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^ ROBERT LOWRY KEITH,

" THE CUFF-HOLDER MAN."

Author ol "TWENTY YEARS' FUNNY EXPERIENCES ON THE ROAD," til
which was over 500,000 copies the first two years.

BRAZIL, IND., U. S. A.

Book
Ten

Minutes.

Gentle

in

FROM THE FUNNY SIDE,
and SOME OTHER THINGS.• OF U©caTyn

interest.

WE beg to say that we have placed on sale Clark's

Six-Cord Spool Cotton Manufactured by the William
Clark Company.

Mr. William Clark, President of this new company, has
been associated with thread making for the past forty years, and
he was general manager for twenty-seven years of the mills pro-
ducing one of the best known brands in this country. He has
made many improvements in thread-making machinery, some of
which are used to-day wherever spool cotton is made.

The new mills at Westerly are built on the most approved
>lans, and contain the latest improvements in machinery, the
esult of which places on the market a spool cotton superior to all
other brands. Its special features are uniformity of size, smooth-
ness, strength and freedom from knots. The Black is absolutely
a fast color and will withstand the actions of acid, light and air.

We can further add that we have thoroughly investigated
the claims made by The William Clark Company, and find
them to be correct in every particular.

For sale at wholesale by

MURPHY, HIBBEN & CO.,

INDIANAPOLIS.

Importers. Jobbers,

Dry Goods, Notions, Woolens, Eto.,

vv stocks complete in all departments____

•v lowest prices always a certaintyBicycles for the Masses!

OLD KEN, YOUNG MEN, GIRLS AND BOYS,

We Have What You Want!

■■■*
'■ A :■

M



If we are not represented in your city, get our prices.

MOST COMPLETE LINE OF CYCLES AND SUNDRIES

IN THE STATE.	J

C. 6. Fisher & Co., Indianapolis, ;f

64 NORTH PENNSYLVANIA ST.	;J1D. W. BRATTIN

MAKES

WATCHES

A

SPECIALTY

GOOD WATCHES CHEAP,
IS HIS MOTTO.

■BRAZIL, IND.

Staflkafd Bros.,

BRAZIL, IND.

MANUFACTURERS
AND DEALERS
IN.....

ARC IN THE FRONT IN THEIR LINE.

Largest Stock and Lowest Prices in the City,

AS THEY DO BUSINESS ON THE CUT-RATE

CASH BASIS AND BUY IN CAR-LOAD LOTS.

Factory and Salesroom: { 24 and 26 H. Meridian St.IHbmNAPOHA.

beta* ©ffioeA

II II-J--

Grneitl^. }feitf$,

J^oonrjA d,2^IS,Ro.l$§£c.@^a<&ft.|?t.

Practice in State and Federal Courts.

Commercial and Corporation Law a Specialty.

Well Equipped Collection Department.

Long Distance Telephone Connection.

Notaries and Stenographers in Office.R. L. KEITH,

REAL ESTATE and
MONEY BROKER,

BRAZIL, IND.

Wmsofl, m^Eti & SEiDEfys,

^ — —mmmi■■■■■■■

FIRE, CYCLONE, LIFE, ACCIDSNT.

STEAII BOILER and PLATE
CLASS INSURANCE.

R$aT estate AS^Hts.

STEAMSHIP TICKETS FOR SALE.

All of the Above at the Lowest Possible Rates.

OFFI0E, NO. 10 EAST MAIN ST.,

^■Mmm^BRAZIL, INO.

Geo. J. Mayer

MANUFACTURER of

SEALS,

STENCILS and
RUBBER STAMPS,

Steel Stamps, Badges, Checks,

Burning Brands, Etc.,

IB SOUTH MERIDIAN ST., OitouMD Flooh.
VENDER CATALOGUE.	INDIANAPOLIS, INO.It's Love at First Sight! ^

When you see Our Magnificent New Stock of Well Made, Perfect
Fitting lines of

We propose to give you the best at the lowest possible price«
PRIZES and SURPRISES are as thick as flies in a molasses
barrel. You wonder at the immense variety. You take a delight
in the beautiful Styles* You go wild over the Prices* Don't
cheat yourself by missing early selections from this great assort-
ment of Stylish Novelties at the

WHEN CLOTHING CO.,

BRAZIL, IND.

1845	QO TO	1895

HENDRIX & CO.'S

DOORS, SASH, BLINDS, PAINTS, OILS, VAR-
NISH, BRUSHES, REFRIGERATORS, ICE
CREAM FREEZERS, SCREEN DOORS and
SCREEN WINDOWS at pricesithat cannot be beat-

Cook Stoves and Gasoline Stoves at great Reductions. Don't
Forget the place,

N. W. Co ft. Main and Meridian Sts., Brazil.PLANING MILLS.	SAW MILLS.

All kinds Hard Wood,	Plain and Quartered Oak,

Doors, Mantels, Stairs	Cherry, Ash and Bill

and Inside Finish.	Stuff.

James N- Halstead,

BRAZIL, IND.

Lumber, Lath and	Sash, Doors, and Blinds.

Shingles.	Builders' Hardware.

JUCREH GIOVE STORE

Sell Every Kind of Glove®,
For All Kinds of People,
And Always at Bottom Prices.

Only Glove Store.

10

C. Washington St.

INDIANAPOLIS,AND AUTHOR OF

'TWENTY YEARS' FUNNY EXPERIENCES ON THE ROAD,

BRAZIL, INDIANA, U. S. A.Copyrighted 1895
By ROBERT I<OWRY KEITH.

Baker Randolph o.

printers, binders and rlbctrotyfer*,
indianapolis, ind.Country Merchant Fifty Years Ago

FROM THft

FUNNY SIDK,

and

SOME OTHER THINGS

. . . BY . . .

Robert Lowry Keith,

The Cuff-Holder Man.

and author of
" Tw*nty Years' Fuwny Experience* on th* Road."

INPIANAPOWi:
Bakxr-Randolph Go., Fmmtma.
-189*-INDBX.

9Amm.

Keith Purchases a Store..................................15

Takes a Look at Pearl Street Early in the

Morning...............................................................................21

Keith Gets a Letter from His Partners at Home.	28

Keith Goes to New York to Buy Goods........................36

Pioneer Merchandising................................................47

Why Die Ye All the Year?..............................77

If I Only Had it Back..................................................................78

Tribute to Mother...............................................81

Keith Makes a Speech at an Old Settlers' Meet-
ing ..................................................................84

A Speech Made at a Soldiers' Reunion in a

Western State.........................................................91

The Law of Association is Clearly Defined in All

Creation......... .........................................96

The Influence of Love in the World..................98

Ideal Woman...................................................................101

Is Life Worth Living?.....................................108INTRODUCTION.

In writing upon this subject I shall doubtless excite inquiry in
the minds of some of my readers as to where the plot was laid and
how I came to know so much of country merchandising. Well, I
shall tell you. I was a country merchant myself for a number of
years in the early part of my life at the town of Bowling Green,
Indiana, and it is there that I locate the plot of my story, and what I
shall tell you of early merchandising, and the names I shall use from
time to time, are real, the circumstances of which I shall speak are
true, and while it may become necessary for me to extend some of the
transactions of those days toward the border of fiction, I shall not lie
much. My purpose in writing this story is to recall to the memory of
some of the older citizens of the country the early history of merchan-
dising, and to give also to the young men and women of this day some
idea of how we lived and did business in those days, and I presume
that what is true of my own town and merchants of my own locality
is equally true of other places, for that humanity is much the same,
situated alike, is one of the undisputed principles of our nature. So,
if our merchants and myself did some ridiculous things, the people
that you knew probably did the same, and the reading of this book
will call to mina many things that happened in the long ago, which
may awaken tender recollections of times that are past, and bring
before the mind's eye the pictures of our pioneer merchants, our
fathers and mothers, their lives and the ways in which they transacted
that part of their business pertaining to the purchase of goods needed
in their economical lives, which are to us seemingly ridiculous cir-
cumstances of the early days. In the description that I shall give of
myself as a country merchant in primitive times and under the em-
barrassing circumstances that controlled us in those days, if I should
say what may sound as ridiculous and untrue, you just ask the older
people, not only of this but of any other State, if they really did do
this way, and whether I have described scenes with which they are
familiar, and they may be able, not only to confirm what I have said,
but to tell you much more of the funny and odd things that were
done between the early merchants and the people of that day.

I have set apart in this book a small department that I call
" Odds and Ends," which will serve as a kind of dessert, consisting of
se\eral things and several kinds, and have closed with a valedictory
address on the subject of "What Have You Got Out of Your Life?" or
" Is Life Worth the Living as You Have Lived It ?" And here, as with
the menu of a first-class hotel, there may be some things that will not
be palatable to you, yet there is generally something that we do like,
and out of whicn we can select a comfortable meal, and so I trust will
be my book. If you do not like it all, you can, perhaps, select enough
that will be worth to you the price of it.TO MY FRIENDS,

the civilized inhabitants of the world,
i dedicate this book.

Robert Lowry Keith,

The Cuff-Holder Man,

and Author of

Brazil, Indiana, U. S. A.,
September 1,1805.

"Twenty Years' Funny
Experiencea on the Road."Keith Purchases a Store.

I might recall many funny things that took place in
the beginning of my career in merchandising which
would illustrate the royal green in a country merchant
anywhere. I remember well some of the ridiculous
things that I did in the early history of my mercantile
life. For instanee, with two other men, I traded for a
store " off hand," as they said in those days—" lumped
it off." Well, one of my partners had some little knowl-
edge of the store business, but my other partner and
myself were young farmers and did not know brown
muslin from bed-ticking; but we sailed in. We took
possession of the store at noon, when all the help
walked out. We got a crock and turned it over our
heads in turn and cut each other's hair square around,
all that stuck down and showed at the edge of the
crock, as that was the fashion in those days. Then we went
through the small stock of clothing there was in the
store and dressed ourselves up to kill—and such a com-
bination as it was—I really almost go into convulsions
when I think of how we all looked. Tanned, freckled,
and sunburnt, as yellow as a saddle, and to see the sud-
den transformation from farmer to dressed-up merchant
was killing. Yes, it was; for you know how ill at ease
are those who are not used to dressing when trigged up
in the latest style.

I shall never forget my first afternoon behind the
counter. I got out of the hardware stock a pair of

15x6	Keith Purchases a Store•

scissors like your mother use to have, took some high-
colored cotton rubber tape and strung it across my breast
very much like a sash, with the scissors hanging down
at my side like the shot-pouch of early days, and paced up
and down behind the counter asking the curious crowd
of this quaint old town what they would have me cut off
for them. That was a day long to be remembered.
One of my neighbors said she would take a spool of
thread, and asked me what it was worth. I turned and
asked my partner who had been employed in the store a
few days what thread was worth. He said, " Ten cents a
spool." So my customer picked out a spool of No. 90,
which is very small, as you know, and asked me if they
were all the same price. I said to her that I thought
the small spools should not be sold for as much as the
large ones, so I sold her six small spools at five cents
each. I wondered if she had not had a chance to buy
thread lately, but she afterwards told me that the reason
that she took so much at that time was, that she was
afraid thread would rise, and it did.

If there is anybody that grows suddenly smart it is
the country merchant. I know that I had not been in
the business a month till I thought that I was just a
little the smartest merchant in the country. Am now
ashamed to say so, but I did talk to wholesale merchants
about the origin and manufacture of all goods and the
importation of all foreign products. I can now realize
why they would snigger out and then apologize to me,
say they were laughing about a funny story some custo-
mer had told them, and then tell me some stale chestnut
of a joke at which I would laugh till I was given out.
The merchant would enjoy the occasion, for he wasKeith Purchases a Store.

17

tickled to death to have a chance to laugh at me. Well,
I was just as innocent then as I was green.

There were not many drummers around in those days,
so I begged my partners into the notion of sending me
to Cincinnati to buy a stock of goods. It was in the
spring of the year, about the first of May, and I had
never been to Cincinnati nor anywhere else, excepting
to mill a time or two. We raked up all the money we
had, borrowed all that was loose about the old town,
and I went to lay in our spring stock of goods.KEITH STARTING TO CINCINNATI TO BUY GOODS.

(18)Keith Purchases a Store.

19

We had been in the business only about five or six
weeks, but had the names of the houses that our prede-
cessor had traded with, and he gave us good letters to
each of them telling them that we were good. I hadn't
the least idea why he should have to tell them that we
were good, for I had no thought of attending church
while in Cincinnati, nor did I even suspect that they had
churches in such towns.

Well, to Cincinnati I went, arriving there in the
evening and by some inquiry found the tavern where
I had been ordered to stop. I remember that I
told everybody about the tavern that I was one of the
leading merchants of Indiana, and had come to Cincin-
nati to buy a stock of goods. I showed them my letters
of introduction, as well as my roll of money, the first
evening, and now I often wonder why some fellow did
not rob me, borrow my money, get me to cash a check,
or do some of the many things they do to a fellow now-
adays. I reckon it was out of sympathy for me. But
it was during the early part of the Civil War, when
everybody had all the money they wanted, so it was no
temptation to steal from me. Then, again, I have
thought that it was because I stuck so close inside of the
tavern that they had no chance to get at me, for I did
not get out of the house that night. I was afraid I would
get lost. Now you will say that I was a fit subject for
calf-feed, and no doubt the infant bovines would have
eaten me with a good relish. But, for a wonder, I was
not eaten up—yet I was an awfully smart merchant. I
could have given A. T. Stewart and such merchant
princes of this day some very bright ideas of merchan-
dising, but I did not get to see them, so they missed the
opportunity of a life-time..U KEITH

ARRIVES AT THE TAVERN AT CINCINNATI TO BUY GOODS.

(20)Takes a Look at Pearl Street Early in the

Morning.

Early next morning I was up and had been to break-
fast and down on Pearl street long before sun-up, ready
to begin my purchases; but when I tried a door I found
it locked. I stepped back and looked at the building
and it showed as little sign of habitation or business as
the Pyramids of Egypt. Thinking that, perhaps, they
had moved away, I went to another and still another
until I had tried all the doors on Pearl street, finding
the same gloomy, lonesome goneness pervading the
whole street. I sat down and wondered what I should
do. As I " 'sposed" that they had all gone out of busi-
ness, the great query in my mind was whether to go to some
other city (if I could find the way) and try to buy our
goods, or go back home and tell my partners of the state
of affairs and try to induce them to agree with me that
the best thing we could do would be to move our store
to Cincinnati, as it surely was a good opening to go into
business, for it looked like a right good town, though
very hilly all around there. So I thought I would go
back to my tavern and write my partners an account of
the whole situation and ask their advice, as I had their
money as well as my own to spend. I felt that they had
better be consulted. I made arrangements with the only
porter that was yet up for a rate of board if I should stay
a week with them. This done, I got of him some letter

2122 A Look at Pearl Street Early in the Morning.

paper and a nice yellow envelope, for all of which he
charged me ten cents, but I guessed he" wanted a drink
and that was a good way to get it. I wrote a lengthy
letter to my partners setting forth all the facts, asking
them to write me where to go to buy our goods or
whether they would move, at once, to Cincinnati. The
fellow about the tavern told me that they had a daily
mail out of their town, which more than ever convinced
me that I was right in desiring to settle there and go into
business. After placing my letter in the box in the office
at the tavern, where I was told it would be called for, I
had a lot of time on my hands waiting for business hours.

After waiting awhile I thought I would take another
walk back down onto Pearl street, where they told me that
most all of the wholesale trade was done, thinking^that
I would pick out a good location, perhaps select one of
those seven-story buildings and find out, if I could, who
owned it and what they would take for it, seeing that
they had no use much for it. Soon I turned into what
I thought was Pearl street, but surely I must have been
mistaken, for this street was wide open and alive with
business. This convinced me that we should at once
arrange to move to Cincinnati. So I walked along this
street a few doors, and never before did I see such stores;
they were perfectly immense, and such loads of boxes as
I saw them hauling up from the foot of the hill utterly
astonished me, so that I went down to see where they
had come from—and then and there I found the Ohio
river and saw my first steamboat. Then I knew that
it was a very wise thing for us to do to move to
Cincinnati. Fearing that I should get lost I went rightKEITH WAITING FOR BREAKFAST—FIRST DAY IN CINCINNATI TO PUltCHASK

(23)24 A Look at Pearl Street Early in the Morning.

back the way I had gone down and soon I was on the
same busy street that I had found a few minutes before.
I asked a fellow what the name of this street was, and he
said it was Pearl street. I then asked him if there was
more than one Pearl street in Cincinnati, and he said,
"No; only one." I then asked him which end of the
street I was on. He looked at me "kinder" friendly
and said, "Which end are you?" Of course, I did not know
what he meant, for he seemed to be very busy "tum-
bling" boxes on the side-walk which had been rolled out
of the big store. I went in and asked for the proprietor
and was shown into his private office. He asked me
what he could do for me. I told him that I did not
want to hire a hand, but wanted to see what he would
take for his store building, observing that he seemed to
be moving out. I also asked him, before he could get to
tell me why he was moving out, if it wasn't a healthy
location around there. I noticed that he looked wither-
ed up and tired. He told me as soon as he got a chance
to get in a word for my questions that the goods that were
in the great piles of boxes on the side-walk had been sold
that day and were being shipped to their destination.
"O, I see," said I. Just then two or three young fellows
that I supposed to belong about the store, for they had
their coats and hats off, came up to his office to get
something, and as they left they looked mighty friendly
towards me and smiled, when one of them asked me,
"Who cut your hair?" I answered him, rather curtly,
"My partner, Mr. David A. Orman, of Bowling Green,
Clay county, Indiana." And he at once seemed to re-
alize the fact that he had waked up a very intelligentA Look at Pearl Street Early in the Morning. 25

man, and so he had; and the proprietor said to me, "Call
again for I was then a full-fledged merchant, with
some money in my clothes (if they did not fit as well as
some folks' clothes do nowadays). Just then I had
some lofty ideas of starting a big store in Cincinnati.

After a while I got very hungry, having eaten my
breakfast by candle-light, and started back toward my
tavern to get dinner. I did not have any watch and the
buildings were so tall and thick in this part of the city
that I could not see the sun to ascertain what time a day
it was, as was our custom to do at home, but the^-city
seemed to have grown and spread out wonderfully fast
since the early morning. Every empty house that I had
seen in the morning as I went down onto Pearl street
seemed to be now occupied and full of business. I then
regretted that I had not bought one of those magnificent
store rooms that wrere empty as I went down and wrote
to the boys, my partners, to box up our store and come
on at once.

I could see then that I was a great financier, for it
had turned out just as I thought it ought to, that the
town was too good a place to be without stores long.
So, on seeing a fellow with a nice blue suit on and a link
of bologna sausage in his hand (as I thought it was) I
asked him if he would sell it to me, who said that he
would give me a whack over the head with it if I did
not go on about my own business. Then I explained
matters to him by telling him who I was and showing him
my letters of introduction, for it occurred to me that he
might be one of the merchants to whom my letters were ad-
dressed. He told me that wasn't his name. Then I confi-26 A Look at Pearl Street Early in the Morning.

dentially showed him my roll of money, when he told me
that I should be very careful about showing my money in
such a place; that folks might take it away from me.
He asked me where I was stopping. I told him the
name of the tavern, when he very kindly remarked that
he was going up that way and would be glad to show
me where it was. I noticed when I got there that the
name of the tavern was the same, but it did not look any
more like the place that I had left before sun-up than I
looked like a Cincinnati man. On leaving me at the door
he told me that he was glad he had met me; but I did
not know why he should be, for he had not made any-
thing out of me, as he would not sell me any of his sausage.
I told the clerk about falling in with this newly made
friend who was selling sausage, who laughed and said:
"Why, my friend, that is one of our policemen, and the
thing that you took to be sausage hanging to a strap is what
they call a mace, used for whacking unruly fellows when
they are not willing to be arrested." I asked the land-
lord at what time of day they had dinner, saying that I
had been waiting for the dinner-bell all day, and that if
they had rung it they had been very careful not to ring
it very loud. Looking at me cunningly, he informed
me that the dinner hour had passed long ago and that
the guests were then going out to supper. Being
very hungry and not in the best of humor, I asked him
if I would have to pay for my dinner, as I had not eaten
it, and he said, "Certainly." Then I asked him if it made
any difference if I ate dinner and supper both at the
same time, and he said, "No, not a bit." I responded
with a look of satisfaction that meant I would do theA Look at Pearl Street Early In the Morning. 27

matter justice. They had a splendid supper, and as I
had nothing else to do that evening and had no watch,
as I have before stated, I just ate and enjoyed myself
until all the guests had left the room and the girls came
in to rid up the table. They seemed to be awfully tick-
led about something, laughing and talking to each other,
and would come and hand me things that I did n't want
any more of and insist on my taking some of them; I
thanked them and said I did n't care for any. I remem-
bered that the landlord had said that it did n't make any
difference if I ate dinner and supper at the same time.
But if he had gone out to the kitchen and taken an in-
voice of what had disappeared during the two hours
he might have been persuaded that it made a good deal
of difference. Well, I sat around the tavern and smoked
some, for I had half a cigar left after smoking in the
morning. You would laugh if I should tell you where
I got that cigar. A fellow at the tavern had lighted it
and smoked a little of it and had laid it down on the
table where he was writing a letter, and when he got
through writing he went away and forgot it. I was
watching it while he was writing, thinking that if he
forgot it when he went out I would finish it up for him,
which I was doing at intervals along as I could do with-
out making me sick. I shall close this chapter by say-
ing that I received early next morning the anxiously
looked for letter from my partners at home, and I will
tell you in my next letter what they said to me.Keith Gets a Letter from His Partners at Home.

Well, as I have already said, I received my letter from
home, in which my partners raked me up, burned me in
effigy, and banished from my mind all thoughts of mov-
ing our store to Cincinnati. They directed me either to
come home or go to buying goods, as I was sent to do.
So I determined to give them their satisfaction of new
goods, and I went down on Pearl street long before
sun-up and waited round till they opened their stores,
when I got a fellow that was sweeping out one of the
stores to look over my letters, who very kindly showed
me where the people mentioned were situated, the house
he was sweeping out happening to be one of them. So,
after advising with him and showing him my money, the
clerks came in and I began to look at goods. I mani-
fested a good deal of wisdom and care in the selection of
my dry goods. I had decided that I would begin with
this class of goods. I bought calico first, and selected
each pattern of the style that I had noticed that my wife
always bought—black with a red speck in it. I asked
the salesman in regard to the wearing qualities of each
piece and if it would fade. I bought all the odds and
ends in prints they had, for they told me that they were
cheaper than the others, and so I found, and that they
were shorter, too. I bought a plenty. I selected all of
my dress-goods of the kind and style that my wife most
always wore—black with a little dash of red in it, and

28Keith Gets a Letter.

29

so on through all the stock of dry goods and notions they
sold me. A great many of the goods that I purchased
smelled mighty strong of camphor, but I "reckoned"
that some of the clerks had had the headache and had
been using camphor about there and spilled it on the
goods; anyway, that is all the explanation I could make
to my partners. When the goods arrived at Bowling
Green the town had never seen such a pile of dry goods
shipped in before. The pile seemed to me as though it
had grown to more than double the size of the pile that
I bought. They were the most liberal folks about that
I ever saw. It seemed when I went through our stock at
home that they had closed out all the odds and ends they
had on me, and my partners were mad about it; but I
soon hushed them up on that, for I could tell them many
things about the business that they did not know, and I
was satisfied it would take them many years to learn
what I then knew.

I next bought hats. I took the style and kind I
always wore, and none other. It was the first of May,
and the clerk told me that they had a lot of fur goods
on which a little camphor had been spilled and that he
would knock off a little if I would take the lot, and I
did. I explained it all to my partners, who did not
think much of the trade, but I soon shut them up.

Next I bought the shoe stock. I bought all ladies'
shoes No. 7. They told me to pick out a good pair for
myself, personally, and I did. I asked them if they
cared if I should pick out a pair of good winter boots,
when they said that they were just going to mention it
to me, but I was ahead of them, and they gave me as3°

Keith Gets a Letter.

good a pair of boots as I ever owned in my life. I forgot
to say that when I bought my hat stock the clerk gave
me two or three hats as good as I ever had worn. So I
bought most of the shoes and boots in the size I wore
myself (for average).

Next came the millinery goods. As I could not wear
any of that myself I asked the clerk for a hat for my
wife, and each time I selected a dozen bonnets or hats, I
asked him for one for my wife, and he gave them to me,
apologizing often for not thinking of it sooner.

So I went on buying till I got to clothing—then I
had 'em. I had gotten onto the ropes pretty well. The
first thing the fellow did when I began to buy clothing
was to fit me up with a suit for my own personal use.
And I picked out several suits that I liked as I pro-
gressed with my purchases, and asked the clerk for them
for my own use. He said," Why, certainly," and seemed
to be > really embarrassed, apologizing for his neglect to
offer them to me sooner. He told me (confidentially)
that he had some mighty good overcoats, only a few
dozens left, that he would sell me at a bargain. He ex-
plained that they had a little camphor spilled on them,
but it did not hurt them, and as he had only ten or twelve
dozens of them, he would cut the former price of the
coats, which was $20 each at wholesale, to $19.75 each,
to close out the lot. I told him that if he would give me
one nice overcoat that I had admired very much in look-
ing at the lot, which just fitted me and struck my fancy
all round, we would call it a trade, and he did.

I bought hardware next. I got several good pocket-
knives the same way, also some mighty good scissorsKeith Gets a Letter.	31

and several other things to use at home. I would
have gotten a sewing-machine for my wife, but they did
not have any in stock. And next I bought my grocery
stock. All that I could find there that I needed for my
own personal use was cigars, and at the solicitation of the
salesman that waited on me I took a box for myself of
every kind that I bought, and I bought a good many, if
I remember the circumstance correctly. But I made one
little error in buying some of my groceries. I had just
been buying some essences, which, of course, were sold
by the gross, and immediately thereon I bought some
"reasons." The clerk, who seemed to be getting kind a
tired, asked me how many I would take. I said I would
take twenty gross. He shipped them, and if you have
no idea of how many boxes of " reasons " that makes, I
will tell you; twenty gross means two thousand, eight
hundred and eighty boxes, or a pile about as large as a
union depot, and then some.

Well, I must say that they were all very liberal to me,
and did not seem to care for what I wanted for my own
personal use. I reckoned that the concern that manu-
factured that kind of goods did not charge them anything
for them. But let me here remark that while I felt un-
der great obligations for their liberality towards me in
giving me so many nice things for my own personal use,
I never did pay so much for such things before nor since.
They had some way of entering them up in their bills by
adding the cost of these presents on to other goods that
would make them whole. At the bottom of the bills they
were charged up but not carried out, and the remark
noted: " Seven hats with our compliments to Mr. Keith,"32	Keith Gets a-Letter.

or at the botton of our shoe bill," Thirteen pairs of shoes
for Mrs. Keith, and eleven pairs of shoes and nine pairs
of boots for Mr. Keith, and our compliments." So with
the clothing bill: " Thirteen suits of clothes and one over-
coat and our compliments to your Mr. Keith." While
these goods were presented to me, they cost our firm
about four times as much as I could have bought them
for at any retail store in Cincinnati. My partners, when
I got home and our goods were opened and the bills
checked off, were so mad that they talked of a dissolution
of the firm. I gave them to understand that so far as I
was personally concerned, it didn't make any difference,
as I was well supplied with such things as I should need
in my family in the way of comfortable clothing, not only
for myself, but for my wife.

I may say, in conclusion of this description of goods,
that I bought about six times as many goods as I had
money to pay for—all we needed, but our credit was
good on account of the letters of recommendation that I
had taken with me. I then found out what he meant
when our predecessor said we were good. It had no
reference to our moral or religious standing in the com-
munity at all, but it was a financial term. Well, the up-
shot of it was that we did not need any of some goods
nor some of many kinds of goods that I bought for many
years, but we finally scuffled through and paid for them.

I had very few mishaps other than I have related to
you after I finished my purchase in Cincinnati. I may
mention, however, that I missed the first two or three
trains that started out of the city toward my place.KEITH STARTING HOME PROM CINCINNATI AFTER HE HAD BOUGHT

(33)

KEITH MISSED THE TRAIN AT CINCINNATI.

(34)Keith Gets a Letter.

35

But finally I got a better start and caught one of the
trains. I tell you that it makes a fellow feel awfully
cheap to get in sight of the train and see it go down
around the bend, leaving him alone in a strange city.

After a few years as a merchant I went to New York
to buy our stock of goods, and will give you, in my next
chapter, a brief description of a few of the things that
happened on that trip.Keith Goes to New York to Buy Goods.

There is nothing so eventful in the life of a country

merchant as a trip to New York City on business. I
had so many mishaps during this trip to the metropolis
that I never went back to buy goods there again. The
first thing that happened to me was at Pittsburgh, Pa.
I had stepped off the train to eat breakfast, and when I
went out to get on my train, as I thought it was, they had
moved it farther up the track and had run another train
up to where mine had stood. I got on and went into
the smoking section and had smoked about an hour
when the conductor found me. When he looked at my
ticket he told me that I was not on the right train, that
I was going to Cleveland, Ohio, at the rate of sixty miles
an hour. I was mad, flustrated and greatly distressed.
The conductor arranged for me to get off at the next
stop and to be returned to Pittsburgh, as a goose that
had gone astray. I got away from Pittsburgh the next
morning at the same time and on the same train that I
should have remained on. When we got to Altoona,
Pennsylvania, we were given ten minutes for breakfast,
and while the clerk had gone to change a bill that I
gave him in payment for my breakfast the train pulled
out and left me. I was told while waiting around there
that this was not an unusual thing for some eating-houses
to do—that when a man gave a bill in payment for his
meal they would fool around and go away to get it

36(Keith Goes to New York.

37

changed (apparently) until the customer would rather
miss his change than to be left, with his baggage all on
the out-going train. But in my case it was different, a>s all
the baggage that I had to carry was my carpet-sack. I
had checked my trunk through to New York. Late
that evening I got another train and went sailing, deter-
mined in my own mind that I would not get off the
train again to eat, even if I starved, for in those days,
my friends, they had none of the palatial dining cars that
are hauled nowadays.

The next thing that happened to me was a shocking
affair over between Philadelphia and New York. A
very good-looking girl sat opposite to me with a young
baby in her arms. I noticed that she was a very nice
looking young lady, yet to me she appeared very young
and bashful. I really wondered if the baby was hers,
or whether she was some one's nurse-maid. Well, soon
it was mine. She reached over and asked me if I would
not hold her baby until she could re-arrange her baggage
before her arrival in New York. I did, alas! Just then
our train ran into Trenton, N. J. The train stopped
only a minute or two. I turned around in my seat to
see if my newly (maid) friend was ready to relieve me
of my charge, but I could not see her! I thought the
passengers were taking a good deal of interest in my
dilemma. I told the conductor to see where she had
gone; he did, and said to me that the porter saw her
leave the train at Trenton. Then I tried to get some of
the ladies to take the baby, but they, in their several
answers, gave me to understand that they didn't want to
start an orphans' asylum at their house. Well, sweat?38

Keith Goes to New York.

I should say I did about then. Next stop was New
York City. I wanted the conductor to take the baby
off my hands, but he would not do it, so I gathered up
my baggage and while doing so I asked several of the
ladies if they would not hold the baby till I got gathered
up so that I could get off, but they respectfully declined.
They would not even touch it. I took it to the hotel
with me and as soon as I had registered I called the
landlord into his private office and explained the whole
situation to him. He said he thought he could help me
to dispose of it. So he telephoned to a superintendent of *
an orphans' home in the city and had a man sent down
to the hotel. After full explanations were made he took
my name and all the facts concerning the matter and the
baby, too, thank the Lord, and I felt that a very great
responsibility had been rolled off my mind.

I ate supper and was ready to go out to take in the
sights. However, before venturing, I asked the landlord
whether there was any circus in town that night, to
which he said none that he knew of, but told me that
there were a number of good theaters that I might enjoy.
Now, really, I did not know what they were, whether
something to eat, drink, wear, or ride on, and so I told
him I would see about it; but, as a truth, I did not go
out of the hotel that night.

Next morning I thought I would go up on Broadway
and see how the town looked. I had not gone far until
I came upon a dog peddler. I thought that a very curi-
ous kind of business to be engaged in, so I stopped to
ask him some questions with regard to that line of trade
in the great metropolis. He told me that he sold a great"KEITH EN ROUTE TO NEW YORK TO BUY GOODS IS GIVEN A BABY TO HOLD.

(39)4°

Keith Goes to New York.

many dogs. He also told me that they were " re-
ported " dogs. I did not know what kind that was, but
supposed it to be some good kind. I inquired the price
of them and he rated them at what seemed to me to be
very high. I took a fancy to a beautiful, spotted young
gentleman dog and asked him the price of the pup. He
said he would let me have him for twenty dollars. I
offered him five dollars and after a good deal of " dick-
ering " he finally took me up. Of course, I would not
back out, and he sold me a nice chain for one dollar to
lead him away with. So I started off up Broadway with
my dog. Sometimes he was leading me and sometimes
I was leading him. But I admired him less in a little
while than I did at first. I took him down to my hotel
and led him into the office, where I was informed by the
head clerk that they could not allow dogs in that hotel
under any circumstances. So I was in a predicament, I
assure you. I begged and argued the question with the
clerk and offered him a " tip," but it was no go—the
rules of that house were imperative. I led my dog out
onto Broadway and down towards Union Square to sell
him if possible to somebody. I sold him finally to a cab
driver for one dollar and thirty-five cents, chain and all.

I then returned to the hotel and found a large crowd
of business men who had gathered in and had finished
their dinners and were smoking and resting all over the
office. When I went in they paid no attention to me,
not even so much as to ask me to take a chair, so I had
to stand up until they everlastingly gave out resting and
made their exit. I made up my mind that there were
some very selfish men about New York hotels. So I did
not get very well acquainted with them.

KEITH GOES TO NEW YORK TO BUY GOODS AFTKR HK HAD BKEN A
• MERCHANT A FKW YBARS.

(41)42

Keith Goes to New York.

Next morning I went out on Broadway and took a
car for up town, and just here I may relate a little cir-
cumstance that took place which embarrassed me, but
seemed to be funny to the people in the car. I should
explain, however, that on my way over to New York the
time was different from our time at home, but I did not
understand it. The car was full of people and I could
not get a seat, but stood up, and it so happened that I
was the only person standing. I noticed that folks in
the car kept looking at me curiously until it really be-
came embarrassing. As I was the only person standing
among the whole car load of people, they could see, of
course, that I was a stranger, and while in that unpleas-
ant position I glanced up at the clock in the front end of
the car, then at my watch, and I noticed a vast differ-
ence in the time that was indicated on their clock and
that shown by my watch, so I thought to relieve the em-
barrassment of the occasion I would take correct time.
I had a key-winding watch and, as you know, had to
take out my pocket-book and get my key out and open
up both sides of my watch in order to set it correct. I
looked back and forth from the clock in the end of the
car to my watch. I did not understand how the dial
was arranged on their clock, for I had never seen one
like it. I noticed one of the hands was pointing to
nought (0) and the other to 61. Not having a watch
with such an arrangement of dial as that, I was per-
plexed, showing on my face, doubtless, a good deal of
annoyance, as I had not become wholly unconscious of
the surroundings. Just then I happened to look up and
the whole crowd in that car was in a perfect convulsionKEITH BUYS A DOG.

(43)44	Keith Goes to New York.

of laughter. I had no idea of what could have hap-
pened while I was thus engaged in regulating my watch
to New York time. And they kept on laughing until I
became very much embarrassed, yet I never dreamed
that they could be laughing at me. I wondered what on
earth had happened while my attention had been directed
another way. At last they all broke out in such an up-
roar of laughter that the conductor came in from the
back porch of the car to see what was the matter. Just
about this time a very kind old gentleman took pity on
me, plucked the skirt of my coat and beckoned me to
him and whispered to me that the thing in the end of the
car that somewhat resembled a clock was not a clock at
all, but a register of the number of passengers on the
car. I thanked him profusely and put my watch and
key back into my pocket and felt that I never could look
that crowd of people in the face again. But just then it
occurred to me that I might not see many of them again
during my stay in New York City, and that if I should
they would not recognize me, and this consolation, drawn
from the fact that none of them knew me, helped to re-
store me to my normal condition. Well, now, they
thought that an awfully funny incident, but, really, I
could not see it so from my stand-point; can you ?

I left the car and was soon buying goods and had al-
most forgotten these incidents that gave me so much
trouble on my way and in the city up to this time.

As I had sold goods for a good many years by this
time I had found out what we wanted and how much
of it we needed and that we did not need to buy any dry
goods, clothing and furs in the month of May that hadSELFISH MEN SEEN IN NEW YORK ABOUT THE HOTELS WHILE THERE
BUYING GOODS.

(4S) :46

Keith Goes to New York.

camphor spilled on them. Nothing unusual happened
to me during my purchase of goods in the city, I did
not ask any of them for any presents for my own per-
sonal use, for they seemed not to know how Cincinnati
people did business and I thought best not to tell them,
at least not on that trip, for, though it had been many
years since my first purchase of goods in Cincinnati, I
yet had a pretty good supply of clothing and other things
given to me on that occasion for my own personal use.

I arrived safe at home, and afterwards we went out
of business at the request of our creditors. We quit the
dry goods business and branched off into other vocations
individually. I went into the patent-right business and
have been fairly successful in the same. At least, I be-
lieve that I have made the world rejoicingly happy by in-
venting and supplying Keith's Cuff Holders and other
novelties needed for personal use and benefit.Pioneer Merchandising.

Now that I have told you a good deal about myself
and my experience as a pioneer merchant, I shall devote
some time telling you about other people that I know ot
who did business in an early day in this country, whose
experiences were not unlike mine in many respects.

In the early history of this country everybody was
poor. We had no millionaires then, and it did not re-
quire much capital to carry on business. People paid
for their goods with whatever they could find to sell.
Coon, mink and 'possum skins, as well as ginseng, were
legal tender. The dignified merchant of those times
would look wisely at your account—which was usually
written on the door or wall with a piece of keel, instead
of an account book with a lead pencil—and after mak-
ing a good many erasures and balances would finally
render you a statement of the amount due, say $5.62J,
which, by the way, was a tremendous store-bill in those
days, and sufficient to set the whole neighborhood to
talking of the extravagance of the family who would run

474«

Pioneer Merchandising.

such an account, seeing as they owned only forty acres,
had ten cleared and five more deadened. They were re-
garded as fast livers and censured for going recklessly
in debt. The rural farmer would slam down two coon,
skins, a mink, ten 'possums and probably a couple of
muskrat hides, and the wise merchant would take an
inventory of the truck, supplement his cogitations with
a " chaw " of long-green " tobacker " and tell the customer
that the lot came to precisely $1.87J. Then the farmer
(for such they were in an embryo state) would say:
" Wall, give me a half pound of coffee, ten cents worth
of sugar, five cents worth of soda and the balance of
eighty-seven and a half cents in long-green 'tobacker/
and credit my bill with a dollar." About the time the
hardy son of toil had left the counter, in would step a
dapper little woman, dressed in good homespun gar-
ments, to sell the store-keeper a dozen eggs, two pounds
of ginseng and two pounds of rags, calculating to trade
the lot out in pepper, soda, pins, thread and a wee bit of
tobacco for Joshua. In the meantime she would explain
to the merchant that Joshua was trying to get his clear-
ing ready to roll next " Chuesday " and couldn't spare
the time to come himself, and that he would have to lose
one day anyway to go hunting to get meat for the rollers.

By and by the merchant would have another influx of
trade, when four sun-browned and bare-footed belles
from down the river would come in, sidle up to the
counter, fan themselves with their sun-bonnets, and gig-
gle in a suppressed tone. The bland merchant would in-
quire their wants with a smile and one girl would snicker,Pioneer Merchandising.	49

nudge the next one and say," You tell." The snickering
and nudging would generally be passed down the line to
the youngest, who would look as serious as a culprit in a
dock while she was saying: " We came in to see yer new
caliker." The merchant, with as much urbanity as would
be displayed by a merchant nowadays in exhibiting a
$150 brocade silk dress pattern, would hand down two
pieces of calico—the prevailing color of which was a
bright yellow—and show it up in all the varying shades
of light that crept in through the "chinks" in his store.
A number of my young readers may not comprehend this
expression, so an explanation will be in order. The
" chinks " were the places between the logs of which his
store was built, where the mortar had dropped out and
where the light crept in. I may here remark that fifty
years ago there were but few saw-mills in the country,
and all the buildings were built of logs, and floored (if
at all) with puncheons made by splitting logs and hewing
or facing the surface so as to render them smooth. While
the merchant was explaining to the country belles what
wonderful things he saw when he was in Louisville buy-
ing his goods, and what the city styles were, his eldest
son, Gabriel (more familiarly called Gabe), came in,
rolled a quid of long-green carelessly around in his left
cheek and remarked: " Dad, the brindle heifer is fast in
the top of the old tree ahind the store." The merchant
would of course have to excuse himself and go and liber-
ate the imprisoned heifer. The girls would admire the
" kaliker " to their hearts' content, then file out and run
footraces on the road home; and the female portion of5°

Pioneer Merchandising.

the neighborhood would talk for the next month about
the new goods Mr. Jones, the merchant, had brought on.

I can only convey to you, kind reader, an outline of
the manner of business done by our early merchants; but,
humble though it certainly was, it had its variety, and
the merchant was an oracle among his customers as well
as a sort of encyclopedia of miscellaneous information.
He had an ample opportunity of gathering all the gossip,
and he knew just where all the bee-trees were, who had
caught the largest coon and who had the most ground
cleared. Everything was discussed in his store. But
advancement and civilization made wonderful inroads,
and the primitive merchant kept steady step with the
march of improvement, and soon a little larger and bet-
ter stock of goods was kept. However, the experiences
of country merchants were varied and many funny things
occurred, some of which I will mention here.

In an early day a young fellow from the backwoods
bought an overcoat of the village merchant, and agreed
to pay for it in fur. After a lapse of about three months
the merchant received a letter from the debtor, dated
away down in a Southern State, wherein he said he had
gone down there to get "fur" enough away to pay for the
overcoat, and if that wasn't " fur " enough he would go
"fur-ther."

Another incident recalled is that of a bad boy of the
village—for there were always bad boys, even in the
early history of the good old pioneer town. The mer-
chant bought, with all other articles of commerce, theKEITH BUYING GOODS IN CINCINNATI.

C5i)52

Pioneer Merchandising.

horns of cattle, and he observed that one boy was ex-
tremely lucky in finding large, smooth horns that would
bring ten cents each, and also that this boy came often, so
the merchant thought he would watch him and discover
the secret of his success. When the boy came with his
horn the next day, he told him to go into the warehouse
and throw it on the pile. Then he watched the lad and
discovered that he went on through and took the horn
with him. The merchant said nothing, but when the boy
presented the horn for sale the next day he confiscated it
and spanked him, and in so doing very likely ruined the
ambition of a Wall street speculator.

Those early merchants had lots of fun as well as lots
of hard times, and were, so to speak, a lively set of boys.
They did not want to get very rich, nor could they very
reasonably expect it under the circumstances, but their
ambition seemed to be to make a living and have a good
time, and they resorted to all sorts of pranks and tricks
to amuse themselves after the dull routine of business
was over for the day. I remember that in those early
days, when the country was sparsely settled, and neigh-
bors far between, they did not get mad at a joke and fly
all to sticks at fun, as some people do now.

At one time, during an old-fashioned camp-meeting in a
Western State, on a hill near a county-seat town, there was
a very large attendance. The brethren had various ways
of living and entertaining their guests while attending
the meeting, and while some of them slept in tents and
huts built for the purpose, others occupied their wagons
for night quarters. Among these latter was an old, high,
blue-bed Carolina wagon, nearly as large as a freightA COUNTRY MERCHANT OF FIFTY YEARS AGO,

(5s)54

Pioneer Merchandising.

car, that was occupied by half a dozen preachers. It
stood near the road at the top of the hill, and as a couple
of the merchants and several other men of the town were
passing by the camp after the evening services were over
and everything was hushed in midnight stillness, save
that the ministers in the blue wagon were singing, " Oh,
brothers, we are sailing home to glory; oh, brothers,
don't she glide " (probably with reference to the Old Ship
Zion), one of the merchants took hold of the tongue,
the other boys pushed, and away they went at a 2:14 gait
down that big hill—and for yelling, and howling, and
hollering, those preachers took the cake—but the boys
steered her straight and safely to the bottom and then
ran. We are pretty certain that for a long time only
the boys and the Lord knew who monkeyed with that
wagon time, but it was all in fun, and went for
fun.

Another funny thing that occurred during that same
camp-meeting was this : One of the bottom farmers had
raised a crop of corn, gathered it and penned it up at
the foot of the hill near the camp-ground. One Sun-
day during the revival there was a large attendance and
some of the country merchant boys saw a sight for some
fun. They gave out that that pen of corn was for the
free use of the brethren, and about noon there was one
of the grandest horse-feeds on record held at the old
camp-ground. The brethren who owned horses or oxen
were seen going or coming with their arms full of corn,
and they thanked everybody in the neighborhood and
praised their liberality. Meanwhile, the country merch-
ants sat on a log, enjoyed the performance and laughedPioneer Merchandising.	55

until their sides ached. Finally, the true inwardness of
the matter came to light, and of all the repentant thieves
you ever saw the most repentant was that crowd of
brethren. They were going around accusing and excusing
each other and trying to find out how such a mistake
had been made, but all to no purpose, so they finally
concluded that it was one of those curious cases of mis-
taken identity that sometimes occur. The matter blew
over without serious results, but I have heard the old
fellows who planned it say that the brethren who stole
that corn were the sorriest set of Christians they ever
saw on that old hill. Now do you suppose you could
persuade the fine-haired merchant of to-day to engage in
such fun? Not much. He might get soiled. How-
ever, I opine that the country merchants of the olden
times had about as much fun as they do now, if it did
not cost so much.

Thinking of the early history of country merchandis-
ing, I recall many amusing occurrences of the times,
which sound very ludicrous now. The stocks of goods,
as I have already said, were meager and comprised only
the absolute necessities, as the people were too poor to
buy luxuries. And when a country merchant wanted a
stock of goods he couldn't telegraph his wants to the
city and receive the goods on the next train. On the
contrary, about twice a year he would go on horseback
to Madison, Louisville or Cincinnati, trade his coon-
skins and ginseng for a stock and have his new goods
brought back in wagons he had hired for the trip.
Usually about a dozen merchants would travel together
in making one of these trips. As an example, Uncle56

Pioneer Merchandising.

Bob Wingate of Bowling Green, old Mr. Allison of
Spencer, Mr. Taylor of Point Commerce, old Captain
Thornberg of Greencastle, and several Terre Haute mer-
chants, would meet at some intermediate point—Spencer,
perhaps—and ride through together. Sometimes they
would buy up a drove of cattle in going through the
country and drive them into market, sell them there and
invest the proceeds in goods. It took about six weeks,
generally, to go to market, buy a bill of goods and get
back home with them.

In those days country merchants had no credit in
market, and in buying their goods they had to figure
down and throw out until they had their purchases down
to the size of the "roll" in their pocket-books. Usually,
the merchants would go on ahead of the teams and by
the time their " truck99 reached the city they would have
made vheir selections and be ready to unload and re-load
tbe wagons and start them back home again. Maybe
some of my readers don't think those merchants had a
deal of fun going through the country on horseback—a
dozen together. But they did, just the same.

I remember that on one occasion when the boys went
to Louisville to buy goods, the Methodist conference met
at the same time at some point down on the Ohio river.
In those days everybody traveled on horseback and
carried a change of clothes and a testament (or a pack
of cards, as it may have been) in their saddle-bags. I
don't know whether the whole thing was concocted and
pre-arranged by these mischievous merchants or not,
but the outcome showed that they played their role well.
The good old farmers along the line were on the look-Pioneer Merchandising.

57

out for ministers and prepared to entertain the cloth
right royally. Well, when our merchants came along
the farmers quite naturally mistook them for preachers
en route to conference, and welcomed them heartily—and
they traded prayers, spiritual advice and pious sighs for
board and lodgings, both going and returning. The
boys reported that it was rare fun to see old uncle Billy
Thornberg take the Bible, read a chapter and then call
on some other brother to pray, and that they never had
so much genuine fun at so trifling a cost in their lives. On
their return they arranged so that they should not stop
at the places they had "patronized" going down, and the
whole theme of their conversation was about the work
that had been allotted them and the circuit they would
have charge of the ensuing year. The boys did not tell
about the way they played it on the farmers as soon as
they got home, but after a few days the story came out
and they admitted that they had more fun on that trip
than on any former occasion. Now all this may sound
very ludicrous to some of my readers, but I am recording
history, you know, and must report things as they oc-
curred.

Now we shall go back to country stores when the new
goods are arriving. The people gathered in for miles
around to welcome the teams and pay their respects to
the store-boxes. They knew just when the teams would
arrive, for even if they were slow they made regular
trips. When the goods were opened every big girl had
to have a new calico dress, a neck ribbon and a string of
beads. Everybody stood around and looked and won-
dered what the big town where all these fine goods came58

Pioneer Merchandising.

from was like. Exclamations commendatory of the mer-
chant were heard on every hand and now and then some
honest old soul would ejaculate: "Oh, my, how our
little town is improving I" The merchant was the prince
of good fellows until some months later when he wanted
his money to buy another stock, and then after he had
sued about forty fellows he was n't near so nice for a few
days. I remember a very amusing circumstance that
occurred during my early merchandising. We were com-
pelled to make some collections and had given the "squire"
(for such a justice of the peace was called in those days)
a number of notes we had held for sometime against some
of our customers with instructions to sue them. A few
days afterward one of these same customers came to town
and called at the store and asked me to go with him to
the squire's office and stay a little judgment that had
been rendered against him there a short time before.
He said that as he had always traded with us he felt
that he could with all propriety call on me for a favor.
I felt a little sneaking about having sued this man, and
I told him that of course I would favor him. We went
to the office together and when we got there he said to
the squire: "This man will stay that little matter for
me." The squire turned to the docket and we found
that it was my own note that had been sued on. Well,
I stayed it for. him, we had a good laugh over it and I
sold him lots of goods afterwards.

It wasn't much of a disgrace to be sued in those days.
Everybody sympathized with the debtor and the mer-
chant who sued his customers got hot-shot from all sides
—and even to this day there is a feeling of hatred forPioneer Merchandising.

59

some of those old store-keepers because they were com-
pelled to invoke the assistance of the law in collecting
their honest claims. As we have said before, the merchants
were as poor as anybody, and it was collect or fail with
them. Many and many a time were the merchants of
those early days compelled to sell a poor man's last
milch cow at constable's sale, while his wife and children
stood around crying to see their last means of support
become the property of another. The merchants were
big-hearted as a rule, and they would often loan the cow
to the good woman, with the understanding that if the
debt was paid by Christmas the cow was again to become
her property. Our early pioneers had to pass through a
great many such struggles—times were universally hard,
money couldn't be got, and there was absolutely no other
way to do. A man couldn't step into a bank and borrow
a hundred or a thousand dollars to meet an emergency
as he can now. In fact, there wasn't enough money in
the country to start even a one-horse bank. Now, the
question may arise in the minds of my young readers,
" Did they not have plenty of money printed and minted
in those days?" Yes, but the people didn't have any-
thing to sell to bring money into the country.

Like everything else, the pioneer merchants of the
country are passing away and their places are being taken
by another generation of men. The same marked im-
provement that characterizes all other branches of busi-
ness, as well as the professions, is plainly visible in the
merchandising of this country. After a lapse of some
years we find the stores supplied with a much larger and
finer stock of goods than was kept in the old log store-60	Pioneer Merchandising.

houses by the first merchants. But, even the business
of the time of which I am now writing would make a
very sickly showing beside the extensive business done
by the merchant princes of to-day. The people were
still very poor at that date and were trying hard to pay
for their land and build houses just one grade better than
the first huts, which were built of poles and daubed with
mud and straw. Farm houses were then being built of
hewed logs—a very marked improvement on their hum-
ble predecessors. Those farmers who were first to build
these new palaces of domestic bliss were considered very
aristocratic, and their neighbors who were not yet able
to erect such commodious and comfortable quarters en-
vied them their prosperity.

These early merchants had a deal of hard fighting to
do—genuine pugilistic encounters, too. The fighting
was regarded as essential to the proper regulation of the
business. As an example of this phase of the business,
I may cite the firm of Wingate & Black, of Bowrling
Green, of whom R. M. Wingate was the fighting part-
ner, and he soon earned the reputation of doing the
thing up scientifically. When Uncle Jimmy Black had
to square up with a troublesome customer he would
usually take him out under the shade of a tree, talk
nicely to him, argue the case, and finally the fellow
would cry, acknowledge that he was in the wrong and
beg for forgiveness—which latter meant, in modern par-
lance, more credit for next year—and then all would be
smooth sailing until last year's note and this year's
account fell due on Christmas, day, when the hair
would fly again, and very likely Uncle Bob would makePioneer Merchandising.

the next settlement. So they had it year after year for
a long time; but with all their fighting they all got
along very well and there was a good, deal more broth-
erly love existing between the merchant and his customer
then than there is now. In those days Bob would lick a
fellow like fun and in less than an hour afterward give him
his dinner, and if a stranger saw them he would very
likely think they were brothers who had not seen each
other for many years. Then the fellow would probably
buy a big bill of goods and go home perfectly happy.
He would explain to his wife that his nag ran under the
limb of a tree with him and,came nearly tearing his
eyes out and that that was the way he got his face
scratched; and then he would supplement the whole
story with, " I tell you, Catharine, that Bob Wingate is
the best man in Bowling Green, and here is a new calico
dress he sent you."

In those days fighting was so common a pastime that
no one was ever fined for it. It was regarded as all regu-
lar and right and many a poor devil would go to town
on purpose to get thrashed. When he had stayed at
home so long that his folks could not endure his tant-
rums any longer he would light out for Bowling Green
and hunt up a fight, and, indeed, it was a cold day when
a man couldn't get combed down in that town when
that was what he came in for. They had 'em there in
all sizes and to fit all applicants.

But to return to my text. These early merchants
earned a great deal more money than they ever got, and
are entitled to the applause of the present generation of
tradespeople, for it was they who paved the way and62

Pioneer Merchandising.

broke down the brush for the merchant princes of to-day.

I have a few more funny and interesting reminiscences
of the long ago merchandising and early history to tell
you about. Some forty-five years ago there lived in
Poland, Ind., an old German merchant by the name of
Charley Wittenberg, who kept a little store there and
wagoned all his goods from Terre Haute in an old one-
horse wagon. He traded for such " truck " as the people
had to sell—about the same line of produce mentioned
in my previous chapters—and did quite a nice business
for those early days. Now, this man Wittenberg was a
fly-leaf in the early history of the country. He spoke
with a broken accent and at times tore the " Queen's
English " to pieces in a most shocking manner. Among
the many things Charley bought was butter—butter has
always been a staple commodity and every country merch-
ant who ever did business bought more or less of it.
But in the town of Poland butter has never gone below
ten cents a pound since Wittenberg's time—no matter
how much in the market. Here I may relate an inci-
dent connected with his merchandising which will ex-
plain to you how the old German established the bottom
of the scale on which this greasy substance has since slid
up and down. Early in his oareer as a buyer he paid at
the rate of eight and one-third cents per pound, or three
pounds for a quarter. But he soon found that whenever
he told anybody what he was paying for butter—owing
to his broken dialect—he made a laughing stock of him-
self. All of his customers could not understand German,
and he could not successfully quote the prevailing price
to the English speaking ones. This was very embarrass-Pioneer Merchandising.

63

ing to Charley and finally he declared that from that
day henceforth and forever—so long as time should last
—the price of butter should never be less than ten cents.
And, singular as it may appear, it has never gone below
that figure since, and I don't suppose it ever will.

The boys around Poland used to play all manner of
pranks on this honest old Dutchman and " rile " him up
just to see how mad he could get, until finally he swore
that if they didn't iet up he would import a genuine
Limberger cheese, cook it in a kettle in the middle of
the street and poison every last mother's son of them. I
guess the boys got afraid he would carry his threat into
execution, so they turned their attention to tormenting
some one else and old Charley pursued the even tenor of
his way for a long time in the good old town.

Now, I have called Poland a good old town, and in
truth it is. It is a sort of landmark and has always
had a population that was proverbial for being straight
and steady. It has been a trading-post of some note,
too. At an early day Bob Wingate, of Bowling Green,
established a branch store there, which was under the
supervision of E. B. Peyton—in those days plain "Lish,"
but now Hon. E. B. Peyton, of Emporia, Kansas, who
reached this proud position by keeping pace with the
progress of events. While I revert back to some of the
scenes and incidents of those early days I can not repress
the smiles memory awakens. O, what lively times
" Lish" used to have around there when Uncle Bob
would get mad and raise the timbers; but these minia-
ture hurricanes would all blow over before sundown and
whatever " the 'Squire " wanted was all right with Bob.H

Pioneer Merchandising.

One of the amusing incidents that occurred during
those early days of store-keeping (that was what they
called it then) was this: Peyton had sued one of the
good class-leaders of his church and the old fellow felt
considerably hurt over it, so he gathered up his testa-
ment and church discipline, went to Poland, called at
the store and told Brother Peyton that he wanted to
have a word with him. Peyton asked him to walk up
stairs, and when they got there the old deacon said :
" Let us have a word of prayer." So they both bowed
down on a lot of rags, and the old man prayed long and
loud for Brother Peyton, and afterward read him a
lecture from the discipline. " Lish" began to feel uneasy,
and asked the old fellow what he was driving at, and he
told him that he had committed the unpardonable sin of
suing a brother. Well, after a deal of exhortation, Pey-
ton ordered the suit dismissed, renewed the note and
everything went sailing again. That is not the way they
do it now. If you sue a man now he stays sued until the
debt is paid and no prayers nor kind words of exhorta-
tion will withdraw a suit—not much.

But nearly all the pioneers of this country have
passed away. Year after year has seen these sturdy
sons of toil gathered to their long home until there is
very few of them left. And if there ever lived a class
of men who ought to reach the haven of eternal peace
they are the early pioneers of this country.

We have now followed the history of early merchan-
dising in this country along down through successive
steps, and these steps are bringing us nearer to the port-
als of the merchandising palaces of to-day. About the\

Pioneer Merchandising.

65

year 1858 we first encountered a species of tlie genus
tramp, who was called a " bummer," but who has since
modified his title into that of " drummer." Why they
should have been denominated " bummers" I do not
pretend to know, but I do know that our early people
regarded them with suspicion. They thought the " bum-
mer" was a bum who had stayed in the city until he was
too tough to live with, and that he was then furnished
with a kit of samples and sent out into the country to
prey on rural innocence and rid the city of his noxious
presence. The honest old merchant would rather have
entertained the wild man from Borneo than one of these.
If one of them drove past his place he would watch him
out of sight and then go and get the old scraper and drag
the road-bed three miles further on for fear his family
might be affected by some contagion. And the merchants
knew perfectly well that these rascals were engaged in
stealing their daughters or wives and carrying them
away, and so they guarded their females with watch-
ful care for a month after a drummer had been in
the town. The drummer then was much the same thing
that he is now—a gentleman with hair parted in the mid-
dle, waxed mustache, ile on his curls, and wore sleek store-
clothes—but of course he was not as previous as his
brother of to-day. He was affable, accommodating and
ready to make any sacrifice to sell goods. And yet,
despite all this, the country merchant regarded him with
about as much suspicion as though he were a wolf in
sheep's clothing, and if he had a good-looking hired girl
he made her do her churning in the cellar until the
drummer had moved on. The merchants were afraid the66	Pioneer Merchandising.

goods would not be like the samples shown, or that their
orders would be stuffed, or the price raised on them, or
that they were stolen goods. These and a thousand and
one other vague and silly fancies ran riot through the
country merchant's brain whenever the drummer dropped
his iron-clads at his door. Gradually, however, this feel-
ing of distrust wore off and the drummer became a sort
of necessary evil. Merchants became better acquainted
with his characteristics. He saved them time and he
saved them money. He told them stories by the mile
and bored them till their backs ached. He let them
curse him and give the house " L " whenever their stom-
achs were sour, and he didn't get mad. He set up stale
beer and cabbage-leaf cigars to all the loafers, and told
the merchant that he had the smartest boy and the hand-
somest daughter in the State. He stopped at the best
hotel and called the landlady aunt, or mother, if she wasn't
young enough to make love to. He hugged the girl that
made his bed, and kissed the cook in the wood-shed when
he went out to wash in the old tin pan. On first coming
into the store he had a long-winded yarn wound round
a reel, down in his stomach, I reckon, which he spun out
with ar velocity that never failed to knock the merchant
into the coal-box, stop the clock and send the cat up on
the highest pile of prints in the house with her back
bowed like a fishing-pole with a one hundred and fifty
pound sucker at each end of it. The racket was some-
thing like this: " I am Orladd Oscar Oysterwitch, rep-
resenting and desiring to recommend to your respectful
consideration the old and reliable, time-tried and fire-tested
dry goods house of Comstock, Thaley & Honesty, ofPioneer Merchandising.

67

Boston, Massachusetts. This house was established in
1831 and has done an entirely successful and constantly
increasing business during all the succeeding years. It
has seen its competitors swept away by adversity, fire,
war, famine and panics, but it stands to-day the only
original cash wholesale and low-priced house in exist-
ence. It has never had a peer and never feared that any
house could even approach the back gate of eminence to
which it has attained. By carefully considering the
slightest wish, either expressed or implied, of its custom-
ers it has won their confidence and esteem. We are
desirous of further extending our circle of acquaintances
and friends, and by special instructions of our senior
partner I am now a visitor to your city, though hereto-
fore we have made no smaller towns than Indianapolis
and St. Louis. And since arriving here I am in receipt
of a letter from the house commanding me in positive
terms to call and see you and sell you a bill of goods at all
hazards—in fact, instructing me to allow you to make your
own terms—to date ahead, to give you five per cent, off
trade, ninety days time, or a hundred and twenty, but
not to leave you without taking your order." Thus the
drummer with the buttery locks pours it into the merchant
of to-day, and this, too, without a punctuation or other
hinderance that would give the merchant a chance to
gasp, "We don't want anything."

The drummer has become the backbone of the conti-
nent. Formerly he was the missing link between the
wholesaler and the retailer, but he has assumed prodig-
ious proportions in later years. He is now the most
honored guest at hotel tables and in railway carriages.68

Pioneer Merchandising.

He smokes the finest cigars, drinks the most costly
champagne and issues his mandates with the pomposity
of a blue-bellied king. At the rate he has progressed
within the past decade he will soon out-rank Congress-
men, United States Senators, constables and all other
personages of high degree. He has grown fully as much
as the country merchant, and can out-lie him ten to one
when occasion requires. The drummer bears a relation to
the business of to-day that is second only to that of the
merchant himself and we could n't get along without him.
He comes around every fifteen minutes to see if the
merchant is not needing something, and tells him that he
is going right into the house and that he will take the
order and give it his "personal attention," and while he
is singing this song he knows that the order will go in
on a postal card and that he will be warbling the same
hymn to somebody else to-morrow. Now, I do not want
to be understood as saying that the same drummer comes
around every fifteen minutes, but I want the reader to
surmise that the drummer is a prolific cuss—that he has
not disregarded the Scriptural injunction to "multiply
and replenish the earth"—and that he has become as
thick as June-bugs or flies around a sugar hogshead.
Why, nearly every time a merchant turns around one of
them stands in close proximity to him. Mr. Drummer
lifts his hat, bows politely, glances askance at any lady
customer that may be in the store, smiles serenely, inquires
after the health of all the family, including the mer-
chant's own dear self and his blessed mother-in-law,
hopes he may take the merchant's order, etc., etc., etc.

Now, I have briefly delineated the drummer, but he isPioneer Merchandising.

69

such a variegated commodity that I do not pretend to
have done him justice, and there are other phases of his
career that I have not mentioned at all. I have not
enumerated his trials and his hardships. He has many
difficulties to contend with, and his efforts to please and
accommodate are often unappreciated. There are times
when his life is not a rose-tinted dream by a large ma-
jority, or more. He is sometimes the victim of foul
abuse, and if the party with the pepper on his tongue
is a patron of the house the drummer represents he will
often feel in duty bound to take a good deal of slang
without resenting it for fear that he may lose a customer.

I was thinking to compare the ancients with the mer-
chants of to-day, but I am a little afraid that the compar-
ison would prove sickly. In early times stocks were
general and comprised everything from a tooth-pick to a
wind-mill. Now the goods are classified and each house
confines itself to some particular line. This classifica-
tion has undoubtedly proved alike advantageous to the
merchant and his customers, as well as to the manufact-
urer and the importer. It enables the former to carry
a more complete line and thereby give his patrons better
satisfaction. He also becomes more thoroughly ac-
quainted with the details of his business, and it matter#
not whether he is in hardware, dry goods, groceries or
any other line, he becomes perfectly conversant with the
value of an article and can tell on sight whether it is up
to the standard and whether or not it will suit his trade.
The difference between the stores of fifty years ago and
those of to-day is so marked that I have caught myself
wondering if it can really be true that the one is the out-7°

Pioneer Merchandising.

growth of the other. The size of the rooms, the quality
and quantity of goods, the manner of doing business, the
systems employed, everything, in fact, is as different as
day from night. Formerly, the farmers traded all the
products of their farms for goods and generally had the
goods consumed a year in advance—now they sell their
produce for cash and pay cash for what they buy, and
they are far more independent than were their forefath-
ers who bought on a year's time.

A feature that I want to mention as connected with
the advance of merchandising is the demand that has
grown up for articles that were regarded as entirely un-
essential fifty years ago and denominated as worthless,
nonsensical trash. There are a thousand articles in this
line that we use every day and regard as absolutely es-
sential to our comfort, such as button-hooks and hair-
pins, stocking-supporters and nail-cleaners, ribbons and
furbelows, etc., etc., etc., and I will venture the assertion
that we spend more money for them annually than our
pioneer dads did for the absolute essentials of life from
thirty to fifty years ago. As I have remarked previ-
ously, we seem to need those things now and they per-
haps didn't then. Everything and everybody seems to
me to have grown more exacting. Merchants have en-
couraged this tendency by putting themselves to any
amount of trouble to gratify the whims of capricious
people—hoping thereby to gain custom. Why, almost
any dry goods merchant of to-day will send to New York
for one skein of silk floss, and if it is not just exactly the
right shade will return it and have it exchanged, or
probably order a dozen skeins of as many differentPioneer Merchandising.

7i

colors as near the shade of the sample as possible and
reserve the right to return those not wanted by the next
mail, and will smirk and smile and say, " Oh, it's no
trouble at all. We are only too glad of the opportunity
to show our customers these little courtesies." Of
course, the merchant's a liar when he says this. It's
lots of trouble and he knows it, and just why he persist-
ently yarns about it is something that no man can find out.
By the way, I might say here that after taking notes for
a good many years, I have finally concluded there is about
as much downright, barefaced deception about the mer-
chandising business as any business in the world, and it is
just about as thick on one side of the counter as on the
other. The merchant smiles so pleasantly that when he
turns round for the forty-ninth time to pull down some
piece of goods that the customer hasn't the remotest idea
in the world of buying you feel inclined to examine his
shoulders closely to see if he hasn't a pair of wings, about
as long as those of a six months old gander, sprouting and
growing out there. Then it is that he has his angelic har-
ness on, and he impresses you with the idea that he is some-
thing more than human and just about too good to live.
Now, dear reader, you think he is the essence of good
qualities boiled down, that he is as happy as a country
boy at a corn-shucking, or a Nevada mule with a con-
/ tract to kick a regiment of soldiers to kingdom come.
But you don't know him; you haven't slept with him as
I have. You can't imagine how his back aches or how
tired his corns are from standing up all day. You don't
know what a cathauling he received just before you came
in from a long-tongued spalpeen who had bought a cal-72

Pioneer Merchandising.

ico dress pattern of him six months before and who
lammed him and jammed him and told him what she
thought of him because the colors had faded a trifle.
Now, to me it is decidedly amusing to see the taffy that
is pulled across the counter. The ladies, for instance, will
examine a stock of dry goods, and they say to each other,
"How lovely!" u How cheap!" " Why I am aston-
ished that you can sell it so low!" and all that sort of
racket. But if the merchant has a mirror conveniently
hung, so that he can turn his back and peep in, he is
likely to catch them taking advantage of his turn to
contort their features and make ugly faces at the pile
of prints. Then, if he is a good listener, he will not
infrequently hear such remarks as this: " I would n't
be caught dead with a dress of that goods on—would
you?" " Naw, I wouldn't." The ladies should n?t for-
get that the hearing propensities of most merchants are
very acute and that they hear nearly everything said in
the room. Maybe if they would remember this it would
save some of them a severe embarrassment sometimes.

Now I want to tell you what will get a merchant
about as completely as anything that is likely to happen
him. Well, one of his lady customers comes in, he bows
divinely, smiles sweetly, turns on the faucet and pro-
ceeds to pour the taffy into her. She makes her pur-
chases finally and pays for them. He wraps up the
goods, delivers them to her, makes change for her, says
"good aft," bows her nearly to the door and turns to
put up the stock of hosiery that he had been taking an
inventory of when she came in. Presently he addresses
his associate salesman, who stands perhaps ten feet away,Pioneer Merchandising.

73

something after this manner: "George, just see this wreck.
I tried to make a running switch here, but that dod-gasted
old hunch-back shopper, who just went out and who
wears the life out of every merchant in town, side-tracked
me here, came in collision with my arrangements
and knocked things into a cross-eyed melange generally.
I wish she were in Helena, Arkansas, or some other salt-
water port." And just about this time Mr. Merchant
looks up and discovers the olject of his wrath standing
less than twenty feet away, looking over a box of ribbon
remnants and pretending not to have heard a word he
said. Now, dear reader, how would you fix such a break
as this ? ril tell you what I think about it. I don't
think any very smart merchant would attempt to explain
a thing of this kind, and I am satisfied that if I were in
such a box I would be as mum as an oyster.

It is my intention here to outline a few of the funny
things that occur with a counter between the actors. I
don't know whether I am making these reminiscenses
very interesting or not.

Just now I think of it; I wonder how many of my
readers ever noticed how much downright lying it takes
to handle lace. It takes a first-class artist to success-
fully handle these goods. A lady will find in the fashion
books the names of various laces that are to be worn this
season. She will commit them to memory and break for
the store—repeating them over to herself so as not to
forget them—and then she'll rush frantically in and call
for the new-named laces one after another. Now the
" slick " salesman gets in his work. He says," Of course,
we've got them," and hands out the first piece he gets his74

Pioneer Merchandising.

hands on and comments upon the quality. Perhaps he
never heard the name given before, but by attentively
repeating it after her he soon becomes familiar with it.
And he will frequently further indulge his mischievous-
ness by showing various other laces and calling them the
most ridiculous names he can invent. After an hour's
hard lying he will probably sell two yards of fifteen cent
lace for the price named in the magazine—say, seventy-
five cents a yard. This little descriptive romance is not
susceptible of a personal application. I have not in-
tended it to apply to any particular person, and if any-
body takes it to himself and gets mad about it, thinking
I mean him, he is a bigger fool than I am.

Now, I can not close without paying the mercantile
business and the merchants a parting tribute. In run-
ning back through the business in this country for some
years, I have briefly and disconnectedly recounted some
few of the historical incidents of mercantile life. Now
that I have come to my finis, I find that while the mer-
chants have had trials, hardships and mishaps to contend
with, there are also some very pleasant things to remem-
ber. There are friendships formed by our being thrown
together in business relations that time can not sever.
They are not momentary whims nor passing fancies that
gild our horizon for a while only to depart like flitting
shadows. No, on the contrary, they are remembrances
that we cherish arid hold sacred—the cords that bind us
together as man and brother. I recall to mind many
names and faces that have grown familiar through long
years of association, and I feel for them a reciprocal
friendship that is something above and beyond the every-Pioneer Merchandising.

75

day sentiment we bestow upon passing acquaintances. I
can also look back into the past and see the well-known
forms and features of some who have dropped off, one by
one, within the past twenty years, and my recollections
of them are always pleasant. I think of the many social
chats we had together while Time was busy working his
wondrous changes, of the busy hum of trade that has
made music for us while we were growing old, and of
the thousand and one apparently trifling incidents that
cemented us together. Perhaps it is because so many of
these people have closed their life-work and gone from
hence that we feel, or seem to feel, that they were always
pleasant and that the friendships formed in the early
morn and noon of life are the sweetest we have ever
known. These sentiments knew no commercial value—
paltry dollars and cents could not be considered in esti-
mating their worth—they were more priceless than dia-
monds or the glittering success of the most prosperous
merchant prince of to-day. I sometimes think that there
was a very different feeling existing then from that of the
present time—that the people were more disposed to for-
give faults and help one another, and by so doing help
themselves—that the merchants were more lenient and
therefore sealed to themselves for all time these price-
less treasures I have tried to tell you about. The people
of to-day are far more independent than they were then,
and do not have to ask nor grant the favors out of which
have grown these ties that are only broken by the reaper,
Death. But, after all, the merchants (even the merchants
of to-day) are far better men than you think. They have
souls (some of them) and are susceptible of the finest76	Pioneer Merchandising.

feelings and of appreciating confidence and friendship.
Now, my dear reader, before you heap anathemas merci-
lessly upon the merchant's head, always remember that
there are two sides to every case, and listen to his vindi-
cation. Perhaps, even after you have taken exceptions
to some transaction, you would be surprised to hear the
other side of the story. It isn't fair to accuse the mer-
chant of doing everything that is mean without giving
him a chance for his life, for he has a tough pilgrimage
here on earth and should certainly be the recipient of uni-
versal charity, and an abundant admittance to that haven
of peace and rest that is specially designed for the finally
faithful.Why Die Ye All the Year?

It was said of old that " so soon as we begin to live
we begin to die." While this may be so physically, we
do not think that it was ever intended to be so under-
stood. If true, why do we not droop and wither and die
like all else in nature ? Why do we not realize that we
are fast dying, with decrepitude outlined in our very
nature? Why do we not, like the fading foliage of
autumn, begin early in our lives to drop the bright and
cheerful hope of our future? In youth we stand upon
the threshold of our existence, and look across the great
sea of life, and with the inspiring eye of faith and hope,
look to attainments of high renown. We rush out on
the great tide of life, filled with that God-given ambition
that inspires us with courage in the battle of life. Tell
me not that we die all the years of our existence. Ask
cheerful youth and manhood, in their stalwart prime, if
they are dying, and they tell you, " No ! " Ask falter-
ing age, and the trembling answer is: " No; I see yet
more fields of usefulness, armies to lead and battles to
win. With all my ripe experience, I am but ready now
to take a grand march through some great conflict. This
I could not have done in the days of my youth. No; I
am not dying, but am full of hope and faith in my exist-
ence."

(77)If I Only Had it Back.

How often is this remark made, and how many
thousand times a day does it silently well up from the
very inmost depths of the heart? The sentence applies
to more than one phase of human life. It applies to
fortunes lost, to brighter and better days that are forever
gone, to the friends that have been to us a bright source
of happiness, to unkind words hastily spoken, to rash
acts committed, and to broken hearts that have been
crushed and have gone to that bourne with which we
have no communication. It applies to the many thousand
opportunities that we have had to do good, to the bright
days of our youth, when we were blessed with all that
health and the smiles of heaven could bestow upon man,
when the world was our bright field of golden opportu-
nities, which were allowed to fade like the flowers we had
gathered in the morning of our life that we thought would
bloom forever. To no one can this heart-felt utterance be
more poignant than the poor inebriate who once occupied
a high and honorable position in life, surrounded with
property and friends, enjoying the pleasures of a life of
honor and the recognition of the community in which he
lived. But now he totters in the street, a vagabond; no
credit, no home, no money, nothing but a miserable life.
Bitter must come the sentence ringing through his soul:
" If only I had it back again." You who have unkindly
and wrongfully accused your friend, afterward in the

(78)If I Only Had it Back.

79

great sorrow of your soul have silently said: "Oh, if I had
it back again." You who have stood idly by the great
stream of time and seen the golden opportunities pass
before you and heeded them not, now in the anguish
of remorse say: " If only I had it back again."

We could enumerate ten thousand just such instances
in which we have given ourselves untold sorrows by neg-
lect of the duties that crowd upon us every day of our lives.
We can never step back and retire from the past. This
life is a march, either up or down, but ever onward. We
can never retrace our lives, however much we may
deplore the neglect of the past. Bear in mind that be-
tween the now and the then, the here and the hereafter,
there is an impassable gulf no human being can cross.
But we may yet have ten thousand opportunities to
accomplish what we have neglected in the past, to weave
into the great web and woof of life some goodness that
will help to brighten the shades of the early part of our
journey. We may yet break away the clouds of sorrow
that are surrounding some poor struggling man or
woman, and let the bright sunshine of happiness appear
to him, and in so doing we shall be made happy.

The enjoyment of a duty well performed, an act of
kindness cheerfully bestowed, is the great balm in
Gilead. Try this for a time, and see if you do not derive
more true happiness from it than you ever anticipated.
You need not go far to find some good place to begin.
Just look down around you (not always up), and as you
exercise your God-given influence you will grow stronger
and more willing to help others. But don't put up a
sign in front of your place that you are going to do some8o

If I Only Had it Back.

good and noble act and help some struggling inebriate
that is fighting the terrible appetite for drink. Don't
publish that you are going to speak more kindly to those
with whom you mingle every day. Don't herald to the
world that you are going to weave into the web of your
life some bright, new and cheerful colors, but do it so
quietly and so effectively that your neighbor, whose loom
of life sits just beside yours, can look at your designs
and improve his. Tell him how you did it; give him
the designs, and show him all you have learned; and,
oh, how soon the change will be manifested along through
the great work-shop of life. Brighten up your hearts,
your ambitions, your determinations, and march steadily
on and others will follow you.Tribute to Mother.

There never was but one mother, and she is ours.
We may wade through the halls of splendor, bow and
scrape in graceful reverence to the queens and belles of
all countries, but the homage we render unto them at
heart can not compare with that which we all silently
though most reverently accord to mother. Many have
been the domestic broils engendered in the moment of
forgetfulness when some young and inexperienced speci-
men of husband has referred to and dilated in contrast
upon the grand and sublime qualities of his mother—
how she boiled and baked, roasted and fried, in the days
that were and which can never again return to him.
How many of us now basking in the shades of the after-
noon of life long to go back home to mother's just once
more; how we should love to quit the busy scenes of
manhood's estate and be once more a boy, to wade bare-
foot and bareheaded through all the vagaries and pleas-
antries of childhood's happy hours, when our young
hearts were free from care and wholly oblivious to the
coming responsibilities of the noontide of life, when our
hearts were full of childish glee, recognizing no world
but home, no queen but mother. This feeling of respect
and reverence for mother and her methods is most aptly
expressed in the following poem, by a clever writer and
friend, dedicated to

(81)$2

Tribute to Mother.

"the bread that mother makes

You may writ© about your toothsome pies, your puddin's sweet
and rich;

You may give receipts in plenty, too, for cookies, buns and sich;
You kin talk about your doughnuts, and your jelly rolls and
cake,

But I'd ruther have a piece of bread like mother used to make.

The bread they set before us now is just as white as snow,

And fur satisfy in' hunger doesn't any further go;

It's just a " whited sepulker," it is and no mistake,

Oh, I wisht I had a piece of bread like mother used to make!

It was when I was a schoolboy, 'fore I started for the cow,
I'd scour the pantry for a lunch—I wisht I had one now!
A plenty of golden butter and of pear preserves I'd take,
An' pile it on the splendid bread that mother used to make!

At good, old-fashioned cookin' mother was a master hand;
At good, old-fashioned eetin' her son at the head could stand;
And I never slighted anything from pickles up to cake-
But you'd ought to see me reach for bread that mother used to
makel

But the truth to you I'm tellin' now; it nearly turns my head
When I see the white, unnatural stuff they pass to us for bread;
This roller flour's the fashion now; its fruit we have to take—
But 'taint a patchin' to the bread that mother used to make IKEITH MAKES A SPEECH AT AN OLD SETTLERS' MEETING.Keith Makes a Speech to an Old Settlers' Meet-
ing at the Town Where He Began His
Career as a Country Merchant.

I had been away from the quaint old town where I
embarked in the merchandising business for about twenty-
years, and found it convenient to pay my respects to the
dear old place in the way of a visit. I chose a time
when they had their annual Old Settlers' Meeting, think-
ing that it would be as pleasant an occasion as I could
select to visit them, and I found it so. They insisted
that I should make them a speech, which I consented to
do; and though little time was given me to collect my
thoughts on the subject of what I should say to them, I
well knew that they would be lenient with me if I did
not speak long nor much. But the occasion, the faces
of my old-time friends, the recollections of the past,
came before my mind in such a way as to awaken in my
soul a sentiment that brought forth the following re-
marks :

Ladies, Gentlemen and Old Feiends—What
means this great gathering of people ? Is it to celebrate
some great national holiday ? No. Is it to ratify some
great public act of the people? No. It is simply an
object lesson of friendship—a friendship that was born
and developed in an early day among the people of this
country, many long years ago, when there were not as

(84)Keith Makes a Speech.

85

many people in this grand old county as there are now.
This is the reason of this strong bond of friendship. The
beginning of the association of this people was in an
early day, when neighbors were few and friends were
scarce, and all the people of this country were on a plane
of equality, and their lives and interests were one com-
mon cause.

It is not strange that the net-work of friendship that
was woven through toil and tears, hardships and woes,
trials and triumphs, should last even down- to this day.
Though but few are before me now who began this race
together, yet, through the mist of years, with its sorrows
and trials, its joys and prosperities, has this early friend-
ship clung to the veterans of this country like their very
existence. And to-day, among the bowed gray heads of
this assembly, we see a few of the pilgrims of a day that
was a long time ago.

We who have come upon the stage of action later on
are sometimes made to wonder at this, yet, when we take
a philosophical view of the question of friendship, we
know that there is something almost superhuman in this
enduring and life-tried friendship. We know by our
own experiences that there is one time in our lives when
we form these eternal friendships that last through all
our life-time. It is in the days of our youth, when our
hearts and minds are untrammeled with the busy cares
of our life-time. It is then that our hearts and lives are
tender and susceptible to the touch of sympathy and
brotherly love and that far-reaching and divine attribute of
our natures which takes hold of our lives and the sympathie
of our fellow-man. And we find our experience to be86

Keith Makes a Speech.

that the friendships formed in the days of our youth are
the ones that are lasting and as eternal as the hills of this
sacred old town that so many of us delight to call home.
We may in after years form other ties and weld links of
other friendships, but we find them breaking many times,
and in our disappointments are constantly going
back to the friends of our earlier life. No sweeter poem
was ever sung than—

" Blest be the tie that binds

Our hearts in Christian love;

The fellowship of kindred miads
Is like to that above.

" When we asunder part,

It gives us inward pain;

But we shall still be joined in heart
And hope to meet again."

So it is with the lives of the grand old fathers and
mothers who are the pioneers of this country. They
are now living in the past, reading the musty yet ever
bright pages of the history of their lives; they go over
the roll-call of their friends of the long ago, and as
they call with tearful recollection those with whom they
have associated in the morning of their lives and
receive no answer (notwithstanding their present sur-
roundings may be the very best that can be provided
for their comfort and happiness) there is in their
souls that eternal longing for the days that were and
that can never come to them again, and for the presence
of the friends that they made in their early lives. Is
this not true, my gray-haired patriarchs of to-day ?

And, as you recall the boys and girls of fifty longKeith Makes a Speech.



years ago, with whom you began the battle of life, I
fancy I hear a sigh and hear you say to yourselves: <( I
do wish I knew what has become of this one, or that one,
that I loved so well in my boyhood or girlhood days."
Or, as you drop the silent tear, I hear you say : " They
have gone home long ago," and I can well imagine that
there is among you that deep and well-earned bond of
friendship formed in the past that can never be broken.
I find that the ranks are becoming reduced very fast.
Some whom we have had the pleasure of greeting
in true and hearty friendship have gone home since
we met here many years ago; we miss them to-
day ; and, were I to call the roll from my recollection
of this community, I have no doubt it would beget a
vein of sadness from which I gladly refrain; and
after I should exhaust personal memory, no doubt but
that many of you older men and women could take up
the roll where I might leave off and call many more
who would not answer.

Such occasions as this are great object lessons of our
lives. We are taught by the very surroundings of to-
day that we are fast becoming the old men and women
of this country, and silence only mocks us when we say :
" Where are our fathers and our mothers ? " The monu-
ments on yonder vine-clad hill-top, the silent city of the
dead, answer the question.

Now, I would not sadden the hearts of these grand
old fathers and mothers that have been spared to honor
us with their presence on this beautiful occasion, but I
well know that I have come very close to your hearts by
this talk with you, and I fancy I hear you say : " Yes, it88

Keith Makes a Speech.

is only too true; we know it all." I would, if possible,
lighten your burdens and brighten the lamp that lights,
though dimly, your pathways of life and cheer you. I
think the satisfaction that these pioneers have now—
that their lives, though nearly closed, have been spent in a
grand and noble work—should be their great recompense,
and we, who are taking their places, find our lives are
made easier, our advantages greater, our education
higher—all on account of the existence of these old
people whom we delight to call the honored pioneers of
this country, whom we younger men and women assem-
bled here to-day should honor by congratulating you on
your heroism during the bitter struggles of your early
lives, your loyalty to each other and your patriotism to
your country.

And now, to the younger men of this day I would
say a word. Our fathers have hewn down the forests,
begun the development of this, the grandest country on
earth ; will you take up the great designs of these
old patriarchs and continue the work begun by them?
Much more is now required at your hands than theirs.
They had no pattern to work from; you have. They
had no means to employ; you have. They had no edu-
cation ; you have. They had no advantage of science
and machinery; you have. They had not the experi-
ence of predecessors ; you have. And with all this, and
in all deference and honor to our fathers and mothers,
may not this country expect more of you in coming
years? Will you bear aloft the flag of your country
and the banner of industry so nobly done by the pioneers
of this country, that your children may point to yourKeith Makes a Speech.

89

lives with pride and say: " Behold what our fatheis have
done ? "

And now I feel I have detained you long enough,
and I desire to express the wish that we may all be
spared to meet around this great family altar many more
times, to greet each other in this fraternal love and
friendship that is known only to those whose lives have
been cemented and woven together in one common bond
of love and eternal friendship.(9®)A Speech Made at a Soldiers' Reunion in a
Western State.

I was traveling in a Western State a short time ago,
and happened to spend a day in a county seat where
they were holding a soldiers' reunion of a lot of Western
regiments, and, as usual, there were present people who
knew me and insisted that I would make them a speech.
I tried to beg off, but they would not have it that way.
After hesitating some, I consented to do so and gave
them this:

Old Soldiers, Fellow Citizens, Ladies and
Gentlemen :—In coming before you I am impressed
with a feeling of awe and sadness that is unusual on my
appearance before the public.

I recall an incident, which impresses me as being ap-
propriate to this occasion, which took place several years
ago in New York City. It was on the occasion of the
death of our beloved Garfield, when the sad news of his
death was flashed over the wires of every continent on
the globe—very soon after which great assemblies were
called together to take steps to express a nation's sorrow
and to offer a world's condolence. Among them was a
tremendous meeting of patriotic citizens of the great city
of New York. They had assembled in the largest hall
that could be had, which was crowded to its utmost ca-
pacity. When order and silence was restored, the great
statesman, Conklin, arose, walked to the front of the

(9092	Speech at Soldiers* Reunion.

stage and stood like a towering giant of statuary for sev-
eral minutes, until the silence seemed to echo back the
sadness of the occasion, when he broke the stillness with
great feeling and solemnity, in entering upon his eulogy
of Garfield as a statesman and patriot by quoting the
following beautiful poem:

" There are waves away out in the ocean
That will never break on the beach:

There are billows of emotion
That can find no expression in speech."

So to you patriots and soldiers, I could utter no more
appropriate sentiment than was expressed on that great
occasion.

I see before me to-day a band of men who have, by
their acts of love and kindness toward each other, under
the peculiar and trying relations of the soldier's life, been
united together as one great family, whose parental tree
is rooted and grounded in this glorious government of
ours, whose wide-spread branches reach every civilized
land on the globe arid afford to its loyal subjects the
protection which a father does to his own. These men,
whom we delight to honor, are men whose patriotism
and bravery have won for them a crown of national
honor and glory.

You remind me to-day of a great family having met
in reunion. Like a family, you have since the war been
scattered all over this country in the pursuit of the vari-
ous vocations of life. But to-day you come together to
live in the past. When a large family that has been
scattered abroad in the world comes home to a reunion,
perhaps to celebrate the anniversary of father or mother,Speech at Soldiers' Reunion.	93

what do you say the greetings are? What do you im-
agine would be the topic of conversation? Some popu-
lar issue of the day, politics, religion, or finance? No,
indeed; it would not. I know, and so do many of you
know. Their conversation would be of the past, when
they were boys and girls at home, and of the thousands
of circumstances that attended them in early life and en-
deared them to each other, making them one in heart
and purpose. The day would be spent in rambles over
the old farm, its hills and valleys, in searches through
the old barn, and in pilgrimages to the old springs, re-
turning through the orchard, and every place where they
roamed when they were boys and girls at home. And,
too, I fancy I hear some of the sad side of this occasion;
some dear brother or sister has not met with them at
home this time. They in sadness recall his or her name
and recount with tender recollections the memory of one
or more who have been called to their long home since
they met.

I hear a sister say: " 'Twas here under the sheltering
boughs of this dear old tree I plighted my vows of love
and had pictured to me the elysian fields of the paradise
of a happy wedlock. But, alas, the one I had expected
to march with me along the path of life has fallen by the
foe of humanity; and I am alone and sad, yet full of
memories very dear to me to-day." So I hear a brother
say that it was on this grand old sward of the green in
this dear old home door-yard, more than thirty years
ago, that we romped and made the very heavens re-
sound with merry-making, when I brought home my
blushing bride. But to-day how changed the scene! She,94

Speech at Soldiers' Reunion.

too, has fallen a victim to the Great Leveler of the
human family, and I am sad and alone because she is not
here to celebrate this reunion with us.

So, my dear old soldiers, I see a beautiful application
of this picture to you on this occasion. I believe that
you are to-day living in the past, and even though some
of the scenes that are brought to your minds present sad
memories of my picture of the family to you, you are
here to celebrate for a day, this, your annual reunion.
You have come here divested of all the selfishness of
your lives and are as the family, if not in body, then in
mind, wandering back over the battle-fields, the camp,
the hospital, the march, the prison and all your soldier
lives, as you recount to each other the many things that
have made your lives dear to yourselves and to each other.

I fancy I hear mentioned the name of a fallen one,
who sleeps to-day in his silent, windowless tenement, with
the flag of his country for his winding sheet. You,
comrades, left him in the far away land of the Sunny
South. The memories of that day, that battle, that
comrade, awaken a thousand recollections in your
hearts to-day, and I know the memories of other days
and other faces will not grow dim with the coming years,
nor soon be effaced by the hand of time. In the re-
counting the great sacrifices that you have made in the
long ago, in order that this flag might still wave over
the land of the free and the home of the brave, are be-
yond computation.

Statisticians give us the cost of the late great civil
war in voluminous figures, but allow me to say that the
smallest cost of the war was the money part of it. We\

$pe*sh at Soldiers' Reunion.	95

im upon the unrecorded pages of the history of the
great civil war the broken ties, the sad partings forever
from mothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts, and thou-
sands upon thousands never returning to reclaim them.
The limbless soldiers who walk our streets to-day are
living monuments to the great cost of the struggle;
so is the aged and heart-broken widow who sits in your
midst in quiet sadness reflecting shadows of the great
cost of the maintenance and perpetuity of the Union.

I might refer to a thousand things which teach us that
the blood of a nation's patriots can not be estimated in
money. No; the fast falling tears that I see before me
now only echo back the truth of this assertion.

All honor to the men whom we delight to praise with
the name of patriot and soldier. Were we to bankrupt
the English language in search for words to do them
honor we should fail. Were we to employ all the sweet
poetry of the sages in sentiments of praise we should
still fall short. All this would fail to express to them
the praise of a nation due its defenders.

So in conclusion allow me to congratulate you upon
your grand reunion and all the pleasure and memories
of this occasion.

And now that the last battle has been fought, the last
victory won, and the flags have all been rolled up and
the drums have all been unstrung, allow me with every
patriot of the nation to say again, all honor to the sol-
diers who defended this country in its peril. May you
yet live a long and peaceful life in the enjoyment and
protection of this, your government, your country, and
your flag*The Law of Association is Clearly Defined in
All Creation.

The stars were created in constellations, the fishes of
the sea in schools, the birds of the air in flocks, the
forests in density, the wild buffalo on the western plains
in herds, the grapes on the vine in bunches, the grass of
the field in nature's broad, green carpet, the sands of the
beach innumerable; the waters of the great deep are
formed by the same law, mingling together from rivulet
to river, on to the great and mighty ocean.

So we find man from the day of his creation. The
first edict that went forth was that it was not good for
man to be alone, and ever since has this immortal in-
stinct asserted itself in all his relations.

We find men associating themselves together in the
business affairs of the world—in their social as well as
domestic life, and the great golden key to all this is the
national motto, " In union there is strength." We find
that the great reformation of the world is being done by
the church organizations and the associating together of
great bodies of people, uniting their combined efforts in
one common cause.

We see that the great educational world is being con-
trolled by this same law of association, and that all the
laws of our nation come from associated bodies of the
great and learned of the world. So do we find that the

(96)The Law of Association.

97

great charitable work of the world is under the manage-
ment of great and mighty lodge associations, and to-day
this far-reaching influence is second only to the church
of our great Creator.

The ties of brotherhood and the bond of brotherly love
are known to none better than those who know well the
workings of the lodge fraternities of the world. It is
there that brother can meet brother and pour out his
soul in joy or sorrow, prosperity or poverty, and receive
from him that true human, yes, almost divine, sympathy
that, I regret to say, the church knows but little of and
the world yet less.

Such associations form some of the bright pictures in
our book of life. Ah, how we love to go back and gaze
on them, while our minds are filled with a thousand
pleasant recollections of the past, and as we linger on
them in sweet revelry the faces of friends and
brothers shine out of this picture with a radiance and
halo that can never be forgotten, and I feel that I voice
the sentiment of every fraternal brother that reads this
book when I say that we all feel the pleasant thrill of
brotherly love, the renewed ties of friendship, the strong
bond that makes us one in purpose, one in love, and one
of the brightest stars in all the great constellation of the
crown of charity when we meet and clasp the hand of a
fraternal brother.The Influence of Love in the World.

The influence of love in the world is as broad as the
light that God created in the beginning when he said:
"i Let there be light/ and there was light."

Turning back through the history of the world, through
the dimly lighted gateways of the centuries to the cre-
ation of the world, we are able to trace love to the begin-
ning of time and the first existence of all things. We
have but to look up through the great constellations of
stars on through the dome of the very heavens to get the
first glimmering ray of the light of love. We read in
the great book of books that God so loved the world that
He gave His only son as a ransom for sinful and fallen
humanity. So we see beautifully portrayed in all the
life and teachings of Christ, while here on earth, this
same love and tender regard for others. This feeling we
call love, that God dispensed through all His life on
earth, which was shorn of all earthly selfishness and
worldly motives on account of His exalted inher-
itance. His father, the Creator of the universe, placed
Him beyond the power of His followers on earth to do
Him honor above His own that would redound to His
goodness on earth. His followers were of the poor,
humble and despised of earth, and neither knew how
nor had it in their power to do Him honor for His love
and sympathy. But He did for humanity what would
not have been done for love.

(98)The Influence of Love.

99

"We find in all creation this natural instinct that is un-
conquerable in all the animal creation—that this love
for its kind is one of the cardinal features of their
nature. There is no animal of all the family of beasts
or fowls that will not defend its own. From whence
came this nature ? Surely not from the sweet poetry and
song that awakens the tender emotions of the human
heart. No; God, their creator, gave it to them. It is
a part of their created nature, has always been and will
always be. So man in the higher order of the creation
is full of love and devotion.

The early followers of Christ were not induced to do
so because of great earthly rewards, nor honor, nor posi-
tion, but the love they had for Christ made them mar-
tyrs; yet their love and devotion that was created in
them by the Great God of the universe and developed
by commfngling with His humble followers was the be-
ginning of the love that has been perpetuated all along
down the rugged pathways of humanity to the present
day. No sweeter theme has been found by the poets of
every land and age since the existence of man on the
earth. Sages have written about love; poets have
touched and inspired the human soul with their beautiful
thoughts on this sweet subject. The sweet songsters of
the ages have sung the world over about love; patriots
of all ages have laid down their lives for the love of
home and country; nations have laid down their weap-
ons of warfare and, with hearts awakened with the un-
quenchable fire of love and with streaming eyes and out-
stretched arms, have clasped hands across the bloody
chasms of national strife and have forgotten that theyioo	The Influence of Love.

had been enemies. And so we might follow this influ-
ence all oyer the known world, and everywhere find that
it is the goldon link that binds humanity into one great
family.

If I could draw a line of distinction along very near
to the line of a Savior's love I would say that the near-
est and sweetest love next in comparison is the love of a
mother, not only in humanity, but in all the creation of
living things. She will die for her own, and in all the
vicissitudes of her life, when the doors of the world
close against hers, she stands with outstretched arms
ready to receive a wayward son or daughter; and when
the heartless world in mocking derision would tantalize
her she turns with streaming eyes and a heart breaking
with sorrow and says to the world, " This is my child."

So why not cultivate love as we would any of the
precious gifts of God in our nature; for if there is any
phase of our nature that we shall take to heaven with us
it is love. How pitiable would we be in the presence of
the great God of love if we knew nothing about its sweet
influences an earth. Rob the earth of love and you take
away all that makes us grand and God-like, and when the
afternoon of our lives comes with its gathering shades,
how sweet will be our lives if filled with love for our
people and all the grandeur of God's creation that He
has put here on earth to help us cultivate and develop
this immortal fire. And when comes the calm sunset of
our lives I trust that we may realize the sweet victory
of peace on earth and good will toward man of which we
read in the book of books—the Bible.Ideal Woman,

Woman has always been the admiration of the world
of mankind. Not because of her peculiar creation being
part of man, not because it was the rib of Adam out of
which God created woman, symbolizing her close attach-
ments to man, and that she was to be his support, but
because she was originally a very important part in
the organization of man. God's wisdom teaches us that
man in all his organization and his attributes was incom-
plete without woman. He created woman for a help-
mate for man. Why ? The great Creator did not create
woman out of the dust of the earth as he did Adam, nor
at the same time, but that he did create her for a
grand and noble purpose has been fully demonstrated all
along down through the pages of the history of the
world.

Women have made themselves heroines. All along
through the history of the world we find that history
crowns women the heroines of all ages. Their deeds of
valor, courage and zeal are recorded all through the his-
tory of the world in letters and pages of living fire that
grow brighter with age and shine out along our path as
the great examples of heroism and goodness that are
worthy of the emulation of every woman in the land.

We all have our ideas of what the Ideal Woman is,
or who she is. We may find her everywhere. The pio-
neers of this country were the heroines of their day.

(101)102

Ideal Woman.

The privations, hardships and struggles they encoun-
tered in the early history of this country are written on
the tablets of the world's history in pages of fire. We
of this age can never know, only from history, what their
lives were. They were poor, patriotic and true. They
humbly and meekly bore the wearied toil of their
day without a murmur, nobly helping their husbands in
their arduous labor of making civilization what it is in
this country. They did the drudgery of the slave, rearing
large families to bless the earth and develop the resources
of this country and make it what it is to-day. In their
day education was a thing unknown, and the conven-
iences of labor that are enjoyed by you of this age were
things unheard of by the pioneer mothers of that day.
She would not have known what a sewing-machine was
if it had been left at the cabin in her absence, her absence
being an every-day occurrence, as she daily toiled in the
field with her husband. Had a piano been left with her,
at the very first thrilling sound of its sweet music, no
doubt, she would have fled to the woods that were always
near. And so would she have been as much a stranger
to all the convenient appliances of this age—the patent
churn, the knitting-machine, the great and untold labor-
saving inventions of to-day ; but they did not know of
such things, nor did anyone else. Yet they were con-
tent, and these grand and noble duties that they did per-
form were a joy to them. These same pioneer ladies
that you girls would think lightly of could slay and
dress a deer, or a shoat, or pick a wild turkey and pre-
pare a sumptuous meal without the aid of a cooking-
stove, quicker than any of you could make the most del-Ideal Woman.

103

icate cake and bake it on the most improved cooking-
ranges of the present day. They were the heroines of
their time. . To-day their windowless tenements are
dotted all over this great civilized land of ours, and the
little awkward-shaped piece of crude limestone, dimly
carved with a common chisel, marks the resting-place of
these noble mothers of our country.

We may choose the pioneers for our heroes, but I have
in my mind a character that rises higher in my estimation
than all others. It is mother, the ideal woman. It was
mother who first taught our lips to speak her name; it
was mother who was our constant and never failing friend.
When the sore trials of life came upon us in all their
fury, it was mother who always had a kind word for us,
a smile, a " God bless you my child," and when the cares
of life had gathered over us like a great dark pavilion,
shutting out from our longing gaze our friends, through
the gloom came mother's presence to dispel the shadows,
when the sun would again shine on our pathway. The
mothers have made the great sacrifices of their country in
the wars of the world. There was not a soldier, though
grizzled gray with the hardships of war, but had lisped
the name of mother. The stalwart youth, in all his
prime of manhood, well remembered the day when he
bade his dear old sainted mother good-bye. So the
tender, beardless drummer boy, as he lay away upon a
bleak mountain, thinking of home, the sweetest dream
he ever had was of mother. On the gory fields
of battle, as the strong men fell amid the carnage of
war, the name of mother and home was silently
uttered by the wounded soldier as he lay dying alone onIdeal Woman.

the grim battle-field, with earth for his pillow and the
stars of heaven for his covering, and as he passed away
into the great beyond, where no long roll will ever beat
the reveille for him again, he closed his eyes to sleep the
long sleep with the name of mother on his lips.

The mothers said to their boys: "Go defend your coun-
try." She followed him in all his wanderings; she was
first on the battle-field with aid for the wounded and dying;
she was in the hospital; she was everywhere the tender,
loving heart of a mother could go, to help her boy, or
some other good mother's boy. Great God ! has such an
example of patriotism and heroism a parallel in the
history of the world? A mother never forsakes her
child. She will follow her daughter to the gutter, or her
son to the gallows, and there, before a scorning world,
own her children. She even stands with out-stretched
arms and pleads for their return, and in every falling
tear is a volume of forgiveness. Ah, who is our Ideal
Woman? It is mother.

You, young ladies, may never live in a primitive
country where you may develop the spirit of the pioneer, as
some have done. God grant that no cruel wars may ever
give you an opportunity to be heroines, and may heaven
save you the heart-breaking sorrow of wayward sons and
daughters. But there are fields for you now. The
rough corners of life hvae been broken off in the descent
of time through the gateways of the dimly-lighted centu-
ries down through the great world's history. And now,
young ladies, you stand on the very threshold of a new
era—a life of advantageous circumstances, such as will
widen out before your ambitious gaze great broad fieldsIdeal Woman.

of usefulness, affording you opportunities to be of great
service to the world. Greater demands are made of you
than of the pioneer mothers of our country. In your life
education has placed in your hands a weapon of influ-
ence you must wield. You must hold the light up
along the shore, that the weary may be led to the great
fields of usefulness and honor. You who have had the
pleasure and the advantages of this day find yourselves
called upon to spring forth in all of woman's glory and
goodness and direct the nation. Women of to-day are
the great architects of this country. They are raising
up the fallen, founding institutions of learning, and the
great whir of the national machinery of this country, as
it rapidly reaches out for the ennobling of humanity, is
being influenced and largely managed by the great
women of our country.

We have only space to mention a few of the great
women of to-day. Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of
Uncle Tom's Cabin, a book that has been printed
in every language under the sun, has accomplished
with her pen a victory over slavery almost as great as
Grant's glorious achievements with the sword. Frances
Hodgson Burnett, author of Little Lord Fauntleroy and
other books, has received high praise from Gladstone,
Blaine, Bismarck and others. She has enlightened the
great literary world with other books and stories that
will be read around nearly every fireside in the world.
She is to-day in receipt of the largest income from her
literary achievements of any woman in the land. In
the music that has gladdened the hearts of the nations
and carried the world in rapturous song, was Jennieio6

Ideal Woman.

Lind, who had the sweetest voice that ever breathed
forth it's soul in song. The charming voice of
Emma Abbott held captive the world, wrapped
in the profound ecstacy of her entrancing music. In
the great refrom work, Frances Willard stands at the
head of the temperance women of the world, and to-day-
thousands of fallen men are walking erect and praising
God and her for her grand and glorious work. In poli-
tics and philanthropy, Susan B. Anthony, prominent as
a woman suffragist, has no equal, who gained great
distinction by her elaborate hospital work during the
late Civil War. In the drama and on the stage, Mary
Anderson is the greatest American artist that ever ap-
peared. Ellen Terry is the greatest English artist that
ever appeared on the stage, and by her genius she holds
the Old World in rapture and admiration. In oratory
and lecture, Mary A. Livermore has been for a quarter
of a century a speaker of renown. So, we might go on
enumerating the great women of their day and of to-
day almost without limit, but the few names will suffice
to show that women have become and can become the
great heroines of the world.

Great men have received some of their greatest in-
centives to goodness and honor at the hands of the noble
educators of our day, who have the proud distinction of
being called women. The day has passed when women
are to be ignored in the management of the great edu-
cational machinery of this country. Who is the founder
of the great charitable institutions of to-day? It is
woman. Who is it that has become the fixed foe of the
greatest curse that ever befell a nation—the curse of in-Ideal Woman.

107

temperance ? It is woman. Who is it that has given
us our palatial homes and the grandeur and charms of
the music of home ? It is woman. Who is it that is
the great rudder or brake on the rapid gait in the down-
ward plane of man to his ruin ? It is woman. So, we
may all have our ideal of woman, representing all her
phases of life, and developing all the true greatness of
her race. But with all honor to whom honor is due, I
say to you that no woman on earth ever has changed or ever
will change my ideal woman. It is mother. Her ten-
der influences will follow us all through life; though the
flowers may have bloomed on her grave long years ago,
yet will she ever and ever live in our hearts as the one
supreme ideal of woman.Ig Life Worth the Living?

As previously announced, I have chosen for my last
chapter the topic, What have we gotten out of our
lives? or, is life worth the living as we have lived it?

My purpose in asking this question in the general, is
to lead each of you in the individual to ask yourselves:
What have I gotten out of life? Has it been a suc-
cess or a failure? We all have our standard or esti-
mate of life. Some have chosen riches; some, honor;
some one thing and some another; and I would like to
ask if you have obtained the high standard that your
earlier ambitions pictured out to you. If your ambition
was money, has it bought for you all that you had hoped
it would ? Has it furnished you throughout your life
the real, genuine pleasure and satisfaction that you had
anticipated; or has it been a myth, a vapor, a mirage to
you in the great desert of life? Have you not made
yourself a slave in the best part of your life in the ac-
cumulation of a fortune, and have you not found your-
self a greater slave in later years trying to hold your ac-
cumulations from slipping away from you, or in trying
to keep somebody from stealing it from you ? Are you
satisfied with your life as you have chosen to live it?
Really, do our lives wholly consist in the things we
have ? If we have spent our lives in the wild pursuit
of wealth, have we not, perhaps, by engaging every
energy and emotion of our being, passed under many of

(i 08)Is Life Worth the Living?	109

the sweet-scented forests of life unaware, without even
looking up to behold its grandeur or inhale for a moment
the sweet fragrance of rest, as we might have done had
we not been so eagerly engaged in the great struggles
in the drama of human existence ?

How many of you to-day have taken the rest and
pleasure that you had planned to do ? Did you not in
the morning of life set your standard at a moderate
distance and name a reasonable amount that you
thought you would accumulate and then rest? But have
you done it? Or, did you, without even so much as a
day's rest, pull up the standard of wealth and move it
farther up the hill of fortune and mark upon its battle-
scarred face larger figures than you had done before?
And did you not pursue your aim to reach the goal with
greater energy than you had done in the beginning?
And after all the privations and hardships to which you
subjected yourself did you not promise that if you ever
reached you mark on the road to wealth and fortune you
would rest and have some pleasure? Have you done
it? Really and truly, has not your life been a con-
stant struggle in this direction, and now that you are
old and broken down, may I not ask you the question—
" What have you for your labor ?" After all, has your
life been worth the living as you have lived it; and
would you, if you had it to do over again, spend all your
life in the accumulation of wealth, depriving yourself of
the many pleasures you might have enjoyed had you
not been so greedy to grasp the world? You may have
all the gold of Ophir walled up around you on the bleak
mountain, but, with nothing else to comfort you, mayno

Is Life Worth the Living?

freeze to death like an outcast; so you may possess the
title to a whole State, but with no other comfort than
this you may starve like a beggar; then, after all, is not
money worth just what we get out of it, and no more?

The use of money has been for ages perverted; in-
stead of its being our servant to administer to our wants,
our happiness and comfort, we have allowed it to make
us the slave with it the tyrant.

You that have sailed on the boisterous sea of honor and
renown—have you succeeded? Has the giddy glare of
distinction, the clamor of the world, the brilliant trap-
pings and pageantry of honor, made you really happy?
And after the battle is well over and the world has dis-
covered some new and brighter star among the constella-
tions of notoriety and the clamoring throng that pur-
sued you like a whirlwind has left you—then, in counting
the cost, has it been to you the source of real happiness
that you expected? Or, do you find yourself late in
the afternoon of life worn out and alone, holding in your
hand the withered flowers of honor and fame, their
fragrance gone, and in its stead the memory of brighter
days that were and that will never come to you again ?

And to you whose voyage has been swayed by the
popular applause of the people, do you think that life as
you liave lived it is worth the living ? Has it come up
to your expectations ? Are you satisfied ? And if you had
to live it over again would you spend it in the pursuit
of honor, fame, and the empty applause of the world ?

But I would not have my readers come to thj conclu-
sion that I am opposed to the accumulation of wealth
and the grand achievements of honor. No; both areIs Life Worth the Living?	hi

right, righteous and good, properly used and enjoyed.

The great development of this country is the result of
the accumulation of wealth, and is a great blessing to the
nation. So are honor and influence a counterpart in the
structure of this great country, and are both good and
valuable in their places. But what I would say, my
kind readers, is this: Do not let either make you a
slave; but, be ye their master. Our lives are a problem
to us. When we look backward and see what our aims
and ambitions have been and how far we have fallen short
of them, we contemplate the retrospect with wonder.
We who have climbed far up the rugged hill of life can
look back toward the beginning, and as we see you
younger people just starting in the same struggle and
battle would give you by way of our experience a gentle
hint that may be of service to you. We older persons
who have passed the meridian can not well change our
lives, our ambitions and aims, but we may in all kind-
ness advise you. Be industrious, frugal and ambitious;
if possible, lay up for yourselves a competence for old
age or a rainy day. Seek honor, be thoughtful and
careful of your friends and your influence, but do not
destroy yourselves in the pursuit of either before you
have arrived at the time when the harvest of your life is
ripe. Who cares when we are gone how hard we have
struggled to get riches ? The clamor will be: " How
much did he leave ?" I will tell you; we shall leave
everything on earth. The things of the world belong
to us and the world, and why not enjoy them while we
can. Could we live a thousand years, then might we
afford to spend the span of the present life in the fight for112

Is Life Worth the Living?

wealth and renown; but when we look around us to
call up those who held in their coffers the wealth and
honors of the world but a few years ago, we behold that
they are gone. We may ask as one of old: "Where
are our fathers to-day, with all they called their own ? "
In silence there comes back to us the answer: " They
are gone." Yes, and all they accumulated they left here
on earth. So, my friends, let us enjoy 6ome of the
pleasures that are for us, some of the rest we need, some
of the sweet fragrance of the flower j of earth; and
even if there be those who have no time to rest here, let
us profit by the end and live while we do live, recalling
the Shakspearean philosophy," Live while we live, for we
shall be a long time dead." Let us wear some of the
flowers of life and happiness now, even if there should
be less left for the. funeral.

Let us tell each other of our goodness now. Let us
smile and weep with our friends now. Let us encourage
our friends and loved ones now. Let us tell the world
of the goodness of humanity now, even it be at the ex-
pense of our monument when we are dead and gone. I
would rather be told that I am good now, just once, yes,
if no more—only once—than to miss it now and have it
engraved on my monument. I would rather have my
heart made glad and light during life by acts and deeds
of kindness from those who say they love me now, than
to have them wait until I am gone and then express their
grief and poetry on my tombstone for the strange world
to glare at when I am gone. I would rather have the
world ask why there is no inscription upon the shaft that
marks my last resting pla$€ than with ioubt and derisionIs Life Worth the Living f

read the eulogy lavished upon me after I am gone. 9 Tis
said that often a smile dispels a tear, a kind act prevents
a sigh; even so, if we have strangely neglected to dispel
the sorrows of some one we might have made happy, let
us do it now. Oh, let us be thoughtful of the happiness
of our friends. We all have friends and we are all
somebody's friends. The whole world is akin*

And now in closing I would say, let us take a look
into our lives and see if we are getting all out of them
that is ours, and when the warfare is over, when the last
battle has been fought, the last victory has been won, the
flags have all been rolled up and the drums have been
unstrung, may our lives go out as calm as the setting of
the sun. Like a sweet and hallowed twilight, may we
reflect back the sweet peace of happy lives that have
been lived in the true enjoyment of the things of this
world, and, as we lay down our burden of wealth and
honor at the end, and in the evening of our lives, may
we, if nothing else accomplished, have taught the world
the lesson that happiness can be secured on earth—that,
after all, life is largely what we make it.Latest Novelties

%

-IN . . .

Ladies' and Gents'

Fine Footwear!

See the New Razor and Needle Toes.

® ® ®

Elegant Styles in PATENT LEATHER and TAN, BUTTON

and LACE SHOES.

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--C. FRIEDQEN-

19 North Pennsylvania Street,

A Few Doors South of Post Office	INDIANAPOLIS, IND.

If j

§^w

«K». » w it 1 JtiSF

REGISTERED

a TTp____

INDIANAPOLIS SELIQ'S BAZAAR

IS HEADQUARTERS POR

DRESS GOODS, MENS' FURNISHINGS, CLOAKS, HOSIERY,
AND UNDERWEAR, ETC.

First Dry Goods Store from Union Station.

BEST GOODS, LOWEST PRICES.

SELIC'S BAZAAR, 109 and 111 S. Illinois St.

John A. Wennell,

Practical HA**BR.

73 SOUTH ILLINOIS STREET.

Silk and Stiff Hats made to Order. Old Hats made New in th#
Latest Styles, and all Kinds of Repairs on Gentlemen's Bats.

SILK HATS BLOCKED OR IRONED WHILE YOU WAIT.l^. Siersdorfer,

r^3r«DEALER IN

GENTS', LADIES' AND CHILDREN'S

FINE

FOOTWEAR.

27

Mest TKHasblngton Street,

.Ifnbianapolte,5tumpf & T hiele

riANUFACTURERS OP

sSSE

Steel

Warm Air
Furnaces.

Wholesale and Retail at_

19 and 21 Capitol Ave.,

(North Tennessee Street.)

INDIANAPOLIS, IND.

Opposite State House.	Send for Catalogue.A. J. TREAT & SON,

MERCHANT TAILORS,

24 N. Pennsylvania St.,

INDIANAPOLIS,
INDIANA..

THE NEW

HOTSI,.

THE LEADING HOTEL IN BRAZIL, IND.
CENTRALLY LOCATED ONE SQUARE OF POST-
OFFICE, BANKS AND THE COMMERCIAL
CENTER OF THE CITY.

DRUMMERS' HEADQUARTERS.

BUSSES RUNNING AT ALL HOURS TO AND
FROM ALL TRAINS, NIGHT AND DAY.

JOHN tfURHBR, - - - P*©PltfS*OR.Troy Steam Laundry

OF BRAZIL, IND.

THE PLACE FOR FINE WORK.

Special Attention Paid to Traveling Hen's Work.
"PROMPTNESS" ISIOUR MOTTO.

JOHN W. KEITH,

Propricto*.

J. W. PRITCHETT----

PROPRIETOR OF THE LEADING

- - TONSORI/IL PdRLORS

-AJSTID BATH ROOMS

Of the city. " Cleanliness and High Grade Workmen in every De-
partment " is our motto. High speed electric fans running all
the time in summer. We strive to afford all the luxury
possible in all departments of our business.

CALL AND SEE US WHEN IN THE CITY.

FranR SfiattucR $

THE ICE JVIAfl

OF BRAZIL, INDIANA,

Has every facility for the business. Handles the purest

:M!a^in3sL\iol5L@e La:fce Ioe,

And will not be undersold. Also raises all the leading

Berries and Mts' of tie Rarest Cultivation

On his farm, and delivers to the trade in the city at lowest prices.MISS TEX1E ALLEN.

J1ILLINERY BAZAAR,

hi WEST MAIN STREET,

IND.

I take pleasure in announcing to the public that I have the
largest and most fashionable stock of Millinery ever shown in this
city. My goods are selected in the best markets in the United States,
and with the greatest care with reference to this particular trade.
I have in my employ the best trimmers and artists that can be had,
and I have no delicacy in saying that I am in a position to please all
classes of trade. Call and look through. We take pleasure in show-
ing our goods to not only our customers, but to strangers as well.

-	TEXIE OWEN-

D. IfflWKIIft 6 CO.,

THE LEADING

DRT • G0ODS • HOUSE

=IN BRAZIL.=

Our goods are bought in the largeet markets in the country for
cash. "Pleasing the public and benefiting our customers," our
motto. We call especial attention to our Carpet and Curtain "Drapery
Department."

We are well known and feel that our friends and customers, who
are legion, will look with pleasure and astonishment upon our won-
derful stock of goods. We employ none but the best of salespeople,
and will guarantee tjie most courteous treatment from the beggar to
the millionaire. Come and see us when in the city.

D. HAWKINS & CO.& KPWJVI,

llANUFAOTURlRB OF

Havana and Domestic Cigars,

Factory located on South Meridian Street,

-BRAZIL, INDIANA.-

V V 7

If you want a good, clean, enjoyable smoke, one you know has not
been made by an eastern tenement house, get one put up
by K. & K. Cigar Factory. We use only the
finest of imported and domestic to-
baccos in their manufacture.

h'c

JOHN DOUGHERTY,

BRAZIL, INDIANA.

THE LEADING LIVERYIMN OF THE CITY.

Aside from general livery business, makes a specialty of fine funeral
carriages, black match teams, and polite and capable men to conduct
funeral and wedding parties.HOLLOW BUILDING BRICK.



......mi..: ............. . .unit::.'-

Showing Foundation and Cellar Wall Boiit of 8^x8%xl6>£ Blocks.

Hollow Brick, as manufactured by us, have many advantages over com-
mon red brick or stone for houses, barns or any kind of buildings. A few of
them are:

1.	Cheapness, costing less than either brick or stone.

2.	Being thoroughly vitrified, do not absorb any moisture and always
make a dry wall.

3.	Being hollow, are more healthful for dwelling houses—warm in winter
and cool in summer.

4.	Make a stronger foundation, as each brick, 8J^x8^xi6^ in., will stand
a weight of more than 100,000 pounds.

5.	Beauty of finish. Either a light or dark shade, buff, brown or stone.

6.	As all ware is salt-glazed, the walls will always keep clean and will not
get dirty, and look dingy, as is usual with cut stone and brick.

SIDEWALK PAVING. We make a very fine Vitrified Brick, 8x8x2^ and
8x12x2^ in., for sidewalks, and have sold many thousand during the year.
Nothing better.

CELLAR PAVING. We manufacture a hollow, vitrified, salt-glazed
Paving for cellar floors that will always keep dry and is smooth and easily
kept clean.

Our ware is giving entire satisfaction, as is evinced by the demand during
the past two seasons, hundreds having used it in buildings, foundations and
cellars.

The following are some of the buildings that have been built of our Hol-
low Brick during the two seasons ending December 31, 1892:

New Surgical Institute, Indianapolis, four-story building and basement.

Daily Enterprise, Brazil, Ind., and W. M. Nees, jointly, two-story printing
office and store room complete. 20x80.

C. E- Wilder, Brazil, two-story office and hardware room complete. 40x50.

I. O. O. F. Lodge, Harmony, Ind., two-story building, hall above, store
room below, cellar and foundation complete. 24x90.

Nordyke & Marmon Co., Indianapolis, Ind., boiler and engine house and
office ; flour mill at Montezuma. Ind.

Midland Railway Co., new passenger depot at Brazil, Ind.

Daily Times, Brazil, Ind., two-story building. 20x50.

Chicago Sewer Pipe Co., Brazil, Ind., foundation to factory. 50x180. Boiler
and engine rooms and stacks.

Tiefel & Sons, Dairymen, near Brazil, Ind., large building for ensilage.

Jas. A. Kerr, Carbon, Ind., double business room, two-story. 44x80.

Hannah & Fellows, Worthington, Ind., business room. 58x125.

Worthington Exchange Bank, Worthington, Ind., bank building and
vaults. 18x75.

U. S. Post Office, Worthington, Ind. 20x60.

Geo. Durham, Trustee, Waveland, Ind., school house. 30x60.

And hundreds of foundations, basements, cellar walls and other buildings.

Call on or address,

BRAZIL BRICK AND PIPE CO., Brazil, Ind.

January 1, 1893.	J. V. AYER, Secretary and Treasurer.*H3 BATES,

INDIANAPOLIS.

fcOUIjS RBlBOfcfc, PROPRII?*OR.

JEROME MYER,

House Painter and Sign Writer.

Hakes Hanging Fancy Wall Paper and Parlor Decora-
tions a Specialty*

In his business, none better in the city. His work speaks for itself

BRAZIL, INDIANA.

CHARLES A. FISCHER,

. . . LEADING ...

Merchant Tailor

OF BRAZIL, IHSTO.

The Finest Stock of Goods, Most Stylish Workmanship
and Fitting.

Has made a reputation that we point to with pride. We invite the
public to call on us and see our line of Imported Goods
and Trimmings.CHAS. MAYER & CO.

-Importers, Wholesale and Retail Dealers in-

MNCT QOODS, TOTS, NOTIONS, QflriES,

DRUGGISTS', STATIONERS' AND GROCERS* SUNDRIES.

HOLIDAY COOPS A SPECIALTY.

Toys and Dolls an Immense Assortment.

Send for our Illustrated Catalogue of the various season goods.

9 and 31 West Washington Street, - - - INDIANAPOLIS, IKD •
ksflerfey & kidd,

UNDERTAKERS,

AND THE LEADING DEALERS IN ,\

FURNITURE,
CARPETS and
%»# DRAPERIES.

The Largest Stock at the Very Lowest
Prices is Our Motto.

_BlUSlfc, INS.

Shannon, Fast & Sowar,

BR34I&, INDIANA.

The T PaHingr

•> Gkocekt House *

mmBrazil.

We carry the LARGEST and BEST ASSORTMENT of
GROCERIES, GLASSWARE and QUEENSWARE in Clay
County. Without any exception we have one of the largest
and best LUNCH ROOMS in the State. When in Brazil do
not fail to call on us.

Ve are Importers of Teas. Our Teas are all Good Value.r

-----------THE—-

SMITH <£ Griggs MFG. CO.

WATERBURY, CONN.
Manufacturers of Brass and Metal Goods.

«aaaBBD. P. ERWIN & 00.,

JOBBBRS AND IMPORTERS

II GOODS, MENSMOTK,

-(§>-

TEN COMPLETE DEPARTMENTS,

RECEIVING GOODS DAH/V FROM THB MANUFACTURING MARKKAS
v--03* TH» WoRI#D-'

■an THAT TOUR COTTON FLANNBL8 ARB STAMVBD WITH TBX8 BRAND.

We contract for tlie entire production of this brand by an old estab-
lished mill. When once put in a retail stock
it is never dropped.

in

bleached

and
unbleached,
eleven
different
qualities.

EHmm

i

made:of

lows cotton,

has
heavy nap,
and fob
durability
and weak
cannot
be beaten.

IN DRESS GOODS WE EXCEL ALL FORMER EFFORTS.

-®--

We show 10 qualities in Serges, 8 qualities in Henriettas, 30 lines of
Bancy Dress Goods in Imported and Domestic. In

Silks we defy all Western competition.

-®--

D. P. ERWIN 6c CO.,

Meridian, McCrea and Georgia Streets,	INDIANAPOLIS.CO	a&° country merchants

^ were at a loss where to buy
their goods. The live merchants of
to-day know that the best house,
that carries the most complete stock
in this line in the United States,

Kipp Brokers Go.

37 and 39 S. Meridian Street,

Indianapolis, Ind.

IMPORTERS AND....

r-—	IA0nDDC OP

DRUGGISTS' AND STATIONERS' SUNDRIES,
TOYS AND FANCY GOODS, SPORTING
GOODS, FLAGS AND FIRE WORKS,
CUTLERY, SMOKERS* ARTICLES, MU-
M	SICAL INSTRUMENTS, FANCY

2sSj£	CHINA AND GLASSWARE,

rwC	BABY CARRIAGES, AND

BICYCLES, ETC.

Sent) tor tbetr Illustrated Catalogue,
it Interested in anj? of tbe above lined.This book is a preservation facsimile produced for
the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
It is made in compliance with copyright law
and produced on acid-free archival

60# book weight paper
which meets the requirements of
ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (permanence of paper).

Preservation facsimile printing and binding
by

Northern Micrographics
Brookhaven Bindery
La Crosse, Wisconsin
2019