Treading the Narrow Way Part 9

Don't worry over the sport that can smoke twenty cigarettes a day.

The girl that marries the man to reform him has a SAD lesson to learn.

A good excuse saves lots of lying.

GLIMPSES FROM THE PAST.

I most humbly beg your pardon for inserting here a short address to a Republican Convention when I was aspiring to the office of County Clerk for the second term. The chairman having instructed the secretary of the convention to cast the entire vote of the delegation for myself, I addressed the convention as follows:

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the Convention: Accept my profound thanks for the splendid manifestation of honor that you have conferred upon an humble individual like myself. I wish to impress upon you the political principles I outlined to you briefly two years ago, are the same today as they were then. I would rather be defeated honorably, squarely and honestly than to be successful with a tarnished character obtained through disreputable methods. I realize, as do all intelligent reasoners withholding myself to be the humblest among you, that character is something that is not acquired while we sleep. It is a constant every day struggle, a life-long battle. Take away our character and what have we left.

I desire to say to you gentlemen that during my lifetime I have been intimately acquainted with labor in its most aggressive form. I know what it is to stand between two s.h.i.+ning bands of steel under a scorching July sun. I know what it is to stack hay under a sultry and oppressive heat. I know the loneliness and privations that comes to one who has tended stock in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. I fully realize that these different pursuits require grit and determination, they are the hardest kind of labors, but I can say to you in all candor that I have never worked harder in my life than in the past two years endeavoring to serve the citizens of this county in the capacity of clerk.

If I have been competent, if I have been faithful, if I have done my duty, that is not for me to decide. You are the judges of these conditions, if you think I have, then I ask for your support and influence. You are a body of men from all parts of this county; if each one of you will work for the best interests of the party I see no reason why we should not be successful at the polls. The campaign this year is short; I wish to say for myself that I will not be able to get around much. The duties of my office for the past six weeks have been very strenuous and will continue so to be for some time to come. The state board of equalization were late in sending their report and not only being late, but were unkind, and raised the valuation on several of our taxable properties and this makes extra work for the clerk, so I trust you will be like the turkey in the tall tree and keep one eye open for the boy from Lodge Pole.

There has happened in my short career as an American citizen a good many things that I have felt elated over and proud of. I am proud that I am an American citizen, born under the stars and stripes and belong to a nation second to none. I am proud I was born in a state whose brow is bathed by the mighty Missouri and upon whose bosom flourishes the most productive crop of the union. But if there is one thing that I am prouder of more than any other, it is the fact that I belong to a party whose motto is principle and good government, and whose loftiest aim has always been to make America the ideal nation of the world. I thank you.

I will here relate an incident that happened when I first encountered experience in her knee breeches, I have termed it a fighting, explosive nauseating cough remedy. I would prefer calling it an egg nogg; but there is one extra ingredient that disfranchises the egg and in a peculiar way leaves the nogg there in a somewhat embarra.s.sing condition.

When I was a youth, I had some peculiar traits in my makeup. My main instruction was received from that old professor, experience, and day by day I gained some valuable knowledge in the school of hard knocks. Being of a peculiar turn of mind I had implicit truth and confidence in all mankind, and on account of this trait I have often met with misplaced confidence.

For instance, the "Bonuses" and "Good Wills" heretofore related. I had contracted a bad cold of tenacious irritability down near the little hamlet of Paxton, Nebraska, while performing the menial labor of an every day workman on the renowned line of the Union Pacific. The work being accomplished was known as bucking steel. Through climatic conditions of contraction and expansion the rails on one side had gained from nine to twelve feet over the rails in the other side. The side that was ahead was being pulled back to the point opposite the other by a locomotive attached to a large cable. Some said this strategic work swelled the premium of the water soaked stock; but this contention is left to philosophers and those who study economic problems, as to whether or not the corporation was ahead rails at Omaha or short at Ogden.

The days were exceedingly warm, it being in the autumn of the year. I lost more perspiration than was due me and along toward evening, when old sol was getting ready to retire and also largely due to a scant wardrobe, a chilliness would steal over my spare physique. The ride home from the work in the evening, on flat cars, at a hurried speed, caused the night air to condense in the locality of the throat. Nature not doing her part, I tried to a.s.sist her in removing the obstruction and, as soon as the speed of the train would allow, I shot from the car in a mad race for the boarding house. Being sure footed and fleet, I was generally first at the wash basin, erasing from my countenance Nebraska's productive soil and leaving what the water didn't loosen on the old fas.h.i.+oned long rolling boarding house towel. These repeated conditions day after day commenced to tell and the slight cold became a hacking cough that embraced more forcibly than a Dutch la.s.sie reared on eastern corn.

After the work was completed, the men were returned to the various localities. Upon arriving safely at my destination, I went to the home physician. "Doc" when not incarcerated in the county bastile for dispensing a compound familiarly known as whiskey but better known to home residents as hades corked up in a bottle, prescribed, from his oft water stock. (I pause for a scalding sensation felt on my cheeks.) Poor Old "Doc" is sleeping beneath the sod.

Constant concoctions bringing no relief, I was at last listening to a well meant prescription from my co-laborer d.i.c.k. He said his remedy would give unwavering satisfaction to ailments like mine. I don't think his remedy would stand the pure food law test; but when you get to clutching you'll clutch anything. So I listened to the unlearned pharmacist and keenly a.s.sented and he started to compound two well known ingredients in equal parts. One ingredient was controlled by that magnetic dollar chaser, John D., and the other was controlled by n.o.body, it did the controling, i. e., oil and whiskey. I'd cover up this last ingredient and give it a better concealed cla.s.sical standing but ignorance is bliss and there you are. This carefully prepared drink, my friend said, should be taken five minutes before breakfast. So according to directions I hoisted the tin cup and down went the fluids. Just enough oil in it to make it slip quick, and you had it before you really knew it.

It is now twenty-three years since I swallowed that conglomeration and I can't hardly pa.s.s a home one-gallon kerosene can full or empty without a keen desire to kick the bottom out of it, but you have to be careful with other people's property, whether it's mortgaged or not. No matter how keen or fertile your imagination may be you can't realize a dose of this character unless you taste it. Take the minutest equal parts of each, mix them, drink them and be convinced. Was I sick? Of all the great guns of all our wars, Civil or uncivil, I will take my oath before any judge of common jurisdiction, sitting as a court of record and say I WAS.

The only recollection I have of the breakfast menu was the two hard boiled eggs and a faint remembrance, as I was leaving the table, of a fruit picture on the wall tipping up and down. That was the first time I ever saw anything inanimate acting so. Mercy, the taste of that oil and the remembrance of it, mixing in a place the size of your fist! Think of that rip-roaring, sizzling tobacco flavored, ingredient, trying to slip one over on that kerosene and knock out those two hard-boiled, well matured, boarding-house eggs. I say in all candor, I don't blame John D.

for watering the oil. Water it more, John, it will be milder to take. I went through the oil belt in Indiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and all the rest, I visited all the stills, illicit, and otherwise of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Colorado; and as soon as brother Pat could get me to my room and my head out of the window I hoisted the hottest fluids and food stuffs ever contained in the stomach of man or beast. I have always felt sorry for those eggs on account of their age.

I must take a short glimpse here of a peculiar incident that transpired under my roof between two men of the cloth. One was a M. E. minister and the other a seven day advent. The advent had been staying in town for several weeks and I became fairly well acquainted with him and his estimable wife, and he asked me if they might have a few meetings at our home in the evenings, and I said certainly and he came. Both he and his wife were scholars, well cultured and refined and we enjoyed listening to their version of the scriptures. How the M. E. minister came to be there one evening is still a mystery to me, but I think some one of his paris.h.i.+oners must have told him that Satan had entered our home and he had better intervene and see if he couldn't extricate us from the wary gentleman's clutches.

The evening entertainment was progressing nicely and the advent man was in charge of the machinery, when suddenly the M. E. man took issue with him over his version of one of the scriptural pa.s.sages and quick wit and repartee was fast and furious. The advent was the superior in scriptural knowledge and the way he got the other fellow in the meshes and so completely tangled him up is an event that can never be erased from my memory. The M. E. man was nonplussed, red of face and angry; and so ungentlemanly as to let all the fireworks in his dignified Sunday nature explode and told the cool, calm advent that teachings of his kind should be in h.e.l.l. You may lay this excitement to anger, being worsted, or anything you like, but I think the gentleman he came to remove from our home entered him one hundred per cent strong. Why he was on his feet with his Methodist fists clenched, ready to fight, and if it hadn't been for the soothing, pacifying utterances of his good wife saying, "John,"

"John," I don't know what would have happened. The other fellow laughed at him and I really think if the worst had occurred he would have given the angry man a fuller meaning of the Bible and turned the other cheek.

I think if an Advent says Sat.u.r.day is the Lord's day and should be observed on the Sabbath, the Methodist says Sunday is the day, and some other denomination says Friday is the day, I'm willing to be convinced.

It beats having the Fourth of July come on Sat.u.r.day, and if I had enough money so I needn't work I'd say let seven different denominations have seven different days, and no matter which home I observed I wouldn't be left out s.h.i.+vering in an unders.h.i.+rt. Something peculiar about church denominations, all of them headed for the same place, but each one anxious to route you. One tells you they have the old travelled road, founded on the Bible, another a different way, founded on the Bible, and others another different way, also founded on the Bible. I conclude the best and surest way is to be a Christian and read the Bible, live it and let G.o.d show the way. Sunday churches or Sat.u.r.day churches carry no guarantee that you'll reach Heaven.

Before I invested in "Good-wills" and "Bonuses" and other losing investments, I would occasionally take my family for a little trip on the Los Angeles limited and rub against the aristocracy and the diamonds. Years before when I was a day laborer on the same road over which this elegant train glides, I thought to travel on such a G.o.ddess of beauty was a luxury only for wealth and culture, and a pleasure unequaled, but hope beats eternal in the human breast and as I had lived largely on hope for over thirty years, I finally said hope can go to blazes, the opportunity is here and why not embrace it.

Well, it is certainly a big taste of wealth and affluence to settle in cus.h.i.+ons a foot deep with all the wrinkles eradicated for once in a lifetime by a well filled stomach of the choicest viands in the culinary art. And oh the lofty thoughts as you settle down in the deep upholstery and listen to the clicking of the rails as you speed away on this overland beauty. There is a peculiar feeling under your vest as you notice the well groomed man, the well groomed woman, the sparkle of the electric lights and the glitter of the diamonds. Elegance everywhere.

The very height of ingenuity. Then when you enter the dining car with its rosewood finish, tastily decorated tables, superb linen, and cast your eye over the choice menu and have the black gentry all attention and ready to care for your smallest want, you may feel as I did, pretty cla.s.sy company for a boy from Lodge Pole. Of course there are snubs here and there, you find them everywhere. They are in a cla.s.s that is well known for nineteen hundred years. They took the leading part in the crucifixion of the Nazarene. We can't exist without having them, and if you will notice in any walk of life, there is a pain for nearly every pleasure, with corns and bunions thrown in.

As a hunter I never received any distinction and am forced to admit as such I am an entire nonent.i.ty and failure. My father owned a rifle which was the only one of its kind in our community for years and years. Its early history I am unfamiliar with and never learned it. It was in his possession when I was born and I suppose it was the gun he carried on the hand car for protection when the Indians were numerous in the latter sixties. At some time it received a broken stock and ever after its being repaired it was known as old splice. For many years when the old year died and the new year was born, old splice spoke forth at its birth and its missile of death generally lodged in the tail of the railroad wind mill.

Old splice was the type of one hundred years ago, when people weren't killed as quickly as today, the loading was slow and gave one chance to escape; I remember brother Pat used it to shoot a dog that he had tied up with a rope. He took steady aim, pulled the old fas.h.i.+oned hammer and fired. When the smoke cleared away the dog was running with the fullest capacity of its limbs. The ball had cut the rope.

I never shot old splice but once and I'll always remember the incident.

A chicken hawk had been tormenting the poultry for a long time and I got bold and reckless one day, grabbed old splice (some one had been kind enough to leave it loaded) and sallied forth bent on destruction. The hawk was soaring high in the air but didn't seem to want to descend any.

Old splice was supposed to carry half a mile and as I knew this was not the distance from the gun to the hawk, I concluded to test out old splice and see if the prowess of the old fellow had been exaggerated. I had heard some one say you must get down on one knee, as an att.i.tude of respect, I presume, and hold the stock solidly and lovingly against the shoulder. I did both of these things and fired. I felt my head strike the ground so amazingly quick and hard that it confused and startled me.

I knew I was committing no crime and couldn't account for such harsh treatment. At first I thought the bird might have struck me in the face and, it coming from such a height, would cause a terrible compact when one body met another, but I abandoned this idea, as no hawk was anywhere above or below. Then I thought I might have torn some planet loose, but this was an asylum idea also. Then I thought some one may have overfed old splice and made him bilious. I afterwards learned this was true. The miscreant still lives.

HOPES THAT EXPLODED.

If it wasn't for the word hope this would be a dreary world for the fellow who plans and builds in the future. It rises and falls in every human breast. Some have an over abundance, and others lack in not having enough. It arouses buoyancy and encouragement to see one who reaches toward hope and almost succeeds but doesn't get quite a firm enough grip to fasten the goal securely before he has to let go; but no matter how hard the fall, or how often, he's up and trying again. Discouragement or complete failure never causes a faltering step or gets time to fester with despondency before keener activity revives the energy and the shattered hope is rehabilitated and again swells the breast so full there is nothing to do but try again. Bless the hopeful man or woman.

Some can't stand the fall, they go down clear to the bottom. Defeat and despondency chain them fast.

In the year 1896 when Bryan was preparing his famous oration "The Crown of Gold" that was so ably delivered and well received and which was the leading factor in opening up the road for him to the White House, I commenced scheming and planning on patentable ideas. Nineteen years of hard thinking has brought no visible financial returns and so far the patent attorney is the only one who has received toll. I never entered the field thinking I had any latent ingenuity like Edison, Westinghouse, Ford and many others; but I had hopes, as long as I could pay the attorney and the filing fee of the patent office.

My first application for a patent was an adjustable track wrench that met complete failure after a year's pendency. I thought I had a good, practical, economical, and convenient wrench, but after the said period of time elapsed my attorney informed me it was rejected by the chief examiner on account of prior similar claims already patented. Of course you must not get confused and wonder why he didn't tell me this before I filed the application. If he had the self-explanatory portion of the scheme loses its self respect and puts the attorney in a bad financial light, which I would dislike to do. However, the discouraging news was so cool and saddening at this first attempt that it froze my ingenuity a decade and a quarter, and then hope rose again and I called once more on the dormant faculty and changed attorneys.

After due diligence had persevered and I had stood the condemnation of my wife, who said I was getting absent-minded and hard of hearing, I sent in my application duly witnessed and sworn to, along with the necessary stipend that makes the wheels buzz in the attorney's head and swells that seven millions of profit accrued in the patent office from a good many fellows like myself. Nice to help swell this big profit for some day when this acc.u.mulation becomes large enough our wise custodians of this fund may transfer it like ordinary Town Council men do when one fund gets too far ahead and pay off the national debt. My second application was an improved index and a device of meritable convenience over present ones, so I thought. It has been pending two years after failing ten times before the chief examiner, who doesn't seem to have the courtesy to allow it.

While the invention was safe and secure in the government vault, I was rash enough to go into another irrational period and get out a computing device for the busy coal man to aid him in rapid accurate calculations and do away with the old time method of having coal swell so sixteen hundred pounds was a ton; not really a long ton but a short ton. This wonderful invention hatched in the brain of an ordinary man, lingered in Was.h.i.+ngton one year and a half, and was then rejected. I wouldn't care for having it rejected, but I'd like to have the rejectors use a milder word, one that doesn't rankle so much and stir up the mean things in you.

Well, here are two great inventions for the betterment of the race denied, and from the way the attorney wrote in his last tribute of love to me, the third is hanging over the precipice and is ready to fall among its ancestors.

I had hopes when I invested in the last two ideas, my total expenditures, including postage on a voluminous amount of correspondence, was $141.28, and this is how I disbursed the interest on that amount:-I calculated conservatively that the two inventions would net me $50,000. Here she goes! To my father-in-law, for giving away his daughter to me, for which I have never paid, $1,000.00; to two sisters-in-law that favored my suit, $1,000.00 each; to a brother-in-law that did the square thing by me, $1,000.00; to my oldest brother, who continually hammered me when I was young and smaller than he, $1,000.00; to a younger brother, whom I could hammer, $1,000.00; to my four sisters, $1,000.00 each. Ten thousand of the iron men at work. The next $20,000 I put at interest in Colorado, where it is easy to get a ten per cent rate. This would bring me in $2,000.00 a year to live on, and by being frugal I might be able to smoke a five cent cigar occasionally and let the corn cob pipe have a chance to dry up some of its nicotine. The next $10,000 went to old people who have nearly reached the summit of their lives, but on account of the feebleness of their limbs, poor eyesight and a meagre pocketbook, the final ascent overtaxes their small reserve of strength and with want and sacrifice being in the majority they can't quite make it. To these aged and needy people I would give $500.00 cash. This amount would render their last days comfortable, free from worry and care. That helps twenty old couples, forty people that are worthy and needy. The remaining $10,000 goes from my pocket in ready cash to people met every day, people whose countenances have rigidly printed thereon a silent appeal for sympathy and help. A meal to the man suffering from the pangs of hunger; $50.00 to a woman making her living over a washboard and fighting a losing fight against poverty to rear her brood; $100.00 for a present and a Christmas tree to poor little children who never have the pleasure of unwrapping a doll or any kind of a toy; $5.00 to a laboring man looking for work; $10.00 on a subscription list to help a poor widow bury her boy; $25.00 to the man in the pulpit preaching straight from the shoulder; $10.00 for a railroad ticket to take a girl home who expected work in the city but didn't find it. And so goes the remaining $10,000, here a little and there a little. I think I could gladden more hearts with this last $10,000 than the great man who spent millions in libraries and free reading rooms throughout the country. With all due respect to him, the man in overalls and the girl who must work are the ones who need literature the worst, but the struggle for existence is so keen they haven't time to read books and they feel humiliated and unwelcome in their everyday garb mingling with the better dressed people. The well-groomed man and woman of today, in a large sense, doesn't apply any too closely the ethics of the Galilean and would rather not mingle with the less fortunate people, so the conclusive thesis is there is no congeniality between the two and the primary object of helping the fellow who needed it most is a failure. But alas, the $50,000 is still behind the capitalist and must wait for hope to rise again.

Not feeling satisfied but that there was plenty of loose coin waiting to flow to me, I took up the pleasant but unprofitable part avocation of composing songs. I had a Was.h.i.+ngton music firm write the music, copyright the songs in my name, do the advertising, and remit one-half the proceeds to me semi-annually January 31st and July 31st. I was very careful to set out specifically the remitting part in our contract. Each song had its own peculiarity and sentiment to touch the public pulse, which so far has been untouchable. The first song, "A Tear Drop Always Glistened in His Eye," was to fasten itself on the hearts of the people like "Annie Laurie." "When the Silver Moon Light Sparkles on the Lake"

made its bow to the public; I hoped lovers with emotion would go wild over it and would know a good thing when they heard it. If they had such a feeling the emoluments failed to show it. The third song, "Anna, My Anna," was short and jerky for the happy-go-lucky cla.s.s of people that fell so in love with "Casey Jones." But it seems this cla.s.s wouldn't respond either, and leaves me with the entire stock on hand with an expenditure of $90.00 trying to get the people to sing. I find them more unresponsive than the preacher when he says let everybody sing, and a few who gave their best years in the Lord's service lift up their cracked voices in earnest endeavor to lead the sheep, and the sheep, lambs and all go astray. My share of the profits has been ten one cent postage stamps, just the ordinary kind, the common kind you can get from every postoffice in the country. And the trio which failed to receive public recognition I laid away where moths and rust doth not decrease their earning power and neither do thieves molest them. Three more hopes decently but sadly buried.

There is also intertwined and resting sweetly in slumberland 175 shares of Cracker Engle Gold Mine Stock at twenty cents per share and twelve years accrued interest. I had the customary notice before I bought that the stock would advance rapidly in price and if I invested without hesitation and without investigation I would have the benefit of the first and early advance. I hearkened to the alluring honey literature and sent a U. S. money order, something whose face value couldn't be questioned. I wanted to be absolutely sure I'd get the stock. I got it all right. I have such faith in that stock that I can go anywhere and leave it behind unlocked doors and it never strays away.

A home boy succeeded in getting a patent on an improved table. He incorporated under the laws where Wilson was governor and then invited capital for manufacturing purposes. He styled his invention "The Great Western Improvement Company" and sold seventeen shares at the flat sum of $5.00. I learned a little from the crack at the Cracker Eagle and did not fly so high and only took the $5.00 worth. It's comical now, to me, how the inventor and promoter explained how his table was superior to the common ordinary everyday table that's been in use so long. It had a hollow holding receptacle in the center and he said after the meal had been stowed away and nothing was left but the dishes and flies, the housewife could, if she felt so disposed, elevate a handle and the soiled dishes would disappear and the table would have an inviting appearance. He said it was especially fine when conversation had been brisk and company or peddlers were seen coming; all that was necessary was the quick jerk of the ever-ready handle and down out of sight went the dishes, flies, napkins, and everything untidy and untasty. I was looking for votes when this investment was made and while the votes may not have had an equal value I let it go at that and put away the stock for my grandchildren. Another share of stock in the Campbells' Farming a.s.sociation at a cost of $5.00 brings my get rich quick investments to a finis. The only other stock I ever had was bank stock. I invested $1,500.00 in a State Bank in Nebraska. I didn't lose on this deal but the money would have paid better on a straight five per cent rate.

Nothing would have done me more good and brought a keener satisfaction than to have had a nice remuneration from some investment that I have made. My wife called me what the bible says she shouldn't so many times that it seems to look like I am really a bigger one than she said I was, and if I could have changed her mind by laying before her eyes a nice portly check for $5,000.00 or $10,000.00 it would have been such an agreeable surprise not only to her but to myself that we both would have enjoyed it, and especially myself if I could have pulled it over. But if hope don't come again I will have to let that excellent pleasure be like Mathewson's speedy one and fade away.

A lad of the average type at twenty-one has a great deal of stored up energy; he has the muscle bank and the brain bank from which to get his necessary resources, and a great many lads think Dad is a back number and he sees where the old gentleman was short on gray matter, and all advice is lost on this sort of boys. I was never conceited this way, in fact I think somebody else got nearly all the gall that should have been mine. If a fellow holds his own in these days, no matter what party is in power, Democratic or Republican, you need your full allowance of gall. The lad that thinks that the governor's gray matter is not as profuse as it should be, but he, through some unknown force, grabbed all that was coming to him and part of dad's might read the following verse and the conclusive portion of this chapter and apply it from a stand point of ordinary horse sense:

When Johnnie Jones was twenty-one He said my farming life is done, I'll pack my duds and say Good Bye And to the city I will hie.