-consciousness, 
 
182 Sweetheart. 
 
 and that her mind would be filled with distracting 
 thoughts before her time. A few other mothers 
 resented the monopoly implied by the name, and 
 hinted that there was likely to be a good deal more 
 than one "sweetheart" in the community. But 
 Farmer Rooks was obstinate. He maintained 
 forcefully that it was his child and he could call 
 her whatever he chose. She was u Sweetheart " to 
 him and would always be. If other people did not 
 like the name they could call her Miss Rooks. 
 This appeared to strike the community as a per 
 fectly reasonable suggestion, and an exhibition of 
 Rooks s usual good, hard sense. 
 
 As Sweetheart grew up all opposition to the 
 name, as to its propriety or appropriateness,, melted 
 away. It was a sure case of love at first sight, and 
 everybody who saw her surrendered on the spot. 
 The Rooks farm was on the main road to Benthell 
 and High Rock, and nobody in the county thought 
 of driving by without pulling up to catch a glimpse 
 of Sweetheart. She was the only child, for Mrs. 
 Rooks, who was a busy woman, had discovered 
 that the demands and cares of maternity were en 
 tirely too exacting for a farmer s wife in an undevel 
 oped country. Consequently, she was all the more 
 precious to the farmer s heart, and lie never 
 wearied of repeating her epigrams when he went 
 to town, and of exhibiting her accomplishments to 
 the stranger within the gates. 
 
Siveetheart. 183 
 
 Mrs. Rooks, on the other hand, did not share 
 in this manner of adoration. She admitted her 
 daughter s beauty and many good qualities, but 
 was not blind to the little eccentricities which are 
 part of a child s nature. Mrs. Rooks had, more 
 over, forcible theories of government, and had 
 established a set of by-laws which are found in 
 every well-regulated household. Consequently, 
 Sweetheart s life was not wholly devoid of those 
 exciting and purely one-sided or jug-handled 
 episodes which befall all children of high animal 
 spirits. These interviews Mrs. Rooks described as 
 "molding the character," but it was significant 
 that Sweetheart s character was never "molded" 
 when her father was at home, for he countenanced 
 no liberties with Sweetheart s feelings. 
 
 So the years went peacefully by until the early 
 afternoon when, as hereinbefore related. Farmer 
 Rooks sat on the fence and smoked his pipe and 
 looked over his acres. It was the end of an old- 
 fashioned winter, and spring had come on with 
 one of those lightning changes that are the per 
 plexities of agricultural life in Kansas. Farmer 
 Rooks was too old a settler to be misled by any 
 climatic blandishments, and the mercury that stood 
 at 75 on an April afternoon, with a hot wind blow 
 ing from the southwest, offered no inducements 
 for rash experiments. Near the farmer little Sweet 
 heart was disporting with all the enthusiasm of 
 
184 
 
 her five years and exercising the petty tyrannies that 
 a child has in store for a completely subjugated 
 father. Farmer Rooks looked at her admiringly, 
 and chuckled at the reflection that he had the 
 prettiest child, the thriftiest wife, the tidiest home 
 and the best farm in the county. "Such a figure 
 as that child has/ he laughed to himself; "as 
 plump as a prairie chicken and as graceful as a 
 colt." In truth, Sweetheart was a pretty picture 
 as she romped up and down the yard, her cheeks 
 rosy with the color of health, her blue eyes danc 
 ing with childish glee, and her flaxen curls blown 
 all oyer her head by the force of the wind. But 
 it might have been noticed that in her play 
 she was particularly careful to see that no acci 
 dent befell the new shoes on her little feet, for just 
 before the outing Mrs. Hooks had requested an 
 interview with Sweetheart, and had told her that 
 if anything happened to those shoes something 
 would drop. What that something was the child 
 had distinct and painful recollection. 
 
 "Fm going into town, mother," said the farmer, 
 calling to the busy woman in the kitchen. "You 
 keep an eye on Sweetheart, as she s like to blow 
 away. If the wind doesn t let up before night we 
 may hear from it." 
 
 So Farmer Rooks jumped on his horse and can 
 tered off to town, with numerous commissions 
 from the infant tyrant, which he gravely jotted 
 
Sweetheart. 1H5 
 
 down on the back of an old envelope. Sweetheart 
 watched him to the end of the potato-patch and 
 returned to her sports. She was doubtless playing 
 one of those mysterious and intricate games that 
 are evolved from a child s process of thought, 
 which consist of a great deal of digging in the dirt 
 and accumulation of small lumber and other acces 
 sories. All the afternoon she devoted to this 
 occult scheme of diversion, contemplating a great 
 surprise for the farmer, and pausing anon to 
 inspect the condition of the new shoes. 
 
 Neither the busy woman in the house nor the 
 child at play noticed the change in the atmosphere. 
 The wind had died away and the air was hot and 
 oppressive. At times the sky seemed to give a 
 yellow light ; then almost as quickly it would take 
 a greenish tinge, which would as rapidly fade 
 away. There was no signal service expert in 
 Primrose, and there were no weather prophets to 
 guess at probabilities, but the big rooster that 
 strutted up and down past the little girl cocked 
 his eye occasionally at the heavens as much as to 
 say : " I don t like the looks of things, Sweet 
 heart ; you and I \1 better get out of this." 
 
 Sweetheart had reached that point in her archi 
 tectural pursuits when it became necessary to get 
 up and stand off at a little distance and scrutinize 
 her work. At that moment there came from the 
 distance a low, dull roar, and the big rooster gave 
 

 186 S-wccthcart. 
 
 a quick squawk of alarm and ran to the shed. 
 The mother in the kitchen heard it, and came to the 
 door, but there stood Sweetheart with her eyes 
 upon her castle and her thoughts wrapped up in 
 the surprise for her father. Straight from the 
 southwest, skirting the edge of the town, and 
 coming at an incredible speed, was a huge balloon, 
 and Sweetheart, looking up, saw it and clapped her 
 hands with joy. One look, however, made the 
 mother s heart stand still. She knew too well 
 now the meaning of the distant roaring and the 
 fate of whatever stood in the path of the monster 
 that bounded up and down and swept on in its 
 course of death. "Sweetheart!" she screamed, 
 and took one step forward. She was too late. 
 The cloud was on them with an angry shriek, and 
 in a second everything was swept away. The 
 house was in ruins ; the sheds were flattened like 
 cardboard ; great trees were torn up and twisted, 
 and the air was filled with flying timbers and 
 household articles. Pinned to the earth, the mother 
 lay as one dead. And Sweetheart where was 
 Sweetheart ? 
 
 Farmer Rooks sat in the grocery on a nail-box 
 with a dozen of his friends about him. -You 
 see," said he, "mother and I took Sweetheart over 
 to the Higginses to call on Joe s folks. And while 
 we were there Joe s wife s baby got hungry and she 
 had to nurse it, Sweetheart all the time looking on 
 
Sweetheart. 187 
 
 with her eyes wide open. And when we were 
 going home Sweetheart says : Mamma, I don t 
 think that was a nice thing for Mrs. Higgins to do. 
 I think it was nasty/ And her mother said : 
 1 Why, Sweetheart, you and I used to do that when 
 you were a little baby/ And Sweetheart put on a 
 look of great disgust, and said : Well, mamma, if 
 I did, for heaven s sake don t say anything about 
 it ! " 
 
 A great shout greeted this story, and just then 
 Bill Harper, the butcher, rushed in and cried out: 
 "Boys, there s a cyclone south o town, and it 
 looks as if it might strike your place, Hi ! " 
 
 Pell-mell they crowded into the street. Farmer 
 Rooks s face was ghastly pale, and he shook like a 
 leaf. Away to the northeast they saw that angry, 
 bounding balloon, and marked the ruin in its wake. 
 Another minute, and Farmer Rooks was in the sad 
 dle and off in a dead run, and those who looked on 
 his face saw an agony that was indescribable. 
 
 " Boys," said Bill Harper, " it s got Rooks s place, 
 sure ; it was right in the line of the cyclone. God 
 help him if we can t ; but we ll try." 
 
 Men on horseback and men in wagons followed 
 Farmer Rooks, who was now far ahead and riding 
 like a demon. Within a quarter of a mile of his 
 farm he saw the house was gone. He reeled and 
 nearly fell from the saddle. But the horse seemed 
 to realize the pressure of his mission, and ran 
 
188 
 
 madly on through the rain, now falling j n a tor 
 rent, evading and clearing the limbs and branches 
 of trees that lay across his path. In front of 
 where was once the door the animal stopped, and 
 Farmer Hooks threw himself from his back, and 
 knelt by the side of his wife. 
 
 "Mother! mother!" he cried. "Where is 
 Sweetheart ?" 
 
 ^ A few minutes later, when the neighbors and 
 friends drove up, they found him looking union" 
 
 the ruins and moaning, "Oh, Sweetheart, Sweet 
 heart ! " 
 
 It was an easy task to release the farmer s wife, 
 and the work of a minute to restore her to con 
 sciousness. Her left arm was broken, but she 
 couldn t think of that. She saw her husband 
 prying among the timbers, and she heard his 
 moans of anguish, and knew that Sweetheart was 
 gone. She could tell nothing. The storm had 
 come like a flash and swept her away from her 
 side. 
 
 "One thing is sure," said Billy Sedgwick, "the 
 child isn t here, and has been carried off by the 
 wind. We ll have to foller the path till we find 
 her." 
 
 They went out very solemnly, for they knew 
 they were going after the dead. And those who 
 had little girls at home turned awnv their heads so 
 that Hi mightn t see the tears in their eves. But 
 
Sweetheart. 189 
 
 Farmer Jttooks was hurrying along with that deadly 
 pallor still on his face, and his wife, forgetful of her 
 broken arm, was at his side. Her lips were mov 
 ing, and Bill Harper said she was praying. 
 
 Then Bill Sedgwick and Jim Grant and the 
 Kingrnan boys, who were in front, set up a shout. 
 And here came Sweetheart up the road. Her 
 little dress was in tatters, her stockings were down, 
 and one shoe was gone. Her flaxen curls were 
 torn and dirty, her face was streaked with mud, and, 
 withal, she was well plastered from head to foot. 
 The mother, in a manner perfectly characteristic 
 of her sex, no sooner saw her child alive than she 
 gave a shriek and fainted away. The father rushed 
 to the little one and grabbed her up and kissed her 
 muddy hair and dirty face and little scratched 
 arms again and again. 
 
 "I didn t run away, papa," said Sweetheart, 
 apologetically. "1 didn t want to go. But when 
 the big balloon came along somebody reached 
 down and grabbed me up and held me tight so I 
 couldn t get away, and he took me off down the 
 road with a lot of boards and things and our 
 speckled hen and the red chicken-coop. And 
 after awhile he got tired and laughed and let 
 me down in a mud-puddle and splashed me all 
 over ; and and " (here she looked fearfully at 
 her mother, who was coming to consciousness) " I - 
 I losted one of my shoes," 
 
190 Street heart. 
 
 But the father took little Sweetheart in his arms 
 and pressed her to his breast. And, forgetful of 
 his ruined home and blighted farm, he buried his 
 face in her tangled curls and sobbed for joy and 
 thankfulness. For now he knew that God had 
 ridden on the storm. 
 
Political panderings of Joseph 
 
THE POLITICAL WANDERINGS OF JOSEPH 
 MACON. 
 
 THE door of the little back room was carefully 
 closed, and the Numidian attendant was instructed 
 to see that the company was not disturbed. 
 
 " There is great danger in making a Kentucky 
 toddy/ said Colonel Bollinger, as the boys drew 
 around the table and surveyed the preparations 
 with interest. " You take a lump of sugar, like 
 this, put it in a long glass, and pour in a very little 
 water, just enough to dissolve the sugar. Then 
 you stir with a spoon, and add the whisky. Com 
 plete by pouring in more water." 
 
 " But where s the danger, Colonel ? " 
 
 "The danger, sir, is in getting in too much 
 water. You may not believe it, but to make a 
 toddy as it should be made is one of the most 
 puzzling of all the glorious arts of modern times. 
 I remember when Joe Macon came down to visit 
 me that we sat up together half the night experi 
 menting. Joe would never admit that we had 
 discovered the secret of exact proportion, and the 
 result was that when we started for home, al 
 though we had only three blocks to go, we must 
 
 193 
 
194 The Wanderings of Joseph Macon. 
 
 have covered half a mile of territory. And when 
 a policeman I happened to know offered to assist 
 Joe, lie told him that he didn t require assistance, 
 as everybody knew that the longest way round was 
 the shortest way home." 
 
 " Who was Joe Macon, Colonel ? " 
 
 " JOJB Macon, sir, was one of the greatest politi 
 cians this country has ever known, as cunning as a 
 fox, as strong as an ox, and as brave as a lion. If 
 one of you gentlemen will ring for the cigars I ll 
 tell you a story about him. Thanks a Henry Clay, 
 please, rather strong. 
 
 "Well, when the war broke out, Joe was living 
 up in Northwest Missouri, a sort of dealer in general 
 merchandise, sugar, coffee,, clothing, niggers, and 
 the like. Andy Callaway and Joe married sisters, 
 daughters of old Squire Benton, who was with 
 Price during the troubles in this State. Andy was 
 a right smart sort of fellow himself, and what he 
 didn t know about a nigger trade couldn t be 
 learned. Of course his sympathies were all with 
 the South, and at first he promised the squire that 
 he d join the army. But the more he got to think 
 ing about it the less he liked the idea. You 
 see, all of Andy s property was up among the 
 Dutch, and if he joined the rebel army it meant 
 confiscation and a dead loss. So Andy closed out 
 his niggers and went home to think it over." 
 
 The Colonel bit off the end of his cigar and 
 
The Wandering* of Joseph Macon. 195 
 
 chuckled. " Well, the first thing Joe knew, along 
 came the Home Guards one day, and here marched 
 Andy with a lot of Dutchmen, dressed up in a 
 blue uniform and carrying- the Union flag, with 
 the band playing Yankee Doodle, or some other 
 odious air. Joe was mad clear way through, and, 
 when Andy looked over at him and winked, Joe 
 wanted to go and pull him out of the ranks. But 
 his wife said : < You let Andy Callaway alone. 
 Depend upon it, he knows what he s doing/ That 
 night Andy came over to Joe s house, still wearing 
 his blue uniform. That made Joe madder than 
 ever, and the way he lit into Andy was a caution. 
 But Andy just sat and grinned, and when Joe had 
 finished he said : 
 
 " Now look here, Joe, you re on the wrong track. 
 It s all well enough for us to be talking about our 
 sympathies and our rights, but the fact is it s a 
 question whether we ll go broke or keep our prop 
 erty and our skins. As a choice between tlie 
 Dutch and a rope or a bullet, I ll take the Dutch. 
 And if you re sensible you ll go with me. 
 
 " Much to Joe s surprise, his wife spoke up and 
 warmly seconded Andy. Mrs. Macon was a 
 thrifty woman, and as she lived in a border State 
 she didn t have much of that impractical sentiment 
 that was so popular among the women further 
 South. And Andy kept pegging away at him. 
 " The thing for you to do, Joe, is to go up to 
 
196 The Wanderings of Jose-pli Ma con. 
 
 the hall with me to-morrow night and make appli 
 cation for membership in the Home Guards/ 
 
 u < What good will that do ? said Joe. Every 
 body in the country knows that Fve owned and 
 sold niggers, and that I m a rebel. They ll just 
 laugh at me and perhaps mob me. 
 
 " No, they won t/ said Andy ; I ll tell you 
 exactly what they ll do. When you send in your 
 name Jim Cole will be there. lie kicks at every 
 thing and everybody. It s more than likely that 
 he ll get up and denounce you, and when he gets 
 to calling you names you want to go for him right 
 off. Knock him down and lick him. That ll 
 tickle the Dutch and be a sure proof of your loy 
 alty, and they ll take you right in. 
 
 "Well, they talked and argued and wrangled, 
 and finally Joe gave in and allowed he d try it, 
 anyway. And the more he thought of it the bet 
 ter-humored he became. And he tried on Andy s 
 coat and strutted up and down the room, and as 
 he thought of the wrath of his father-in-law he 
 laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. 
 
 " So the next night Andy came around and got 
 Joe, and they went up together to the hall. The 
 boys looked mighty curious when they saw Joe 
 come in, for you see Joe had talked pretty loud 
 about nigger-loving Yankees, and it was generally 
 known that he had fitted one fellow out and sent 
 him off to Price. But Andy and Joe sat down 
 
The Wanderings of Joseph Macon. 197 
 
 and didn t say a word until it came time to nom 
 inate new members. Then Andy got up and made 
 a little speech. He said it gave him great pleasure 
 to propose his brother-in-law, Joseph Macon, as a 
 member of the company. He supposed that it was 
 pretty well known to the intelligent and represent 
 ative Germans present that Mr. Macon s early 
 sympathies, like his own, had been with the Con 
 federacy. But since the South had so far forgot 
 ten itself as to fire on the flag, that glorious 
 emblem of a great and honored union of States, he 
 had felt it his duty to rally to its defense. He 
 therefore begged the privilege of enrollment among 
 the other honorable defenders of the Union. 
 
 "When Andy sat down there was faint applause, 
 and, sure enough, Jim Cole, who had been sneer 
 ing all through his speech, took the floor. Jim 
 was a sarcastic fellow, and he began by saying that 
 he highly approved such loyal sentiments coming 
 from so authoritative a source. He was glad to hear 
 that Mr. Macon had experienced this revulsion of 
 feeling, for less than twenty-four hours before he 
 had heard the gentleman cursing the Union from 
 Abe Lincoln down to the janitor of the Khode 
 Island State-house. For his own part he knew 
 Mr. Macon to be the all-firedest rebel in Northwest 
 Missouri, an unrepentant nigger- trader and a man 
 who would cut up a blue uniform for dish-rags. 
 
 " Well, these spirited remarks set up a great 
 
198 The Wanderings of Joseph Macon. 
 
 hubbub among the Dutch, for Jim was an authority 
 on the question of loyalty. And Andy nudged 
 Joe as a sort of hint that the crisis had come. So 
 Joe got up very deliberately and remarked that he 
 was greatly pained and outraged by these asper 
 sions on his patriotism. He apologized to the 
 company for his inability to make a speech, and 
 said that, as a man of action and not of words, he 
 would detain them only a moment. Then he 
 crossed over to Jim Cole and said : Jim, you re 
 the durnedest liar in the town, and I can prove it. 
 With that he hit him between the eyes and knocked 
 him flat, picked him up and threw him over three 
 rows of chairs, stood him up again and kicked him 
 six or eight times, and finally left him in a heap in 
 the corner. Then he turned to the company and 
 roared : If there s any other gentleman has any 
 thing to say ag in me or the Union, now s his call. 
 
 "Of course nobody had anything to say in the 
 face of this argument, and Joe was taken right into 
 membership before Jim had fairly come to con 
 sciousness. You couldn t have made a Dutchman 
 in that room believe that Joe wasn t next thing to 
 an abolitionist." 
 
 "Was Joe a good Union man after that, 
 Colonel ? " 
 
 " Union man ? " echoed the Colonel, with great 
 scorn. " He was one of the best Union men you 
 ever saw. He d go clown to the meetings and 
 
The Wanderings of Joseph Macon. 199 
 
 listen to the proceedings, and then ride all night 
 to warn one of his Confederate friends who had 
 been marked for arrest. He was such a Union 
 man that he couldn t bear to think that the Union 
 should be put to the trouble and expense of sup 
 porting a worthless rebel." 
 
 The Colonel puffed a moment in silence. " Poor 
 Andy," he went on, "he didn t have much show 
 after all. One day the news came that the rebels 
 were in the neighborhood, and the Home Guards 
 were called out. In some way, while they were 
 dodging back of town, the boys got scattered and 
 divided. Two squads came up on one another in 
 the brush and got to firing. Before they found out 
 their mistake Andy was killed. Joe always claimed 
 that it wasn t a mistake at all ; that they killed 
 him out of pure malice. They took him back to 
 town and gave him a military funeral, and covered 
 the coffin with the stars and stripes, and put Dnlce 
 est pro patria mori in his obituary. Joe tells me 
 that not long ago Andy s wife received a pension 
 with back money as a slight testimonial from a 
 grateful country." 
 
 What became of Joe ? " 
 
 " Well, Joe settled down to farming after the 
 war. But he didn t make much of a success of it. 
 He was too great a man. Perhaps you ve noticed 
 that a great man is only great between spells of 
 farming. Cincinnatus was that kind. His farm- 
 
200 The Wanderings of Joseph Macon. 
 ing merely gave him a chance to think tip more 
 greatness. Joe was a natural politician. He would 
 hang around and find out how things were going, 
 and then he d go that way. He used to say that 
 he wouldn t trust a man who wasn t open to con 
 viction. But somehow Joe was unlucky. When 
 he ran as a Republican the county went Demo 
 cratic, and when he came out as a Democrat the 
 county flopped over and went Republican. If he 
 got on the Prohibition ticket the county went wet, 
 and he no sooner took the side of the antis than 
 every Dutchman voted dry. It was the most curi 
 ous thing you ever saw. Yet Joe was a brainy 
 man, and one of the best wire-pullers in the State. 
 Bu(; he did have such luck. One day he started 
 to bring in a lot of section hands, at his own 
 expense, on a gravel train. The engine jumped 
 the track, and Joe and his brother didn t reach 
 town till three hours after the polls closed. Joe 
 was beaten by one majority. Another time he 
 imported a lot of Irishmen from Kansas and kept 
 them for two weeks. On election-day they all got 
 drunk and went fishing. There never was any 
 thing like it for luck. 
 
 "Naturally, Joe got a little discouraged. His 
 farm began to play out, as farms will when they 
 are run as political annexes, and his wife and chil 
 dren were considerably annoyed by malaria. So 
 Joe reckoned he d pull up and quit. It looked a 
 
The Wanderings of Joseph Macon. 201 
 
 little inviting over on the Kansas side, and he 
 moved across and purchased a few acres near the 
 river. There was plenty of good land cheap a few 
 miles back in the country,, but Joe said he was 
 tired and didn t like to travel, anyhow, and he 
 thought he d try it around the edge, just to see 
 how Kansas was going to suit. If he liked it, he 
 could dip a little farther in any time. 
 
 " Well, with Joe s record as a Union soldier, and 
 on the strength of his fracas with Jim Cole, he 
 could have had a good thing in Kansas. But here 
 is where his confounded luck came in again. Just 
 about this time Cleveland was elected President, 
 and Joe took it into his head that he wanted to be 
 postmaster. Of course, that killed him with the 
 Republicans, and the fight over the office grew so 
 hot that the party was disrupted, and two-thirds 
 of the Democratic leaders had it in for Joe. To 
 crown his sorrows, another fellow got the office, 
 and the next year the river rose and washed out 
 his farm. Then Joe gave up, and took to drink, 
 which he had sort of been taking to pretty natur 
 ally for some years. Ilis wife died, and his daugh 
 ters married off, and it left him free to do about as 
 he pleased. He was such a good-natured fellow 
 that everybody liked him, and he was always 
 sergeant-at-arms at Democratic conventions on 
 account of his great strength and his love of order. 
 
 "Down in Joe s neighborhood the county inva- 
 
202 The Wandering* of Joseph Macon. 
 
 riably had its final Democratic rally of the cam 
 paign. The boys would gather from all quarters, 
 build a huge camp-fire and circle around it while 
 the speaking was going on. Every man was sup 
 posed to bring his own private jug of JefTersonian 
 doctrine, and as the meeting never adjourned until 
 the doctrine gave out there was a good deal of 
 oratory. At such times Joe was in his element, 
 and always saw that everything was pleasant and 
 harmonious. 
 
 "That reminds me," said the Colonel, "that I 
 am getting a little parched. Beg pardon. You 
 were about to order the drinks when I interrupted 
 you. Xo, my boy, not for the world ; you spoke 
 first. 1 shall be happy to drink with you." 
 
 When he had measurably refreshed himself, the 
 Colonel proceeded : 
 
 " I remember being present at one of these 
 rallies. I was invited to address the County 
 Democracy on the character of Jefferson. Al 
 though I was a stranger to most of the statesmen 
 assembled, they honored me with profound atten 
 tion, and, I may say with modesty, unstinted 
 applause. When we first met together around 
 the fire, I noticed with displeasure that there was 
 a nigger present, not as a servant, which would 
 have been perfectly proper, but as a Democrat and 
 a brother. I spoke to two or three gentlemen about 
 it, but as they seemed to treat it with indilTer- 
 
The Wanderings of Joseph Macon. 203 
 
 dice, I could not, as a guest, object. For a time the 
 greatest harmony prevailed, but as the toasts grew 
 more frequent and the good liquor began to cir 
 culate, I could observe a marked change in the 
 demeanor of the crowd. Occasionally a gentle 
 man would look np and catch sight of the nigger, 
 and a look of astonishment would come over his 
 face, as if he observed him for the first time. 
 And by and by the whole crowd began to scrutinize 
 the nigger in an aggrieved and injured way, not 
 exactly in a hostile manner, but with that air 
 which suggests perplexity, annoyance, inability to 
 account for the presence of an interloper. 
 
 " As I recall it, Judge Gentry, as grand a Demo 
 crat as "ever drew the breath of life, was speaking 
 of the comprehensive principles of Democracy. 
 The fire had burned low, and we were unable to 
 distinguish faces around the circle. The Judge 
 had reached an eloquent climax in which he glori 
 fied the equality of man as sustained by the Dem 
 ocracy, and thanked God that we had met that 
 night as brothers in a grand universal brother 
 hood, when there came the sound of two quick 
 blows, and a man tumbled back into the fire. As 
 he fell, the embers, displaced by the body, shot up 
 a sudden flame, and we recognized the features of 
 the nigger. And, do you know, as a most remark 
 able example of spontaneity of thought, every man 
 in that circle jumped to his feet and shouted : 
 
204 The Wanderings of Joseph Macon. 
 
 Hurrah for Joe Macon ! It was one of the 
 grandest, most inspiring sights I ever witnessed. 
 Judge Gentry told me that, in all his forty years of 
 labor for the Democratic party, he had never ob 
 served a more thrilling tribute to a party worker." 
 
 " Did they send him to Congress, Colonel ? " 
 
 " No, sir ; poor Joe was too far gone at that 
 time to receive any reward, however merited. A 
 few months later he was taken into the Soldiers 
 Home, that beautiful haven of rest prepared by 
 our country for those who have fought her battles. 
 I spent a Sunday with him. As I came up the 
 walk from the station, here was Joe jabbering with 
 a couple of old fellows in blue, and drawing in the 
 gravel with his cane. He was saying : Now, it 
 was just like this at Bull s Run. Here were the 
 rebels over here in the woods, and here was our 
 command down by the stream that ran along this 
 way. 
 
 "When I had him alone I said: Joe, what 
 were you talking about, you old rascal? You 
 know that you never were at Bull s Run. 
 
 "And Joe looked at me in a doubtful sort of 
 
 way, and said : * Colonel, I ve told that lie so 
 
 many times since I ve been here that I m gettin to 
 believe it myself. " 
 
Distribution 
 
THE DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 IT is related in the brief chronicles of the 
 adventures of Moses in Egypt that, after the 
 law-giver, with Divine assistance, had subjected 
 Pharaoh to various annoyances such as murrain 
 of beasts, tremendous crops of frogs and flies, pain 
 ful boils and blains and a visitation of hail, he 
 caused a shower of locusts that not only covered 
 the land and ate up every green thing, but super 
 induced the bold statement that "before them 
 there were no such locusts as they, neither after 
 them shall be such." Doubtless, Moses was per 
 fectly honest in this opinion, for, prophet as he 
 was, he could not foresee the possibilities of the 
 great American continent. Indeed, all Christian 
 lands have accepted this promise with a security 
 that argued well for their faith ; but, in an evil 
 moment for Moses, people began to move into 
 Kansas. Now Kansas has always prided itself on 
 its ability as a record-breaker, and, despite the 
 orthodox religious sentiment there prevalent, it is 
 doubtful whether it has ever regarded Moses as a 
 leader in the same class with John Brown. And 
 as for Pharaoh s little experience with the locusts, 
 207 
 
308 The Distribution. 
 
 you can get thousands of affidavits in Kansas any 
 day to the effect that a Mosaic locust is to a Kan 
 sas grasshopper what a humming-bird is to a spar 
 row-hawk. These affidavits are not intended to be 
 irreverent or unorthodox, but are merely the out 
 growth of patriotism and State pride. 
 
 In fact, the Kansas man, having rallied from the 
 plague, is as proud of his grasshopper as a woman 
 is of her pet poodle. The Egyptian article sub 
 sisted on green things, but the Kansas variety is 
 claimed to have devoured cord-wood, kitchen 
 utensils and bits of scrap-iron and nails; in truth, 
 everything except the mortgage, which thus far 
 seems to have escaped even the ingenuity of Provi 
 dence. Whoever visits Kansas in these days should 
 not fail to ask the inhabitant to tell him about 
 the iron pot half-devoured by the ravenous insects, 
 or the crowbar into which they burrowed in their 
 efforts to make a square meal. These things are 
 now among the sacred traditions of the State, and 
 will be properly attested before a notary. When 
 one sits down to write of them, he cannot avoid 
 the conviction that Pharaoh s trouble has been 
 very greatly overestimated. 
 
 Nobody contends that the Lord sent the grass 
 hopper into Kansas, as previously He showered the 
 locusts upon Egypt. If any significance of divine 
 motive appears in this visitation, it is that He 
 afflicted Kansas as, many centuries before, He vis- 
 
The Distribution. 209 
 
 itecl sorrow upon Job a test of strength and for 
 bearance. At least this is the popular Kansas idea, 
 and it is entitled to consideration. 
 
 After all, there is much that is compensatory in 
 the workings of Providence, and while the Lord 
 sent the grasshoppers as a sort of gentle reminder 
 that the Kansas man was putting on more airs 
 than the average farmer is entitled to under a high 
 protective tariff, he had compromised the blow by 
 granting a wheat crop of sufficient yield to prevent 
 a disastrous season of infidelity. And then, as this 
 concession appeared to be too strong an evidence 
 of favor and discrimination against Job, he gave 
 the devil permission to supplement the grasshopper 
 pest with a drought that ate up the farmers 
 patience as neatly as the insects devoured his 
 grain. Such was the condition of affairs at Dob 
 bins the morning after the grasshopper convention 
 and banquet, 
 
 Dobbins had never figured very extensively in 
 the political history of Kansas, partly because it 
 was a new town and partly because its settlers had 
 not had the advantage of previous training in 
 Ohio or Indiana. It had never turned out any 
 thing more formidable in a political way than a 
 candidate for the Legislature, and he had been 
 beaten by a combination which Judge Jefferson 
 always referred to as "circumstances." 
 
 Judge Thomas Jefferson, or the " Jedge," as he 
 
210 The Distribution. 
 
 was familiarly called, was the one character in 
 Dobbins who, everybody conceded, had been 
 strangely and harshly neglected by fate. To the 
 simple people among whom he lived he was a mine 
 of information and learning, a vast repository of 
 facts and figures. To him went all the neighbors 
 with questions and problems, and it is due to the 
 Judge to say that he answered them promptly 
 with great facility. It was largely through the 
 Judge s aptness in answering questions off-hand 
 that for a time the idea prevailed in certain circles 
 of Dobbins that Leviticus was a Roman general. 
 And when the minister sought to dispel this illu 
 sion the Judge explained, with great impressive- 
 ness, that there were two distinct branches of the 
 family, the Hebrew and the Eoman, and that he 
 had naturally supposed that the question referred 
 to the modern representative who had distin 
 guished himself by his great gallantry in the 
 second Punic war. f Oh, well," said the Judge, in 
 the off-hand way that characterizes men of great 
 erudition, "if you mean the Hebrew fellow, I sup 
 pose the parson s right." And as the Judge pro 
 nounced the word with the accent on the first 
 syllable the impression grew that Leviticus was an 
 old Mosaic humorist. So the Judge emerged 
 from the argument with greater prestige than 
 before. 
 
 The Judge had moved into Kansas from Mis- 
 
The Distribution. 211 
 
 souri at the close of the civil war, and had settled 
 down on Dry Creek, which subsequently marked 
 the southern limits of the town of Dobbins. It 
 was confidently believed by his fellow-citizens that 
 in Missouri he had been a distinguished jurist, and 
 that he had been obliged to fly from home on 
 account of his loyalty to the Union and for the 
 reason that old Caspar s father left Blenheim 
 they burnt his dwelling to the ground. This im 
 pression the Judge never undertook to correct. 
 13ut in Kansas he was content to live on his past 
 reputation, and to make ends meet with such little 
 manual labor as a small gentleman farmer could 
 with dignity allow. 
 
 The early history of Judge Jefferson was a sealed 
 book. Indeed, the gentleman himself avoided all 
 inquiries tending to lead up to personal matters, 
 and at such times bore so unmistakable a look of 
 pain that it was admitted by common consent that 
 he was the hero of a mystery ; but whether a 
 romance or a lynching, it was impossible to tell. 
 When he had first appeared on Dry Creek, he had 
 been distinguished for his long, luxuriant hair and 
 an expansive shirt front. In later years he had 
 curtailed his locks, but retained the prestige of 
 exposing a wider area of shirt bosom than any man 
 in the district. In politics he was, as his name 
 would indicate, a Democrat, and while this fact did 
 not deprive him of any social pleasures, it proved 
 
212 The Distribution. 
 
 a barrier to the realization of those hopes that at 
 one time or another inflame every voter in Kansas. 
 "In this world/ said the Judge, "I am a martyr 
 to principle, but in the great and notable day of 
 the Lord I shall find my recompense." 
 
 As Dobbins grew the Judge began to branch out. 
 He it was who opened the first real estate office, 
 organized the first town-lot company, and called 
 the attention of Eastern capitalists to the golden 
 opportunities that were waiting to be picked up 
 along Dry Creek. It was the Judge who presided 
 at all the public meetings, made the most stirring 
 public-spirited addresses, and cheerfully gave his 
 time and his eloquence to offset the cash contribu 
 tions of those less gifted and less influential. 
 
 Yet in spite of these exertions and this laudable 
 display of public spirit Dobbins remained a village, 
 and the Judge showed no evidence of prosperity. 
 In fact, the little farm on the creek began to run 
 down, and the Judge s shirt bosom, never of im 
 maculate whiteness, bore tobacco stains somewhat 
 deeper and more numerous than before. Things 
 looked squally for the descendant of the great 
 patriot. 
 
 One day a letter came saying that the Judge s 
 wife had come into possession of a three-hundred- 
 dollar legacy through the timely demise of a super 
 fluous relative. In honor of this felicitous event, 
 the next day being the Sabbath of the Lord, the 
 
The Distribution. 213 
 
 Judge gave a dinner-party to his daughters and 
 sons-in-law, his sons and daughters-in-law, and 
 their heirs and assigns of all ages. The older 
 members of the family were still sitting at the 
 table, and the heirs and assigns were playing in 
 the yard, when there came a tap, tap, tap at the 
 window pane. The Judge had reached a point in 
 his discourse where he was disposing of the last 
 hundred dollars of the legacy, and he looked an 
 noyed by the interruption. 
 
 "It s only the children," said his wife, sooth 
 ingly. 
 
 "As I was saying," went on the Judge, 
 mean to take this last portion of the money and 
 
 apply it to " And again came the tap, tap, 
 
 tap. The Judge looked over his spectacles to catch 
 the culprits at the window, but they were not in 
 sight. " To take this money and apply it to the 
 improvement of the " And for the third time, 
 and louder than before, came the tap, tap, tap. 
 
 "Bill," said the Judge, "I wish you d go out 
 and drive those children away. This money came 
 to us lawfully, and it seems as though we might 
 have the privilege of disposing of it as we please." 
 
 Bill rose carelessly and went to the door, lie 
 opened it and looked out. Then he closed it 
 quickly and turned to the old man with his face 
 white. 
 
 " My God, father, it s grasshoppers ! " 
 
214 TJie Distribution. 
 
 The company jumped from the table and rushed 
 to the door and windows. A cloud of insects 
 almost shut out the sky, and thousands had already 
 settled down on the trees and ripening grain. 
 Even as the startled farmers looked the vegetation 
 seemed to disappear, and, as if in a moment, the 
 valley was like a prairie swept by tire or a country 
 sacked and pillaged by the conquerors in war. The 
 Judge looked first at the destroyers and then at his 
 sons. " Boys/ said he, " we re busted, by ! " 
 
 A less indomitable spirit than Thomas Jefferson, 
 the namesake and descendant of the man who con 
 structed the cradle of liberty, would have been 
 crushed by this misfortune. But the Judge was 
 unconquerable. In fact, he experienced a glow of 
 pleasure, as it were, in the reflection that at last 
 he was a "sufferer." The old-time Kansun exults 
 in "suffering." He esteems it a natural stage 
 through which he must pass in order to reach the 
 true dignity of life. A life in Kansas without 
 some of the cruel tests and disappointments that 
 beset a new country is to subject the citizen to 
 suspicion and distrust, and to cause him to be 
 looked upon as a Sybarite and an enemy to existing 
 conditions. So the Judge, with a flutter of pride, 
 mounted his horse, which the grasshoppers had 
 spared, and rode to town. 
 
 The ruin had been so widespread that the Judge 
 soon found himself in the company of the most 
 
The Distribution. 215 
 
 prosperous farmers of the valley, and it required 
 very little argument to convince them that the 
 calamity was one that appealed directly to the 
 sympathy and charity of the entire nation. 
 
 " As one who has been prostrated by this heavy 
 blow," said the Judge, "I shall take the liberty of 
 calling a public meeting, to be held in the Method 
 ist church to-morrow afternoon, to devise means to 
 lay our misfortunes properly before the country. " 
 
 When the Judge called this meeting to order 
 the church was filled with sufferers and their 
 friends. The Judge began with great dignity. 
 He reminded his hearers that their misfortune was 
 not unparalleled ; that the Romans, returning from 
 the second Punic war, had found their crops devas 
 tated by a similar pest. Should the citizens of 
 Dobbins be less courageous than the people of 
 Rome ? Should they not bear up under their 
 affliction, at the same time setting forth the exact 
 facts in order that the country might not be 
 debarred from the blessed privilege of giving of its 
 store ? 
 
 Jim Hodgman demurred. Jim had always 
 looked upon the Judge as a Missouri mossback, and 
 thwarted him in every possible way. He admitted 
 that he didn t know anything about a Punic war, 
 or what the Romans did, but when he was in 
 Kansas he believed in doing as the Kansans did. 
 He had looked around the room, and while there 
 
216 The Distribution. 
 
 were some honest farmers present, the meeting was 
 composed largely of men who couldn t be hurt by 
 a dozen grasshopper invasions. For his own part, 
 he had raised a good crop of wheat, and was in no 
 danger of starving. lie moved the meeting 
 adjourn. 
 
 The Judge replied with great eloquence and 
 fervor. lie submitted to the council of "sturdy 
 farmers and their friends " that a cry of distress 
 was going up all over Kansas ; that the grout, 
 newspapers of the country would be tilled with 
 dispatches from every county and town. Could 
 Dobbins afford to miss this glorious opportunity to 
 advertise itself in the Eastern press ? 
 
 Mr. Ilodgman asked, with a slight shade of sar 
 casm, if that was the policy adopted by the suffer 
 ing Romans after the second Punic war. 
 
 Judge Jefferson answered with spirit that the 
 facilities of the old Romans were somewhat abridged, 
 but that they were great hands to take advantage 
 of their opportunities. 
 
 Tom Meade thought that Dobbins would acquire 
 a better measure of advertising by taking care of 
 itself and declining all offers of assistance. This 
 opinion created a flutter and great agitation on 
 the part of the Jefferson contingent. 
 
 Mr. Hodgraan renewed his motion to adjourn. 
 
 The motion was lost, and a committee was 
 appointed to draft resolutions setting forth the 
 
The Distribution. 217 
 
 calamity that had overtaken the Dry Creek Valley 
 and the town of Dobbins, and imploring such 
 assistance as a generous nation could grant. At 
 his own suggestion Judge Jefferson was selected 
 to go to Kansas City to stir up the Board of Trade 
 to a realization of the disaster. Thereupon the 
 meeting adjourned, subject to the call of the chair 
 man of the executive committee. 
 
 That great director of public sentiment, the 
 Dobbins Enterprise, forewarned the merchants of 
 Kansas City that they would be waited upon by 
 the Hon. Thomas Jefferson, a victim of the 
 great scourge, and at the same time a man who had 
 lost sight of his own troubles in the awful calamity 
 that had overtaken his fellow-citizens. It bespoke 
 for the advocate a generous welcome and a hearty 
 measure of aid, and presented him to the great 
 commercial Samaritans as one of the foremost 
 men of Kansas, the peer of the brightest and the 
 pride of the best. The Judge thoughtfully mailed 
 several copies of this formal introduction to the 
 newspapers, the banks and the Board of Trade of 
 the Southwestern metropolis. Then he brushed 
 up his best clothes and started for the city. 
 
 A smaller man than the Judge, a man less self- 
 contained, less conscious of the high philanthropy 
 of his mission, less impressed with the urgency of 
 the cause that drove him from hjs rnial quiet into 
 the noise and bustle of the citv. would have been 
 
218 The Distribution. 
 
 overwhelmed by the reflection that he was seeking 
 the ear of strangers and the co-operation of men 
 engrossed with their own affairs. But the Judge 
 was not easily daunted. In less than six hours 
 after his arrival in the city lie had conversed with 
 three reporters, and not only painted a harrowing- 
 picture of the desolating scenes along Dry Creek, 
 but had reviewed in full the parallel circumstances 
 of the second Punic war, and had outlined the 
 probable policy of the Democratic party in the 
 coming campaign. Two papers spoke of him as 
 "one of the most distinguished of Democracy s 
 chieftains," and a third styled him that "old wheel- 
 horse of Democracy." The second day he was on 
 Change laboring with the moneyed men, and set 
 ting forth, in his most picturesque manner, the 
 terrors of the plague that had paralyzed the ener 
 gies of Dobbins and clogged the wheels of com 
 merce. 
 
 "Our town, gentlemen," said the Judge, "has 
 enjoyed the closest commercial relations with your 
 city. It is for this reason, if for no other, that 
 we have come at once to you in our distress. I 
 would ask, if it were feasible, that you should send 
 a committee of your body to see for yourselves the 
 extent of our sufferings, but time presses, and 
 affliction brooks no delay." 
 
 Not one man in forty had ever heard of Dobbins, 
 but the Judge was fertile in resources, and the 
 
Tlic Distribution. 219 
 
 next morning the newspapers printed diagrams of 
 the town and Dry Creek in the very heart of an 
 appalling waste of grasshoppers. Board of Trade 
 men are notoriously open-handed, and this evi 
 dence of suffering touched them. Before the week 
 was out a purse of nearly $1,500 had been pre 
 sented to the Judge, and a carload of corn-meal 
 was ordered shipped to Dobbins without delay. 
 
 Publius Scipio, returning from the second 
 Panic war, could not have experienced a greater 
 measure of personal satisfaction than was felt by 
 the Judge as he took the train for Dobbins. And 
 he argued forcibly with himself as he bowled along : 
 " It is a principle promulgated by a great statesman 
 that to the victors belong the spoils ! Such princi 
 ples, however, should be governed by circum 
 stances. I will apply only $200 to my own expenses 
 out of the $1,450 I have raised by my eloquence 
 and efforts." 
 
 An hour later he said : " It would appear that I 
 am robbing myself. I will take $100 more for my 
 just dues." 
 
 Still a third time the devil tempted him, and he 
 communed : " Why conceal from myself the knowl 
 edge of my necessities ? Four hundred dollars will 
 be a poor reward for my labors." And then, with 
 the keen appreciation of a man who enjoys a quiet 
 joke, he asked the conductor to lose no time, as 
 
every hour deprived a suffering community of 
 means of relief. 
 
 The return of the Judge to Dobbins was wel 
 comed by a joyous outpouring of sufferers!" The 
 train that bore the distinguished representative of 
 smitten agriculture brought also, from Topeka, a 
 relief committee and a carload of donations, princi 
 pally in the way of wearing-apparel, warranted 
 grasshopper-proof. As the Judge stepped on the 
 platform he was met by Jim Hodgrnan, who pro 
 pounded a few blithe questions touching the 
 present relative condition of the Punic war and 
 the Dry Creek invasion. To these ribald taunts 
 the Judge replied with dignity, and an adjourn 
 ment was taken to 2 p. M. to allow the committee 
 to lay out the clothing. 
 
 It must be admitted that gratitude was not one 
 of the shining virtues of the Dobbins sufferers. 
 As the relief committee cordially invited the vic 
 tims to step up and inspect the coats and trousers 
 generously provided for their necessities, many 
 were the exclamations of disappointment. 
 
 "This here coat is five years old if it s a day," 
 said Bill Xixon. 
 
 " Ain t there no watch-pocket in them trousers, 
 Bill?" asked Sim Mayfield. 
 
 "What do you want of a watch-pocket?" said 
 Ilodgmau. "Next thing you ll be wanting a 
 watch." 
 
The Distribution. 221 
 
 "Got any white vests?" inquired Joe Morgan. 
 Joe was the dude sufferer. 
 
 "What do we want with these old duds, any 
 how ? " exclaimed John Tully, with indignation. 
 " The corn s all gone, and there ain t no need of 
 scarecrows." 
 
 "There s a reasonable amount of suffer! 11 round 
 here," said Bill, "but I m inclined to think, from 
 the looks of these offerings, that the calamity has 
 been exaggerated." 
 
 Mr. William Ray, the tenor of the Methodist 
 choir, stepped up briskly. "There s to be an 
 entertainment at the church to-night for the bene 
 fit of the sufferers," said he. "If no gentleman 
 has any objections, we ll take these things to help 
 out the costumes." 
 
 "Take em along, Bill," replied Joe ; "they may 
 come in handy after all." 
 
 Mr. Morgan s prediction was verified. The 
 costumes were the glittering feature of the enter 
 tainment, and the sufferers who came early, paid 
 their twenty-five cents each, and occupied the 
 front seats, applauded liberally. 
 
 "It s a darned good show," said John Tully, 
 approvingly, "and we ought to get some money 
 out of it. But I don t see what we d have clone 
 without them fixin s." 
 
 Judge Jefferson appeared on the stage and was 
 o-reeted with a great round of applause. He 
 
The Distribution. 
 
 unbuttoned his vest and waved his hand with 
 dignity. 
 
 " Fellow-sufferers, I think I may say as much, 
 for we are all sufferers in this common cause, I 
 have been requested to thank our fellow-citizens 
 for getting up this delightful entertainment for 
 our benefit, and also to include the relief com 
 mittee from Topeka that has assisted so materially 
 in our pleasure this evening. Ancl so I pass to 
 another agreeable surprise. I have the pleasure 
 of informing you that I have returned from Kan 
 sas City with a cash contribution of $1,050. I 
 have ventured to withhold the modest sum of $50 
 for my expenses, and will now turn over the balance 
 of $1,000 to your chairman." 
 
 Tremendous enthusiasm followed this announce 
 ment. Three cheers were given for the Judge, 
 who was surrounded by his fellow-citizens and 
 complimented for his industry and generosity. 
 Then Jim Hodgman took the stand. 
 
 "If the meeting is agreeable," said Jim, "I 
 should like to ask permission of the visiting com 
 mittee to use their cars for the purpose of ship 
 ping our wheat." 
 
 The committee, somewhat dazed by the turn of 
 events, thought the matter could be arranged, and 
 the company dispersed with many bright anticipa 
 tions for the future. 
 
 Three or four days after the c]istribution. Judge 
 
The Distribution. 223 
 
 Jefferson, Bill Nixon and two or three more of 
 the boys were sitting in Sam Turner s grocery, 
 when the Judge said : 
 
 " Boys, there s a load of corn-meal down on the 
 side-track which nohody seems to claim. Til 
 play you a game of seven-up to see who gets it. " 
 
 "I ll go you," said Bill. 
 
 So the cards were dealt and the game pro 
 gressed until everybody had been frozen out save 
 Bill and the Judge. It was the last hand. Bill 
 lacked one point, the Judge two. 
 
 "I stand right now," said Bill ; "what yer got, 
 Jedge?" 
 
 "King high here." 
 
 " King is good. I stand on tray for low." 
 
 "Deuce here," replied the Judge. 
 
 "Darn such luck !" said Bill; "take the corn- 
 meal, Jedge." 
 
 The Judge went out whistling a merry tune. 
 As he passed down the street he encountered the 
 Rev. Mr. Henry. 
 
 "Good morning, Judge," quoth the dominie. 
 
 "Howdy," replied the Judge. 
 
 "Ah, Judge," said the reverend gentleman, 
 earnestly, " I think that Dobbins has much to be 
 thankful for, that through the blessing of Provi 
 dence it has been enabled to surmount its afflic 
 tion and distress. I trust that we all appreciate 
 the goodness and loving kindness of the Lord," 
 
94 The Distribution. 
 
 The Judge hastily thrust a stray card into his 
 pocket, patted his old wallet affectionately, rolled 
 over his quid with an easy movement of his tongue, 
 and replied, solemnly : 
 
 "He doeth all things well." 
 
That H^wful Miss goulder. 
 
THAT AWFUL MISS BOULDER. 
 
 FEMALE society was all agog. At the lunch 
 eons, the teas, the little dinner-parties; at the 
 meetings of the literary clubs; in short, wher 
 ever the ladies for pleasure or instruction came 
 together, the first eager questions were : " Well, 
 have you seen her ? " " And pray what is she like ? " 
 The unhappy masculine creature who is plumped 
 down in a coterie of women at one of those times 
 when they are supposed to be enjoying themselves 
 may well believe that the world is given over to 
 small things. He may deprecate, he may shrug 
 his shoulders, he may protest in his puny lordly 
 way, but, Heaven defend him, he is of no more 
 consequence than my lady s cat, and much less an 
 object of interest than my lady s poodle. Perhaps 
 this is why the sensible man avoids afternoon 
 gatherings when the dog-star rages. 
 
 The cause of the present social agitation was in 
 the nature of a remarkable invasion involving 
 delicate treatment and the most diplomatic meas 
 ures. The first explosion had taken place a month 
 before when the omniscient Mrs. Audrain, swollen 
 with pride and information, and triumphant in 
 
 227 
 
That Awful Miss Moulder. 
 the blessedness of a piece of gossip, had announced 
 that " the Boulders are coming back." And this 
 intelligence naturally prompted the younger gen 
 eration to ask : " Who are the Boulders ? " 
 
 Major Boulder had lived in Missouri at a time 
 when " living " for a Union man was measurably 
 precarious and never of unalloyed pleasure. Where 
 he came from nobody seemed to know. Connect 
 icut, said some ; Ohio, others; others, New York. 
 All agreed that he was a Yankee in the loathsome 
 significance of the word, and the Major would not 
 even take the trouble to deny it. If questioned 
 sharply, he would reply that he was a lawyer, and 
 would point to his shingle as corroborative evi 
 dence, thereby intimating that professional confi 
 dence must be remunerated. For, albeit a Yankee, 
 it was reluctantly admitted that he was a smart 
 Yankee. Hence the feeling against him was 
 intensified to a virulent degree. 
 
 When South Carolina committed the indiscre 
 tion of firing on Fort Sumter, Boulder he wasn t 
 a major then unreservedly declared that it was a 
 "damned outrage," and when the State began to 
 divide in sentiment he was among the first to join 
 the Federal ranks. His military career was brief, 
 for in less than nine months he came back with a 
 desperate wound. Experience, however, didn t 
 change his sentiments or lessen the vigor of his 
 expressions, and so violent were his speeches that 
 
That Awful Miss Boulder. 229 
 
 the gentlemanly and efficient contemporaneous 
 regulator, Bill Anderson, marked him for destruc 
 tion. One day the Major was missing. No great 
 attention would have been paid to this, but, un 
 happily, pretty Susie Gentry was missing also. 
 Inquiry was made at the Gentry residence. " The 
 repo t," said the Colonel, "is cor-rect. But 
 
 have a quick eye to see; 
 She hath deceived her father and may thee. " 
 
 The Colonel was a man of wide reading and 
 quick and pertinent phrase. 
 
 To make an otherwise unnecessary introduction 
 desirably short, let it be remembered that the 
 Major fled with his young bride to Colorado, 
 speculated in mines, made a. handsome fortune, 
 and, after twenty years of good luck and happi 
 ness, yielded to the thin air, and died. His wife, 
 now possessed of three daughters and a comfort 
 able income, found her heart turning back to Mis 
 souri and her childhood associations. Behold 
 them, then, fairly domesticated in the lower 
 breathing-levels as this tale opens. 
 
 The apparently innocent question, "Have you 
 seen her ? " did not refer directly to the pretty girl 
 who had run away with the Yankee twenty-five 
 years before. It was prompted by the revelations 
 of the grocer s boy, who, being on oath, testified 
 to old % Mrs. Dallas that , while delivering an order at 
 the back door, he had seen a mannish-looking girl 
 
230 That Awful Miss Boulder. 
 
 at the dining-room window, with a cigarette in her 
 mouth and her feet on a dead-level with her head. 
 This startling report Mrs. Dallas promptly com 
 municated to Mrs. Mercer, who in turn repeated it 
 to Mrs. Lawrence, from whom Mrs. Crawford re 
 ceived it, and so on until the entire community of 
 men, women and children knew that the Boulders 
 smoked and sat with their feet on the mantel. 
 
 "I can readily believe that story," said Mrs. 
 Au drain, "for when my sister, Mrs. Brown, was in 
 Paris last summer she met the eldest Miss Boulder 
 at one of those horrid French shows where there is 
 very little dressing and a good deal of kicking. 
 The interest that girl took in the sight actually 
 made my sister shudder. At last she went up to 
 her and said : Why, my dear Miss Boulder, pray 
 what are you doing here? And the girl turned 
 around as cool as you please and replied : Pray, 
 my dear Mrs. Brown, what are you doing here ? J 
 My sister was a good deal surprised, but she said, 
 very gently: Why, you know I m married/ 
 And this girl just laughed and tossed her head and 
 answered : < Well, by the grace of God, I hope to 
 be/ Did you ever in your life ?" 
 
 And all the ladies present agreed that they 
 never did, and that she must be "perfectly horrid," 
 and some remembered that she looked "healthy 
 enough," and might be reasonably pretty were it 
 not for a "rather cold eye " and a " bad nose." As 
 
That Awful Miss Boulder. 231 
 
 for her dressing, it was respectable, considering that 
 she had " come from the West. " 
 
 This phrase, "from the West," is purely relative, 
 after all. The New England man regards Buffalo 
 as the confines of the setting sun. The Ohio man 
 goes " West " to Illinois. In Chicago they think of 
 the country beyond the Missouri River. Kansas 
 remembers that it is the geographical center of the 
 United States. In the Rocky Mountains they 
 remind you that they are 1,200 miles east of the 
 Pacific Ocean, and when the traveler reaches San 
 Francisco and swears that at last he has run down 
 the West, lo ! he finds a kingdom in itself. So the 
 pursuit is hopeless. There is no West. 
 
 Miss Boulder was not unconscious of the sensa 
 tion she had created. Indeed, she rather enjoyed 
 it. "Excuse me," she said, -apologetically, to Mrs. 
 Audrain, " if I appear to be a tenderfoot to your 
 conventionalities." "And what," said the bewil 
 dered lady, in narrating the incident to her friends, 
 " is a tenderfoot ? " 
 
 But if to the ladies she was a revelation, to 
 the men she was a "stunner," q, "corker," a 
 "thoroughbred," anything that in the masculine 
 vernacular signifies a high-stepping girl out of the 
 ordinary. She knew the latest and the best jokes, 
 and some of them were club jokes at that. She 
 told a story capitally, and when she laughed she 
 gave a hearty, ringing laugh that made society 
 
232 That Awful Mis* Boulder. 
 
 shiver. In the ball-room she held court in a cor 
 ner, and a very full court it was. The women 
 turned up their noses and sniffed contemptuously at 
 "that girl" with her "brazen manners" and her 
 "off-color stories," but every male creature dropped 
 around at least twice in an evening to get a bit of 
 Kocky Mountain breeze and, perhaps with a little 
 malicious incentive, to shock the austere pro 
 prieties of Madam Grundy. 
 
 At the dinner-table she always remembered that 
 she had heard such a good story that wouldn t 
 keep. And to do her justice, it was a story that 
 had the evidences of having been kept a little too 
 long. The ladies shivered and turned pale and red 
 by turns, and fled precipitately at the first oppor 
 tunity. All of which was highly diverting to the 
 awful Miss Boulder, who followed the gentlemen 
 into their smoking-retreat and said : " Xow, fel 
 lows, the girls are away; let s enjoy ourselves." 
 And the laughter and hilarity that floated back 
 into the drawing-room made the mothers of mar 
 riageable daughters tremble with indignation and 
 send in for their sons on the most trivial pretexts. 
 
 The catch of the season beyond perad venture 
 was Willie Worth. Willie was the remaining prop 
 of an illustrious house that had exercised good 
 judgment during a wild period of real estate specu 
 lation. Timely and advantageous deaths in his 
 family had left him with a great fortune, no posi- 
 
That Awful Miss Boulder. 233 
 
 tive habits of evil, and a weak and tremulous 
 inclination to do good. Willie was tall and slen 
 der, a partial victim to inanition, too weak to work 
 if he had the desire, and too rich if he hadn t. So 
 he passed his time in a hopeless endeavor to spend 
 his income and to avoid the snares of match-mak 
 ing mothers and the pitfalls of shrewd and calcu 
 lating daughters. 
 
 The advent of the awful Miss Boulder jarred 
 Willie from a spell of despondency. Her strong, 
 robust figure appealed to his enfeebled sensibili 
 ties ; her high animal spirits fascinated him. Her 
 laugh went through him like the shock of an elec 
 tric battery, and her stories, while they made his 
 teeth chatter and his hair rise gently, filled him 
 with an indescribable longing for more. At first 
 he was content to hang on the outskirts of her 
 admirers, but little by little he drew nearer, 
 until one evening she asked him, kindly, why he 
 never invited her to dance. That completed the 
 spell, for Willie s dancing amounted to a positive 
 disease, from which the girls shrank as they would 
 from a plague. So Willie haunted her with his 
 long, trembling figure and melancholy face. He 
 even smoked a few cigarettes in order that he 
 might be near her after dinner and catch some of 
 the ozone which she distributed so lavishly. Per 
 ceiving which, the mothers trembled more violently 
 
234: That Awful Mixs Boulder. 
 
 and wished the more heartily that the "creature" 
 had never left her mountain fastnesses. 
 
 In turn, Miss Boulder was attracted by the gen 
 tle Willie. It was the kindly law of opposites. 
 She was so vigorous, so straight, so full of rich 
 arterial blood ; he so frail, so willowy, so bloodless. 
 80 she petted him, and smiled on him, and allowed 
 him to wait on her. And one night in com 
 pany she called him "Billy," a favor which he 
 repaid with a look of the most eloquent gratitude. 
 But beyond this matters did not progress. She 
 had no time for sentiment. 
 
 It was at the third and final summer reception 
 of the Prairie Club. Miss Boulder had been in 
 unusual spirits, and her jests and sallies had paled 
 the electric lights. Very handsome Miss Boulder 
 looked, and in marked contrast was her perfect 
 physical womanhood to the emaciated form of 
 Willie, who was trembling perceptibly with weak 
 ness and pleasure. Miss Boulder was taking one 
 of a series of ices with Willie in a corner of the 
 summer-garden, and a pleasant hush had fallen 
 upon the inviting scene. 
 
 "Billy," said the awful Miss Boulder, suddenly, 
 "why don t you come down to see my kid ?" 
 
 " Your wh what ? " gasped Willie. 
 
 " My kid, my baby. Don t you know that I 
 have a baby ? " 
 
 Willie wiped the cold perspiration from his 
 
That Awful Miss Boulder. 235 
 
 brow. " I didn t know that is, I hadn t heard - 
 you ll pardon me, but I don t believe I exactly 
 understood." 
 
 Miss Boulder gave one of her invigorating 
 laughs. "Don t say anything about it, Billy boy, 
 for you might get me into trouble and summarily 
 ruin my reputation. Come down to-morrow after 
 noon, and I ll let you into a secret." 
 
 Willie sat up late that night and smoked a 
 cigarette, as was his custom when he was very 
 stern and desperate. Plainly he had allowed 
 matters to go too far. He had permitted himself 
 to think even tenderly of a young woman who not 
 only defied cherished conventions, but openly 
 flaunted her improprieties in the face of her 
 warmest and stanchest friend. It was not too 
 late. lie would show this brazen creature that he 
 was a man sans sans sans something; he 
 couldn t remember exactly what it was. Willie was 
 not strong in the modern languages. And he went 
 to bed very white from the double effect of emotion 
 and cigarette. 
 
 But in the morning the old feeling came back. 
 After all, it might be a mistake. Was it not an 
 undisputed fact that this girl was a madcap to 
 whom nothing was too sacred for a jest ? Of 
 course it was a jest, Any fool could see that, and 
 Willie was prepared to admit in defense of his 
 lady-love that he was very much of a fool. 
 
236 That An fid Mi** Boulder. 
 
 So, after luncheon, having braced himself with 
 such stimulating influence as a soda cocktail affords, 
 Willie went down to the Boulder residence. For 
 a moment he stood on the porch and admired the 
 clematis that climbed up and around the column, 
 and he recalled, with a sudden gush of feeling, that 
 Miss Boulder had worn a dress of that color at a lawn 
 fete. The reminiscence nearly took him oil his 
 feet, but he steadied himself and rang the bell. 
 Miss Boulder answered the summons. It was 
 shockingly unconventional, but Willie rather liked 
 it. It made him feel that the young woman w r as 
 anxious to see him, and in this event any lapse 
 was excusable. There was a serious look in Miss 
 Boulder s gray eyes, and almost a sadness in her 
 voice as she said, gently : 
 
 " I was afraid that perhaps you would not come. 
 Step in, Mr. Worth. It is cooler in the house." 
 
 Willie was greatly troubled. He had nerved, 
 himself to be calm, collected ; to exhibit a frigid 
 ity bordering even upon hauteur. Had she called 
 him Billy he was prepared to stiffen and greet her 
 with a chilling and commonplace phrase. But 
 "Mr. Worth" was entirely too unexpected for his 
 programme. It brought before him a gaping 
 abyss. On the other side of a yawning chasm 
 stood Miss Boulder, lie gazed at her helplessly 
 and shambled into the house, his old weakness re 
 turning with alarming rapidity. 
 
That Awful J//sx Bouldrr. 237 
 
 Miss Boulder preserved her gravity of tone. 
 " You seemed so unlike yourself when we parted 
 last night ; you were so preoccupied and so silent 
 that I was sure I had offended you. And you 
 know, Willie" (this with a most engaging air), 
 "that I could not bear to have you angry with 
 me." 
 
 The young man fidgeted nervously in his chair. 
 "I presume I was thinking of that baby." 
 
 Miss Boulder s face lighted up, and she laughed 
 quietly. " I promised I would let you into a secret. 
 Wait a minute, and I will produce the important 
 element." 
 
 . When she had gone to execute the writ of habeas 
 corpus, Willie played with his watch-chain and 
 endeavored to bring his shattered intellect to a 
 proper realization of the situation. He had not 
 untangled his wits when Miss Boulder returned 
 with a triumphant flush on her cheeks and a great 
 mass of seemingly superfluous clothing in her 
 arms. 
 
 "There," said Miss Boulder, "what do you think 
 of my little beauty ? " 
 
 Willie rose irresolutely and poked feebly at the 
 bundle with his stick. Then he drew a little 
 nearer and clucked once or twice. Feeling the 
 necessity of saying something, he remarked : " It s 
 a beautiful child, but it seems to have a lot of 
 color. Why, it s got its eyes open." 
 
That Awful Miss Boulder. 
 
 "Of courses" answered Miss Boulder, with sonic 
 asperity; "you don t suppose that babies are like 
 cats, do you ? " 
 
 "1 didn t know," said Willie, doubtfully; "I 
 thought perhaps some of them might be." 
 
 "K"ot until they re grown up," said Miss Boul 
 der, reflectively. And she cast a wicked look across 
 the street, where old Mrs. Dallas had her habita 
 tion. 
 
 A long silence followed. Then Willie plunged 
 in desperately : - It doesn t look a bit like you." 
 
 "Sir I "said Miss Boulder. 
 
 "I suppose it takes after its father. I have 
 heard somewhere that girl babies always do take 
 after the father, though I don t see why they 
 should. I presume it has something to do with 
 physiology." 
 
 "On the contrary," said Miss Boulder, coolly, 
 "the baby is the perfect picture of the mother." 
 
 Willie stared at the young girl and marveled at 
 her extraordinary self -possession. So innocent and 
 fair she looked, so seemingly unconscious of the 
 great shadow she had thrown on her life. He shut 
 his eyes and groaned inwardly. 
 
 "And now," said Miss Boulder, gayly, "now for 
 the secret. You know, perhaps, that I do a little 
 slumming in a quiet and private way, just for my 
 own amusement. Doubtless, you read in the paper 
 of the man who was killed by the falling of the 
 
That Awful Miss Boulder. 239 
 
 elevator, and of the death of his wife from the 
 shock two days later. It was my luck or chance 
 to drop in at the house, and there I found this lit 
 tle baby. It looked so lonesome and so helpless 
 that well, I brought it home ; and now that I 
 have it, I suppose the whole town will be pulling 
 me over the coals." And the awful Miss Boulder 
 looked positively distressed. 
 
 Willie had well-nigh collapsed during the recital. 
 He shook his feeble legs together and walked to 
 the window. When he turned around, his face 
 was beaming. 
 
 " Margaret that is to say, Miss Boulder, I think 
 I should like to hold it." 
 
 "Take care," said Miss Boulder, anxiously. 
 " What are you feeling down there for ? Don t 
 you know that babies aren t measured by the 
 length of their clothes ? You re hunching her 
 dress up around her neck." 
 
 " It s a beautiful baby," cried the radiant Willie, 
 "even if it is a little too red and fat." Then, as if 
 an inspiration had seized him : " Margaret, you 
 come over on the sofa and hold it. I feel as if I 
 might drop it." 
 
 So Miss Boulder sat down on the sofa and 
 chirped to the baby and talked "goo" talk. And 
 the infant clutched at Willie s mustache, which set 
 that young gentleman oil in a spasm of admiration. 
 And Miss Boulder danced the baby in her arms 
 
240 That Awful Mis* Jimdder. 
 
 and kissed her, and Willie leaned over and pressed 
 liis lips as near the same place as possible, and the 
 merry minutes flew by very rapidly to all concerned. 
 At last, in a lull of osculation, Willie straightened 
 his long, thin legs and said, in a strained voice : 
 
 "Margaret, I have been wanting to say some 
 thing to you for a long time." 
 
 "Yes, I know," replied Miss Boulder, without a 
 particle of trepidation; "you want to ask me to 
 marry you." 
 
 " What a girl you are ! " exclaimed Willie, admir 
 ingly. "You ought to have been a mind-reader." 
 
 "Now listen, Willie," said Miss Boulder, ear 
 nestly; " I suppose if I were like most girls I should 
 blush and simper and say, <0h, Mr. Worth, this is 
 so sudden/ It s a foolish way that most girls 
 have. They arc trying to deceive you. They can 
 tell to the minute when a man is in love with 
 them. I have known for weeks that you cared for 
 me, and I might have drawn you out two months 
 ago. But I wanted to give you time to know your 
 own mind thoroughly." 
 
 "Then you do love me," said the fluttering 
 Willie. 
 
 " Not so fast, please. I will confess that at first I 
 took a little malicious pleasure in getting you away 
 from the other girls. It was such fun ; they were 
 so awfully jealous. All the old match-makers in 
 town were after you, and how they glared when I 
 
That Awful Miss Boulder. 241 
 
 whirled you up past their corner. And I did it 
 pretty often. But after a while I learned to miss 
 you when you didn t come around, and to look for 
 you. You were always so nice and gentle and 
 
 thoughtful and kind and and " Here the 
 
 awful Miss Boulder fell to kissing the baby raptur 
 ously. 
 
 " Then," said Willie, decidedly, " I don t see why 
 we shouldn t get married right off." 
 
 "There s something yet," went on Miss Boulder, 
 slowly. "I m an unconventional girl, and I know 
 I make awful breaks. I was brought up in the 
 West, where I did as I pleased, and cared for no 
 body s opinion. I can t say that I care very much 
 now, but I m not going to marry any man who is 
 ashamed of me." 
 
 "I m unconventional myself," said Willie, 
 eagerly. " I hate these forms and ceremonies, this 
 solemn sitting in state until a maid comes in and 
 breaks the deadly stillness by whispering that din 
 ner is served. I like a house where they ring the 
 dinner-bell, and people just sort of drop down and 
 eat." 
 
 "But you wouldn t like," said Miss Boulder, 
 smilingly, " a wife who has the reputation of being 
 loud, of telling men-stories, and" (bitterly) "of 
 smoking cigarettes and cocking her feet on the 
 mantel like a man." 
 
 " I must admit/ said the truthful Willie, " that 
 
242 That Awful Mis* Boulder. 
 
 some of your stories are pretty tough, but after we 
 are married you might work em off on me in 
 private and let me pass on em. As for these 
 people here, what do we care for them ? I ve got 
 lots of money, and, if things don t go right, the 
 country is big, and Europe isn t shut up yet." 
 
 Miss Boulder did not reply. She toyed with the 
 baby s chubby hand a moment. Then she looked 
 up suddenly, and tears were in her eyes. 
 
 Willie was deeply affected. " Don t cry, Mar 
 garet," he said, hastily; "you re too strong and too 
 sort of manly to cry. I think it would be better 
 to let me do all the crying." 
 
 The girl smiled and said gently : " Come, Willie, 
 run away now, there s a good boy. W^e both need 
 a little time to think. " Then she added, naively ; 
 tf You might come around this evening after the 
 baby has gone to bed." 
 
 Willie, who had acquired marvelous strength 
 in his legs, and whose face radiated all the happi 
 ness of his feelings, moved briskly to the door, A 
 thought struck him, and he returned. The awful 
 Miss Boulder stood in the middle of the room, 
 holding the baby in her arms, kissing it and coo 
 ing to it as it laughed in her face. And Willie 
 thought he saw in her expression a loveliness, a 
 gentleness he had never seen before. The girl 
 looked up and blushed. Willie took a step for 
 ward and said, awkwardly : 
 
That Awful Miss Boulder. 243 
 
 " Margaret, I thought I would like that is, if 
 you don t object er-r won t you let me kiss 
 the baby again ? " 
 
 "Oh/ Willie!" 
 
 "Oh, Margaret!" 
 
of Qilas gcott. 
 
THE LUCK OF SILAS SCOTT. 
 
 TKAGEDY should be short. Tales of sorrow and 
 despair must be quickly told. There is so much 
 that is bright and beautiful and alluring in life that 
 he is abnormally constituted who would linger and 
 grieve over the dark places in human existence. It 
 is right that the reader should know in advance 
 ii little of the misery that is awaiting him. If he 
 cannot be forewarned in the actual events of life 
 it does not follow that the same rule must apply to 
 his literature. lie deserves a measure of consid 
 eration from his story-teller, a sort of sign-board 
 that may act as a danger-signal. This is a tale with 
 a deep coating of umber, and he who reads may 
 run, if the paraphrase is permitted. At all events, 
 he cannot say that the warning has not been frank 
 and timely. 
 
 Far out in Western Kansas stretches a vast coun 
 try, a veritable empire, rising gradually to the 
 Rocky Mountains, a country to tax human patience, 
 human industry, human ingenuity. It is a coun 
 try that might have exhausted the possibilities 
 of an Arabian night with its capriciousness, its 
 kaleidoscopic changes, its splendors, when fickle 
 247 
 
248 The Luck of Silax Xcott. 
 
 Nature is favorable ; its terrors, when she frowns. 
 It is a country of which the Government says to 
 the long caravan of immigration : " Why delay in 
 the poor, sterile land of small things when all this 
 may be had for the mere asking ? " So the tide 
 ebbs and flows ; they go and come, and they come 
 and go, and the great drama of life, with its shifts 
 and changes, is acted over and over in the count 
 less stories of the wide-stretching plains. 
 
 The voyager adrift in a rowboat on the Atlantic 
 has no greater, no more crushing sense of his utter 
 loneliness than the traveler who finds himself alone 
 on the plains of the AVest. One is land, the other 
 water ; otherwise the conditions are the same. 
 The sun rises at the dead level of the horizon and 
 goes down in the same terrible expanse. In the 
 summer it brings its seemingly endless hours of 
 heat and torment ; in the winter it only mocks at 
 misery and fear. To add to the perplexity of the 
 traveler on the plains, Nature herself conspires 
 to taunt him. Now he sees a beautiful grove with 
 its restful shade and running stream, and quickly 
 it vanishes in the cruel disappointment of the 
 mirage. And now almost at his hand he welcomes 
 a landmark or a haven of refuge, and presses 
 eagerly forward, mile after mile, only to see it 
 dancing on before him, deluding him with the 
 magnifying properties of the atmosphere. If the 
 summer has been dry, as the summer usually is, 
 
The Lurk of Sila* Scott. 240 
 
 the earth is brown and baked, the streams are 
 gone, and miles of cheerless sand are the only 
 promise of the day passing and the days to come. 
 Such pictures as these, and common as they are, 
 the traveler cannot exaggerate, 
 
 Silas Scott was a farmer in one of the Eastern 
 States, a plain, plodding, hard-working man with 
 enough education to keep abreast of the times, and 
 enough ambition to desire to better his lot. Silas 
 lived in a moving neighborhood. One by one his 
 friends and acquaintances dropped out, and word 
 came back to Silas that they had all gone West 
 and prospered. So Silas in time, for he was a 
 slow thinker, felt the Western fever in his blood. 
 He was making a living for himself and family, 
 but it was a living that came hard and slowly, and 
 there he was, tilling a few acres of ground to call 
 his own, when the Government was knocking at 
 his door, reproaching him for his conservatism, 
 and asking him why he didn t go out and take 1GO 
 acres of land in the West, just for the claiming. 
 Silas thought it out in his ponderous way, and the 
 temptation was too strong. He was young, his 
 wife was young, his children were strong and 
 healthy ; the opportunity was dazzling. So into 
 far Kansas came Silas with his family and began a 
 new existence on the plains. 
 
 The story of Silas Scott in his pursuit of an easy 
 living is the story that has been told a thousand 
 
250 Tlic Luck of Silas Scott. 
 
 times by those who believe in the hard and doubt 
 ful qualities of luck. It was bad luck that led 
 Silas to the selection of his quarter section remote 
 from those who might have been kind and helpful 
 neighbors, and in a spot where only the most 
 favorable conditions of weather could assure a 
 profitable crop. It was bad luck that the year was 
 one of the most disastrous ever known to the 
 farmers of Kansas ; that the burning sun and the 
 unbroken drought began the work of destruction 
 which the fierce,, hot w^nds speedily completed. 
 But Silas was a man of character, with a good deal 
 of dogged determination. He had gone to work 
 to put up his little adobe house not as comforta 
 ble as the one he had left, the little frame dwelling 
 back East, but good enough for a start, and prom 
 ising to lead to better things. He worked early and 
 late, studied the conditions of the soil, and made 
 all the calculations and allowances that a careful 
 man should make. There was no time for pleasure 
 or relaxation, and there was no thought of it. 
 What mattered one or two years of toil if they led 
 to a peaceful future and an abundancy of fortune ? 
 So Silas and his wife worked on uncomplainingly, 
 and if the wife grew a little thinner, and both were 
 careworn and more weary as the weeks passed by, 
 neither had time to notice it. 
 
 "It ll be all right, Nancy," said Silas, when the 
 spring storms came on with irresistible force and 
 
The Luck of Silas Scott. 251 
 
 washed away the results of his early labors ; " luck 
 is against us at the start, but it will turn." 
 
 "It s all right, Nancy," he repeated at the end of 
 the first year, when he sat down to figure up his 
 season s profits and found himself far behind his 
 original calculations. " A bad beginning makes a 
 good ending." 
 
 And when, in the second summer, the long dry 
 spell set in, and the grain blistered and cracked in 
 the burning sun, his pluck never forsook him, 
 and his " It s all right/ was as firm as ever. Then 
 the winds came hot and furious, and the earth 
 seemed on fire ; the creeks dried up, and vegeta 
 tion perished. "It s all right," he muttered, 
 less hopefully. 
 
 "Don t cry, Nancy," he said, when the baby, 
 born in that atmosphere of despair, gave up the 
 struggle and yielded its little life. "Perhaps it s 
 for the best. It s all right, or it wouldn t have 
 come about." And his own voice quivered. 
 
 But the mother, sitting by the bed and closing 
 the baby s eyes, said not a word. She was back 
 again in the old home, where the trees were green 
 and the brooks were full. The pain in her heart 
 was stilled, for memory had carried her away to 
 happier times and deluded her with a dream of the 
 past. 
 
 All that suffocating day Silas sat under the 
 shadow of the shed, fashioning the rude coffin for 
 
252 The Luck of titta* Xr-oti. 
 
 the dead child. The hot winds were still blowing 
 with that peculiar, menacing hiss that came as the 
 breath of the venomous serpent, but Silas worked 
 on, struggling with his rising doubts, and vainly 
 endeavoring to solace himself with his favorite 
 maxim, "It s all right." In the house the mother 
 was preparing for the burial, which was to take 
 place when the sun went down. On the baby s 
 breast and in his tiny hand she had placed little 
 bunches of dried flowers, the only offering that 
 Nature could give, and from the trunk she had 
 taken a battered prayer-book, that Silas might 
 read the service for the dead and give her baby at 
 least the semblance of a Christian burial. 
 
 In the evening, as they stood around the little 
 grave, the father, the mother and the older chil 
 dren, hushed and awed in the first manifestation 
 of irremediable affliction, Silas, in his dull, heavy 
 way, stumbled through the service his wife had 
 marked : 
 
 "I am the resurrection and the life. ... I 
 know that my Redeemer liveth. . . . And now, 
 Lord, what is my hope ? ... He hcapeth up 
 riches and cannot tell who shall gather them. 
 . . . We brought nothing into this world, and it 
 is certain we can carry nothing out." 
 
 These and many similar passages Silas read and 
 did not understand, for he was a dull man, and 
 grasped only the tangible things of tho present. 
 
Tlie Luck of Silas Scott. 
 
 He filled in the grave and followed his wife into 
 the house, while the children played about in the 
 joyless way that characterized their lives. 
 
 That night, while the children were sleeping and 
 Silas sat in his chair pondering over the shaping 
 of events, Nancy stood in the doorway and looked 
 out across the plains. The moon was full and 
 bright,, but to the woman it was not the same 
 kindly moon that her girlhood remembered. Far 
 away came the wail of the coyote, and Nancy 
 shuddered. She had heard that half-human, quer 
 ulous cry a thousand times, but never before had 
 it come to her with such significance. She shut 
 the door hastily, drew close to her husband, and 
 sat down beside him. Then she put her hand on 
 his arm and said, gently : 
 
 " Silas, why not give up ? We ve done all that 
 human beings can do, and we re as far away as 
 ever. What good can come from fighting fate ? " 
 
 Silas moved a little uneasily. "Why, it s all 
 right, Nancy," he said, soothingly. 
 
 " That s what you ve always said," exclaimed the 
 woman, with sudden energy. "It has been all 
 right with you when our hearts and our common 
 sense told us it was all wrong. Perhaps our baby 
 thought it was all right when he came to brighten 
 us up a bit. It is all right with him now, and it 
 will be all right with us when we go to join him." 
 
The Luck of tiHas Scutt. 
 
 "I wouldn t talk that way, Nancy," said the 
 man, slowly. 
 
 " How else can I talk ? " replied the wife. " We 
 have lived this wretched life without a spark of 
 hope, a particle of encouragement. Bad luck has 
 followed us from the start and has shown us no 
 future. We are alone, without friends and with 
 out comfort. Every morning the sun comes up 
 like a ball of fire and brings fresh misery to this 
 desert. You know what that awful sun means, 
 Silas. Look in the insane asylum of this State 
 and find its victims. What has become of old 
 Prouty, a stronger man than you, Silas, who 
 defied its power ? A month ago he was carried 
 away a hopeless maniac, and we have remained to 
 invite his fate. Every night I go to bed thinking 
 of old Prouty and listening to the mocking of the 
 wind and the howling of the wolf. I can t stand 
 it any longer." 
 
 "Fve tried to be as easy on you as I can," said 
 the man, by way of blundering apology. 
 
 "I don t find fault with you, Silas, but I m 
 hungry for the old home. We were happy there 
 if we were poor. We worked hard, but we always 
 made a living, and if we got a little tired and 
 despondent at times we had our friends, and the 
 little farm with the great green shade-trees, and 
 the birds singing in them. Here we have nothing 
 but a huge plain and a blazing sun. Let s go back, 
 
The Luck of Silas Scott. 255 
 
 Silas, where at least we can find a little happiness, 
 and where there is a God." 
 
 The woman put her head on her husband s 
 shoulder. .Then she said, a little more calmly : 
 " Did you believe the words you repeated at our 
 baby s grave ? Did you really think there was a 
 God in this horrible place to hear them ? I am 
 the resurrection and the life/ Can a God bring 
 comfort to those who mock him by calling to him 
 from a desert where their foolish ambitions have 
 led them ? Why should we try to heap up riches 
 or carry to the grave more than we brought into 
 the world ? " 
 
 Silas looked bewildered. The woman s swift 
 application of the texts began to penetrate his dull 
 reason. He stared helplessly at his wife, and pat 
 ted her on the shoulder for an answer. 
 
 " I don t complain for myself, Silas. I don t care 
 much what becomes of me, except at times when 
 the old home feeling comes back. But I see you 
 growing ten years older in a single summer. I see 
 the anxious look and the furrows in your face. I 
 know you re unhappy and losing heart. And I 
 see our children growing up neglected and ignor 
 ant. We had opportunities and a fair chance 
 when we were young. Oh, Silas, let s go back, if 
 only for their sakes." 
 
 The woman broke down. The man, too, felt 
 himself strangely stirred. He got up and walked 
 
25(5 The Luck of Silas Scoff. 
 
 to the door. One glance was enough to show him 
 the ruin of the summer and the hopelessness oi the . 
 year. He thought in his turn of the little home 
 back yonder, and of the pleasant times they had on 
 the small profits of their industry. There was the 
 little red school-house the same one he went to 
 when he was a boy. And the old meeting-house too. 
 He found himself wondering whether they had put 
 on that fresh coat of paint they were discussing 
 when he came away. And the lane that led down 
 to the squire s. And the old apple-tree that 
 stood right at the left of the bend. And Bill 
 Simpson s fishing-hole. And Thompson s grocery, 
 where the boys elected a President of the United 
 States every Saturday night. Silas felt his eyes 
 getting moist. 
 
 On the other hand, what would the boys say if 
 he gave up beaten and went back ? Ought he to 
 surrender to a little momentary weakness ? Jim 
 Higgins had gone away and succeeded, and so had 
 Henry Cole, and so had John Grubb, the most 
 shiftless man in the county. Could he go back 
 and acknowledge that he had been taken in ? 
 Could he stand up and hear old Bill Simpson say : 
 " Waal, here s Si hum ag in ; jest as I pel-dieted, 
 by gum"? 
 
 Silas took a turn around the house and paused 
 at the baby s grave. "It wasn t much of a light 
 lie made," he muttered. "I guess that s the way 
 
TJie Luck of Silas Scott. 257 
 
 with all children." And a horrible fear took hold 
 of him all at once, as he thought of the little ones 
 huddled asleep in a corner of the miserable room. 
 So he came back, and, going up to the bed, gazed 
 long and intently upon them, then turned to his 
 wife, sitting patient and silent where he had left 
 her. And he looked into her wan face, and the 
 flush came into his own. Stooping down, he kissed 
 the tired eyes and said, as if a great load had been 
 lifted from his heart : 
 
 "It s all right, Nancy. It s all right, mother. 
 Good luck has come at last. We re going back." 
 
Famous Books of Fiction 
 
 By Western Writers. 
 
 Armstrong, Le Roy. 
 
 AN INDIANA MAN. 12mo, cloth, $1.00; paper, 50c. 
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 AN AMERICAN NOBLEMAN : A Story of the Canaan 
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 F. J. SCHULTE & CO., Publishers, 
 
 298 Dearborn Street, Chicago. 
 
74404