Mr. Fish informed me that the waters of Excelsior Springs resemble the waters of Homburg, the favorite watering place of the late King Edward—or, rather, I think he put it the other way roundMr. Fish informed me that the waters of Excelsior Springs resemble the waters of Homburg, the favorite watering place of the late King Edward—or, rather, I think he put it the other way round
The James farm occupies a pretty bit of rolling land, at one corner of which, near the road, Frank James has built himself a neat, substantial frame house.
Before the house is a large gate, bearing a sign as follows:
James FarmsHome of the James'Jesse and FrankAdmission 50c.Kodaks Bared
James FarmsHome of the James'Jesse and FrankAdmission 50c.Kodaks Bared
As we moved in the direction of the house a tall, slender old man with a large hooked nose and a white beard and mustache walked toward us. He was dressed in an exceedingly neat suit and wore a large black felt hat of the type common throughout Missouri. Coming up, he greeted our escort cordially, after which we were introduced. It was Frank James.
The former outlaw is a shrewd-looking, well preserved man, whose carriage, despite his seventy-one years, is notably erect. He looks more like a prosperous farmeror the president of a rural bank than like a bandit. In his manner there is a strong note of the showman. It is not at all objectionable, but it is there, in the same way that it is there in Buffalo Bill. Frank James is an interesting figure; on meeting him you see, at once, that he knows he is an interesting figure and that he trades upon the fact. He is clearly an intelligent man, but he has been looked at and listened to for so many years, as a kind of curiosity, that he has the air of going through his tricks for one—of getting off a line of practised patter. It is pretty good patter, as patter goes, inclining to quotation, epigram, and homely philosophy, delivered in an assured "platform manner."
It may be well here to remind the reader of the history of the James Gang.
The father and mother of the "boys" came from Kentucky to Missouri. The father was a Baptist minister and a slaveholder. He died before the war, and his widow married a man named Samuels, by whom she had several children.
From the year 1856 Missouri, which was a slave state, warred with Kansas, which was a free state, and there was much barbarity along the border. The "Jayhawkers," or Kansas guerrillas, would make forays into Missouri, stealing cattle, burning houses, and committing all manner of depredations; and lawless gangs of Missourians would retaliate, in kind, on Kansas. Among the most appalling cutthroats on the Missouri side was a man named Quantrell, head of theQuantrell gang, a body of guerrillas which sometimes numbered upward of a thousand men. The James boys were members of this gang, Frank James joining at the opening of the Civil War, and Jesse two years later, at the age of sixteen. In speaking of joining Quantrell, Frank James spoke of "going into the army." Quantrell was, however, a mere border ruffian and was disowned by the Confederate army.
According to Frank James, Quantrell, who was born in Canal Dover, Ohio, went west, with his brother, to settle. In Kansas they were set upon by "Jayhawkers" and "Redlegs," with the result that Quantrell's brother was killed and that Quantrell himself was wounded and left for dead. He was, however, nursed to life by a Nez Perce Indian. When he recovered he became determined to have revenge upon the Kansans. To that end, he affected to be in sympathy with them, and joined some of their marauding bands. When he had established himself in their confidence he used to get himself sent out on scouting expeditions with one or two other men, and it was his amiable custom, upon such occasions, to kill his companions and return with a story of an attack by the enemy in which the others had met death. At last, when he had played this trick so often that he feared detection, he determined to get himself clear of his fellows. A plan had been matured for an attack upon the house of a rich slaveholder. Quantrell went to the house in advance, betrayed the plan, and arranged to join forces with the defenders. Thisresulted in the death of his seven or eight companions. At about this time the war came on, and Quantrell became a famous guerrilla leader, falling on detached bodies of Northern troops and massacring them, and even attacking towns—one of his worst offenses having been the massacre of most of the male inhabitants of Lawrence, Kas. He gave as the reason for his atrocities his desire for revenge for the death of his brother, and also used to allege that he was a Southerner, though that was not true.
I asked Frank James how he came to join Quantrell, when the war broke out, instead of enlisting in the regular army.
"We knew he was not a very fine character," he explained, "but we were like the followers of Villa or Huerta: we wanted to destroy the folks that wanted to destroy us, and we would follow any man that would show us how to do it. Besides, I was young then. When a man is young his blood is hot; there's a million things he'll do then that he won't do when he's older. There's a story about a man at a banquet. He was offered champagne to drink, but he said: 'I want quick action. I'll take Bourbon whisky.' That was the way I felt. That's why I joined Quantrell: to get quick action. And I got it, too. Jesse and I were with Quantrell until he was killed in Kentucky."
John Samuels, a half brother of the James boys, told me the story of how Jesse James came to join Quantrell.
"Jesse was out plowing in a field," he said, "when some Northern soldiers came to the place to look for Frank. Jesse was only sixteen years old. They beat him up. Then they went to the house and asked where Frank was. Mother and father didn't know, but the soldiers wouldn't believe them. They took father out and hung him by the neck to a tree. After a while they took him down and gave him another chance to tell. Of course he couldn't. So they hung him up again. They did that three times. Then they took him back to the house and told my mother they were going to shoot him. She begged them not to do it, but they took him off in the woods and fired off their guns so she'd hear, and think they'd done it. But they didn't shoot him. They just took him over to another town and put him in jail. My mother didn't know until the next day that he hadn't been shot, because the soldiers ordered her to remain in the house if she didn't want to get shot, too.
"That was too much for Jesse. He said: 'Maw, I can't stand it any longer; I'm going to join Quantrell.' And he did."
After the war the wilder element from the disbanded armies and guerrilla gangs caused continued trouble. Crime ran rampant along the border between Kansas and Missouri. And for many crimes committed in the neighborhood in which they lived, the James boys, who were known to be wild, were blamed.
"Mother always said," declared Mr. Samuels, "that Frank and Jesse wanted to settle down after the war,but that the neighbors wouldn't let them. Everything that went wrong around this region was always charged to them, until, finally, they were driven to outlawry."
"How much truth is there in the different stories of bank robberies and train robberies committed by them?" I asked.
"I don't know," he said. "Of course they did a lot of things. But we never knew. They never said anything. They'd just come riding home, every now and then, and stop for a while, and then go riding away again. We never knew where they came from or where they went."
It has been alleged that even after a reward of $10,000 had been offered for either of the Jameses, dead or alive, the neighbors shielded them when it was known that they were at home. I spoke about that to an old man who lived on a near-by farm.
"Yes," he said, "that's true. Once when the Pinkertons were hunting them I met Frank and some members of the gang riding along the road, not far from here. I could have told, but I didn't want to. I wasn't looking for any trouble with the James Gang. Suppose they had caught one or two of them? There'd be others left to get even with me, and I had my family to think of. That is the way lots of the neighbors felt about it. They were afraid to tell."
I spoke to Frank James about the old "nickel novels."
We strolled in the direction of the old house, that house of tragedy in which the family lived in the troublous times.... It was there that the Pinkertons threw the bombWe strolled in the direction of the old house, that house of tragedy in which the family lived in the troublous times.... It was there that the Pinkertons threw the bomb.
"Yes," he said, "some fellows printed a lot of stuff. I'd have stopped it, maybe, if I'd had as much money asRockefeller. But what could I do? I tell you those yellow-backed books have done a lot of harm to the youth of this land—those and the moving pictures, showing robberies. Such things demoralize youth. If I had the job of censoring the moving pictures, they'd say I was a reg'lar Robespierre!"
"How about some of the old stories of robberies in which you were supposed to have taken part?" I asked.
"I neither affirm nor deny," Frank James answered, with the glibness of long custom. "If I admitted that these stories were true, people would say: 'There is the greatest scoundrel unhung!' and if I denied 'em, they'd say: 'There's the greatest liar on earth!' So I just say nothing."
According to John Samuels, Frank James and Cole Younger were generally acknowledged to be the brains of the James Gang. "It was claimed," he said, "that Frank planned and Jesse executed. Frank was certainly the cool man of the two, and Jesse was a little bit excitable. He had the name of being the quickest man in the world with a gun. Sometimes when he was home for a visit, when I was a boy, he'd be sitting there in the house, and there'd come some little noise. Then he'd whip out his pistol so quick you couldn't see the motion of his hand."
As we conversed we strolled in the direction of the old house, that house of tragedy in which the family lived in the troublous times. On the way we passed FrankJames's chicken coop, and I noticed that on it had been painted the legend: "Bull Moose—T. R."
"The wing, at the back, is the old part of the house," James explained. "It was there that the Pinkertons threw the bomb."
I asked about the bomb throwing and heard the story from John Samuels, who was there when it occurred.
"I was a child of thirteen then," he said, "and I was the only one in the room who wasn't killed or crippled. It happened at night. We had suspected for a long time that a man named Laird, who was working as a farm hand for a neighbor of ours named Askew on that farm over there"—he indicated a farmhouse on a near-by hill—"was a Pinkerton man, and that he was there to watch for Frank and Jesse. Well, one night he must have decided they were at home, for the house was surrounded while we were asleep. A lot of torches were put around in the yard to give light. Then the house was set on fire in seven places and a bomb was thrown in through this window." He pointed to a window in the side of the old log wing. "It was about midnight. My mother and little brother and I were in the room. Mother kicked the bomb into the fireplace before it went off. The fuse was sputtering. Maybe she even thought of throwing the thing out of the window again. Anyhow, when it exploded it blew off her forearm and killed my little brother."
"Come in the house," invited Frank James. "We've got a piece of the bomb in there."
We entered the old cabin. In the fireplace marks of the explosion are still visible. The piece of the bomb which they preserve is a bowl-shaped bit of iron, about the size of a bread-and-butter plate.
"What was their idea in throwing the bomb?" I asked.
"As near as we know," replied Frank James, "the Pinkertons figured that Jesse and I were sleeping in the front part of the house. You see, there's a little porch running back from the main house to the door of the old cabin. They must have figured that when the bomb went off we would run out on the porch to see what was the matter. Then they were going to bag us."
"Well, did you run out?"
"Evidently not," said Frank James.
"Were you there?" I asked.
"Some think we were and some think not," he said.
An old man who had been constable of the township at the time the James boys were on the warpath had come up and joined us.
"How about Askew?" I suggested. "I should have thought he would have been afraid to harbor a Pinkerton man."
The old man nodded. "You'd of thought so, wouldn't you?" he agreed. "Askew was shot dead three months after the bomb throwing. He was carrying a pail of milk from the stable to the house when he got three bullets in the face."
"Who killed him?" I asked.
The old constable allowed his eyes to drift ruminatively over the neighboring hillsides before replying. Frank James and his half brother, who were standing by, also heard my question, and they, too, became interested in the surrounding scenery.
"Well-l," said the old constable at last, "that's always been a question."
Mr. Samuels told me details concerning the death of Jesse James.
"Things were getting pretty hot for the boys," he said. "Big rewards had been offered for them. Frank was in hiding down South, and Jesse was married and living under an assumed name in a little house he had rented in St. Joe, Mo. That was in 1882. There had been some hints of trouble in the gang. Dick Little, one of the boys, had gotten in with the authorities, and it had been rumored that he had won the Ford boys over, too. Jesse had heard that report, but he had confidence in Charlie Ford. Bob Ford he didn't trust so much. Well, Charlie and Bob Ford came to St. Joe to see Jesse and his wife. They were sitting around the house one day, and Jesse's wife wanted him to dust a picture for her. He was always a great hand to help his wife. He moved a chair over under the picture, and before getting up on it to dust, he took his belt and pistols off and threw them on the bed. Then he got up on the chair. While he was standing there Bob Ford shot him in the back.
"Well, Bob died a violent death a while after that.He was shot by a man named Kelly in a saloon in Creede, Colo. And Charlie Ford brooded over the killing of Jesse and committed suicide about a year later. The three Younger boys, who were members of the gang, too, were captured a while after, near Northfield, Minn., where they had tried to rob a bank. They were all sent up for life. Bob Younger died in the penitentiary at Stillwater, but Cole and Jim were paroled and not allowed to leave the State. Jim fell in love with a woman, but being an ex-convict, he couldn't get a license to marry her. That broke his heart and he committed suicide. Cole finally got a full pardon and is now living in Jackson County, Missouri. He and Frank are the only two members of the Gang who are left and the only two that didn't die either in the penitentiary or by violence. Frank was in hiding for years with a big price on his head. At last he gave himself up, stood trial, and was acquitted."
Adherents of Bob Ford told a different story of the motives back of the killing of Jesse James. They contend that Jesse James thought Ford had been "telling things" and ought to be put out of the way, and that in killing Jesse, Ford practically saved his own life.
Whatever may be the truth, it is generally agreed that the action of Jesse James in taking off his guns and turning his back on the Ford boys was unprecedented. He had never before been known to remove his weapons. Some people think he did it as a piece of bravado. Others say he did it to show the Ford boys that he trustedthem. But whatever the occasion for the action it gave Bob Ford his chance—a chance which, it is thought, he would not have dared take when Jesse James was armed.
During the course of our visit Frank James "lectured," more or less constantly, touching on a variety of subjects, including the Mexican situation and woman suffrage.
"The women ought to have the vote," he affirmed. "Look what we owe to the women. A man gets 75 per cent. of what goodness there is in him from his mother, and he owes at least 40 per cent. of all he makes to his wife. Yes, some men owe more than that. Some of 'em owe 100 per cent. to their wives."
Ethics and morality seem to be favorite topics with the old man, and he makes free with quotations from the Bible and from Shakespeare in substantiation of his opinions.
"City people," I heard him say to some other visitors who came while we were there, "think that we folks who live on farms haven't got no sense. Well, we may not know much, but what we do know we know darn well. We farmersfeedall these smart folks in the cities, so they ought to give us credit for knowingsomething."
He can be dry and waggish as he shows himself off to those who come and pay their fifty cents. It was amusing to watch him and listen to him. Sometimes he sounded like an old parson, but his air of piety sat upon him grotesquely as one reflected on his earlier career. A prelate with his hat cocked rakishly over one ear could have seemed hardly more incongruous.
It was Frank James.... He looks more like a prosperous farmer or the president of a rural bank than like a bandit. In his manner there is a strong note of the showmanIt was Frank James.... He looks more like a prosperous farmer or the president of a rural bank than like a bandit. In his manner there is a strong note of the showman
At some of his virtuous platitudes it was hard not to smile. All the time I was there I kept thinking how like he was to some character of Gilbert's. All that is needed to make Frank James complete is some lyrics and some music by Sir Arthur Sullivan.
There are almost as many stories of the James Boys and their gang to be heard in Excelsior Springs as there are houses in the town. But as Frank James will not commit himself, it is next to impossible to verify them. However, I shall give a sample.
I was told that Frank and Jesse James were riding along a country road with another member of the gang, and that, coming to a farmhouse shortly after noon, they stopped and asked the woman living there if she could give them "dinner"—as the midday meal is called in Kansas and Missouri.
The woman said she could. They dismounted and entered. Then, as they sat in the kitchen watching her making the meal ready, Jesse noticed that tears kept coming to her eyes. Finally he asked her if anything was wrong. At that she broke down completely, informing him that she was a widow, that her farm was mortgaged for several hundred dollars, and that the man who held the mortgage was coming out that afternoon to collect. She had not the money to pay him and expected to lose her property.
"That's nothing to cry about," said Jesse. "Here's the money."
To the woman, who had not the least idea who the men were, their visit must have seemed like one from angels. She took the money, thanking them profusely, and, after having fed them well, saw them ride away.
Later in the day, when the holder of the mortgage appeared upon the scene, fully expecting to foreclose, he was surprised at receiving payment in full. He receipted, mounted his horse, and set out on his return to town. But on the way back a strange thing befell him. He was held up and robbed by three mysterious masked men.
Everything I had ever heard of Kansas, every one I had ever met from Kansas, everything I had ever imagined about Kansas, made me anxious to invade that State. With the exception of California, there was no State about which I felt such a consuming curiosity. Kansas is, and always has been, a State of freaks and wonders, of strange contrasts, of individualities strong and sometimes weird, of ideas and ideals, and of apocryphal occurrences.
Just think what Kansas has been, and has had, and is! Think of the border warfare over slavery which began as early as 1855; of settlers, traveling out to "bleeding Kansas" overland, from New England, merely to add their abolition votes; of early struggles with the soil, and of the final triumph. Kansas is to-day the first wheat State, the fourth State in the value of its assessed property (New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts only outranking it), and the only State in the Union which is absolutely free from debt. It has a more American population, greater wealth and fewer mortgages per capita, more women running for office, more religious conservatism, more political radicalism,more students in higher educational institutions in proportion to its population, more homogeneity, more individualism, and more nasal voices than any other State. As Colonel Nelson said to me: "All these new ideas they are getting everywhere else are old ideas in Kansas." And why shouldn't that be true, since Kansas is the State of Sockless Jerry Simpson, William Allen White, Ed Howe, Walt Mason, Stubbs, Funston, Henry Allen, Victor Murdock, and Harry Kemp; the State of Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Nation, and Mary Ellen Lease—the same sweet Mary Ellen who remarked that "Kansas ought to raise less corn and more hell!"
Kansas used to believe in Populism and free silver. It now believes in hot summers and a hot hereafter. It is a prohibition State in which prohibition actually works; a State like nothing so much as some scriptural kingdom—a land of floods, droughts, cyclones, and enormous crops; of prophets and of plagues. And in the last two items it has sometimes seemed to actually outdo the Bible by combining plague and prophet in a single individual: for instance, Carrie Nation, or again, Harry Kemp, "the tramp poet of Kansas," who is by way of being a kind of Carrie Nation of convention. Only last year Kansas performed one of her biblical feats, when she managed, somehow, to cause the water, in the deep well supplying the town of Girard, to turn hot. But that is nothing to what she has done. Do you remember the plague of grasshoppers? Not in the whole Bible is there to be found a more perfect pestilence than that one, which occurred in Kansas in 1872. One day a cloud appeared before the sun. It came nearer and nearer and grew into a strange, glistening thing. At midday it was dark as night. Then, from the air, the grasshoppers commenced to come, like a heavy rain. They soon covered the ground. Railroad trains were stopped by them. They attacked the crops, which were just ready to be harvested, eating every green thing, and even getting at the roots. Then, on the second day, they all arose, making a great cloud, as before, and turning the day black again. Nor can any man say whence they came or whither they departed.
Among the homely philosophers developed through Kansas journalism several are widely known, most celebrated among them all being Ed Howe of the Atchison "Globe," William Allen White of the Emporia "Gazette," and Walt Mason of the same paper.
Howe is sixty years of age. He was owner and editor of the "Globe" for more than thirty years, but four years ago, when his paper gave him a net income of sixty dollars per day, he turned it over to his son and retired to his country place, "Potato Hill," whence he issues occasional manifestos.
Some of Howe's characteristic paragraphs from the "Globe" have been collected and published in book form, under the title, "Country Town Sayings." Here are a few examples of his homely humor and philosophy:
So many things go wrong that we are tired of becoming indignant.
So many things go wrong that we are tired of becoming indignant.
Watch the flies on cold mornings; that is the way you will feel and act when you are old.There is nothing so well known as that we should not expect something for nothing, but we all do and call it hope.When half the men become fond of doing a thing, the other half prohibit it by law.Sometimes I think that I have nothing to be thankful for, but when I remember that I am not a woman I am content. Any one who is compelled to kiss a man and pretend to like it is entitled to sympathy.Somehow every one hates to see an unusually pretty girl get married. It is like taking a bite out of a very fine-looking peach.What people say behind your back is your standing in the community in which you live.A really busy person never knows how much he weighs.
Watch the flies on cold mornings; that is the way you will feel and act when you are old.
There is nothing so well known as that we should not expect something for nothing, but we all do and call it hope.
When half the men become fond of doing a thing, the other half prohibit it by law.
Sometimes I think that I have nothing to be thankful for, but when I remember that I am not a woman I am content. Any one who is compelled to kiss a man and pretend to like it is entitled to sympathy.
Somehow every one hates to see an unusually pretty girl get married. It is like taking a bite out of a very fine-looking peach.
What people say behind your back is your standing in the community in which you live.
A really busy person never knows how much he weighs.
Walt Mason is another Kansas philosopher-humorist. Recently he published in "Collier's Weekly" an article describing life, particularly with regard to prohibition and its effects, in his "hum town," Emporia.
Emporia is probably as well known as any town of its size in the land. It has, as Mason puts it, "ten thousand people, including William Allen White." Including Walt Mason, then, it must have about eleven thousand. Mason's article told how Stubbs, on becoming Governor of Kansas, enforced the prohibition laws, and of the fine effect of actual prohibition in Emporia. "No town in the world," he declares, "wears a tighter lid. There is no drunkenness because there is nothing to drink stiffer than pink lemonade. You will see a unicorn as soon as you will see a drunken man in the streetsof the town. Emporia has reared a generation of young men who don't know what alcohol tastes like, who have never seen the inside of a saloon. Many of them never saw the outside of one. They go forth into the world to seek their fortunes without the handicap of an acquired thirst. All Emporia's future generations of young men will be similarly clean, for the town knows that a tight lid is the greatest possible blessing and nobody will ever dare attempt to pry it loose."
Having spent a year in the prohibition State of Maine, I was skeptical as to the feasibility of a practical prohibition. Prohibition in Maine, when I was there, was simply a joke—and a bad joke at that, for it involved bad liquor. Every man in the State who wanted drink knew where to get it, so long as he was satisfied with poor beer, or whisky of about the quality of spar varnish. Never have I seen more drunkenness than in that State. The slight added difficulty of getting drink only made men want it more, and it seemed to me that, when they got it, they drank more at a sitting than they would have, had liquor been more generally accessible.
In Kansas it is different. There the law is enforced. Blind pigs hardly exist, and bootleggers are rare birds who, if they persist in bootlegging, are rapidly converted into jailbirds. The New York "Tribune" printed, recently, a letter stating that prohibition is a signal failure in Kansas, that there is more drinking there than ever before, and that "under the seats of all the automobiles in Kansas there is a good-sized canteen." Whetherthere is more drinking in Kansas than ever before, I cannot say. I do know, however, both from personal observation and from reliable testimony, that there is practically no drinking in the portions of the State I visited. As I am not a prohibitionist, this statement is nonpartizan. But I may add, after having seen the results of prohibition in Kansas, I look upon it with more favor. Indeed, I am a partial convert; that is, I believe in it for you. And whatever are your views on prohibition, I think you will admit that it is a pretty temperate State in which a girl can grow to womanhood and say what one Kansas girl said to me: that she never saw a drunken man until she moved away from Kansas.
Three religious manifestations occurred while I was in Kansas. A negro preacher came out with a platform declaring definitely in favor of a "hot hell," another preacher affirmed that he had the answer to the "six riddles of the universe," and William Allen White came out with the news that he had "got religion."
Now, if William Allen White of the Emporia "Gazette" really has done that, a number of consequences are likely to occur. For one thing, a good many Americans who follow, with interest, Mr. White's opinions, are likely also to follow him in this; and if they fail to do so voluntarily, they are likely to get religion stuffed right down their throats. If White decides that it is good for them, they'll get it, never fear! For White's the kind of man who gives us what is good for us, evenif it kills us. Another probable result of White's coming out in the "Gazette" in favor of religion would be the simultaneous appearance, in the "Gazette," of anti-religious propaganda by Walt Mason. That is the way the "Gazette" is run. White is the proprietor and has his say as editor, but Walt Mason, who is associated with him on the "Gazette," also hashissay, and his say is far from being dictated by the publisher. White, for instance, favors woman suffrage; Mason does not. White is a progressive; Mason is a standpatter. White believes in the commission form of government, which Emporia has; Mason does not. Mason believes in White for Governor of Kansas, whereas White, himself, protests passionately that the "Gazette" is against "that man White."
Says a "Gazette" editorial, apropos of a movement to nominate White on the Progressive ticket:
We are onto that man White. Perhaps he pays his debts. He may be kind to his family. But he is not the man to run for Governor. And if he is a candidate for Governor or for any other office, we propose to tell the truth about him—how he robbed the county with a padded printing bill, how he offered to trade off his support to a Congressman for a Government building, how he blackmailed good citizens and has run a bulldozing, disreputable newspaper in this town for twenty years, and has grafted off business men and sold fake mining stock and advocated anarchy and assassinations.These are but a few preliminary things that occur to us as the moment passes. We shall speak plainly hereafter. A word to the wise gathers no moss.
We are onto that man White. Perhaps he pays his debts. He may be kind to his family. But he is not the man to run for Governor. And if he is a candidate for Governor or for any other office, we propose to tell the truth about him—how he robbed the county with a padded printing bill, how he offered to trade off his support to a Congressman for a Government building, how he blackmailed good citizens and has run a bulldozing, disreputable newspaper in this town for twenty years, and has grafted off business men and sold fake mining stock and advocated anarchy and assassinations.
These are but a few preliminary things that occur to us as the moment passes. We shall speak plainly hereafter. A word to the wise gathers no moss.
That is the way they run the Emporia "Gazette." It is a kind of forum in which White and Mason air their different points of view, for, as Mason said to me: "The only public question on which White and I agree is the infallibility of the groundhog as a weather prophet."
White and Colonel Nelson of the Kansas City "Star" are great friends and great admirers of each other. One day they were talking together about politics.
"I hear," said Colonel Nelson, "that Shannon (Shannon is the Democratic boss of Kansas City) says he wants to live long enough to go to the State Legislature and get a law passed making it only a misdemeanor to kill an editor."
"Colonel," replied White, "I think such a law would be too drastic. I think editors should be protected during the mating season and while caring for their young. And, furthermore, I think no man should be allowed to kill more editors at any time than he and his family can eat."
It was about one o'clock in the afternoon when my companion and I alighted from the train in Lawrence, Kas., the city in which the Quantrell massacre occurred, as mentioned in a preceding chapter, and the seat of the University of Kansas.
An automobile hack, the gasoline equivalent of the dilapidated horse-drawn station hack of earlier times, was standing beside the platform. We consulted the driver about luncheon.
"You kin get just as good eating at the lunch room over by the other station," he said, "as you kin at the hotel, and 't won't cost you so much. They charge fifty cents for dinner at the Eldridge, and the lunch room's only a quarter. You kin get anything you want to eat there—ham and eggs, potatoes, all such as that."
Somehow we were suspicious of the lunch room, but as we had to leave our bags at the other station, we told him we would look it over, got in, and drove across the town. The lunch room proved to be a one-story wooden structure, painted yellow, and supporting one of those "false fronts," representing a second story, which one sees so often in little western towns, and which of all architectural follies is the worst, since it deceives no one,makes only for ugliness, and is a sheer waste of labor and material.
We did not even alight at the lunch room, but, despite indications of hurt feelings on the part of our charioteer, insisted on proceeding to the Eldridge House and lunching there, cost what it might.
The Eldridge House stands on a corner of the wide avenue known as Massachusetts, the principal street, which, like the town itself, indicates, in its name, a New England origin. Lawrence was named for Amos Lawrence, the Massachusetts abolitionist, who, though he never visited Kansas, gave the first ten thousand dollars toward the establishment of the university.
Alighting before the hotel, I noticed a building, diagonally opposite, bearing the sign, Bowersock Theater. Billboards before the theater announced that Gaskell & McVitty (Inc.) would present there a dramatization of Harold Bell Wright's "Shepherd of the Hills." As I had never seen a dramatization of a work by America's best-selling author, nor yet a production by Messrs. Gaskell & McVitty (Inc.), it seemed to me that here was an opportunity to improve, as at one great bound, my knowledge of the theater. One of the keenest disappointments of my trip was the discovery that this play was not due in Lawrence for some days, as I would even have stopped a night in the Eldridge House, if necessary, to have attended a performance—especially a performance in a theater bearing the poetic name of Bowersock.
Rendered reckless by my disappointment, I retired to the Eldridge House dining room and ordered the fifty-cent luncheon. If it was the worst meal I had on my entire trip, it at least fulfilled an expectation, for I had heard that meals in western hotels were likely to be poor. It is only just to add, however, that a number of sturdy men who were seated about the room ate more heartily and vastly than any other people I have seen, excepting German tourists on a Rhine steamer. I envy Kansans their digestions. For my own part, I was less interested in my meal than in the waitresses. Has it ever struck you that hotel waitresses are a race apart? They are not like other women; not even like other waitresses. They are even shaped differently, having waists like wasps and bosoms which would resemble those of pouter pigeons if pouter pigeons' bosoms did not seem to be a part of them. Most hotel waitresses look to me as though, on reaching womanhood, they had inhaled a great breath and held it forever after. Only the fear of being thought indelicate prevents my discussing further this curious phenomenon. However, I am reminded that, as Owen Johnson has so truly said, American writers are not permitted the freedom which is accorded to their Gallic brethren. There is, I trust, however, nothing improper in making mention of the striking display of jewelry worn by the waitresses at the Eldridge House. All wore diamonds in their hair, and not one wore less than fifty thousand dollars' worth. These diamonds were set in large hairpins, and the show ofgems surpassed any I have ever seen by daylight. Luncheon at the Eldridge suggests, in this respect, a first night at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, and if it is like that at luncheon, what must it be at dinner time? Do they wear tiaras and diamond stomachers? I regret that I am unable to say, for, immediately after luncheon, I kept an appointment, previously made, with the driver of the auto hack.
"Where do you boys want to go now?" he asked my companion and me as we appeared.
"To the university," I said.
"Students?" he asked, with kindly interest.
Neither of us had been taken for a student in many, many years; the agreeable suggestion was worth an extra quarter to him. Perhaps he had guessed as much.
The drive took us out Massachusetts Avenue, which, when it escapes the business part of town, becomes an agreeable, tree-bordered thoroughfare, reminiscent of New England. Presently our rattle-trap machine turned to the right and began the ascent of a hill so steep as to cause the driver to drop back into "first." It was a long hill, too; we crawled up for several blocks before attaining the plateau at the top, where stands the University of Kansas.
The setting of the college surprised us, for, if there was one thing that we had expected more than another, it was that Kansas would prove absolutely flat. Yet here we were on a mountain top—at least they call itMount Oread—with the valley of the Kaw River below, and what seemed to be the whole of Kansas spread round about, like a vast panoramic mural decoration for the university—a maplike picture suggesting those splendid decorations of Jules Guerin's in the Pennsylvania Terminal in New York.
I know of no university occupying a more suitable position or a more commanding view, although it must be recorded that the university has been more fortunate in the selection of its site than in its architecture and the arrangement of its grounds. Like other colleges founded forty or fifty years ago, the University of Kansas started in a small way, and failed entirely to anticipate the greatness of its future. The campus seems to have "just growed" without regard to the grouping of buildings or to harmony between them, and the architecture is generally poor. Nevertheless there is a sort of homely charm about the place, with its unimposing, helter-skelter piles of brick and stone, its fine trees, and its sweeping view.
It was principally with the purpose of visiting the University of Kansas that we stopped in Lawrence. We had heard much of the great, energetic state colleges, which had come to hold such an important place educationally, and in the general life of the Middle West and West, and had planned to visit one of them. Originally we had in mind the University of Wisconsin, because we had heard so much about it; later, however, it struck us that everybody else had heard a good deal about it,too, and that we had better visit some less widely advertised college. We hit on the University of Kansas because Kansas is the most typical American agricultural state, and also because a Kansan, whom we met on the train, informed us that "In Kansas we are hell on education."
In detail I knew little of these big state schools. I had heard, of course, of the broadening of their activities to include a great variety of general state service, aside from their main purpose of giving some sort of college education, at very low cost, to young men and women of rural communities who desire to continue beyond the public schools. I must confess, however, that, aside from such great universities as those of Michigan and Wisconsin, I had imagined that state universities were, in general, crude and ill equipped, by comparison with the leading colleges of the East.
If the University of Kansas may, as I have been credibly informed, be considered as a typical western state university, then I must confess that my preconceptions regarding such institutions were as far from the facts as preconceptions, in general, are likely to be. The University of Kansas is anything but backward. It is, upon the contrary, amazingly complete and amazingly advanced. Not only has it an excellent equipment and a live faculty, but also a remarkably energetic, eager student body, much more homogeneous and much more unanimous in its hunger for education than student bodies in eastern universities, as I have observed them.
The University of Kansas has some three thousand students, about a thousand of them women. Considerably more than half of them are either partly or wholly self-supporting, and 12 per cent. of them earn their way during the school months. The grip of the university upon the State may best be shown by statistics—if I may be forgiven the brief use of them. Out of 103 counties in Kansas only seven were not represented by students in the university in the years 1910-12—the seven counties being thinly settled sections in the southwest corner of the State. Seventy-three percent. of last year's students were born in Kansas; more than a third of them came from villages of less than 2,000 population; and the father of one out of every three students was a farmer.
Life at the university is comfortable, simple, and very cheap, the average cost, per capita, for the school year being perhaps $200, including school expenses, board, social expenses, etc., nor are there great social and financial gaps between certain groups of students, as in some eastern colleges. The university is a real democracy, in which each individual is judged according to certain standards of character and behavior.
"Now and again," one young man told me, with a sardonic smile, "we get a country boy who eats with his knife. He may be a mighty good sort, but he isn't civilized. When a fellow like that comes along, we take him in hand and tell him that, aside from the danger of cutting his mouth, we have certain peculiar whims onthe subject of manners at table, and that it is better for him to eat as we do, because if he doesn't it makes him conspicuous. Inside a week you'll see a great change in a boy of that kind."
Not only is the cost to the student low at the University of Kansas, but the cost of operating the university is slight. In the year 1909-10 (the last year on which I have figures) the cost of operating sixteen leading colleges in the United States averaged $232 per student. The cost per student at the University of Kansas is $175. One reason for this low per capita cost is the fact that the salaries of professors at the University of Kansas are unusually small. They are too small. It is one of the reproaches of this rich country of ours that, though we are always ready to spend vast sums on college buildings, we pay small salaries to instructors; although it is the faculty, much more than the buildings, which make a college. So far as I have been able to ascertain, Harvard pays the highest maximum salaries to professors, of any American university—$5,500 is the Harvard maximum. California, Cornell, and Yale have a $5,000 maximum. Kansas has the lowest maximum I know of, the greatest salary paid to a professor there, according to last year's figures, having been $2,500.
Before leaving New York I was told by a distinguished professor in an eastern university that the students he got from the West had, almost invariably, more initiative and energy than those from the region of the Atlantic seaboard.