The cause of temperance is one that has been close to my heart for twenty years. Taken from the logical standpoint of protection to the home, sound saneness, improvement in morals, an enhancement of citizenship, it is the second paramount issue of the age. Take away liquor, stop the traffic entirely, and you reduce seventy-five per cent of crime. The empty whisky-bottle is the greatest curse that ever existed. When it is standing filled in front of some bar-room mirror, it is harmless, but when it is empty it signifies that it has been drank by somebody and has been the direct cause for all that has followed.
Trace it up and you will find sorrow, misery, heartaches, remorse, disgrace, shame, humiliation, want, poverty, destroyed homes, cruelty, hatred, anger, revenge, and murder. Rags, vulgarity, dishonor, wasted lives, and deceit. Ruined sweethearts, broken-hearted wives, disgraced parents, and hungry, shoeless children. Disease, filth, white slavery, prize fights, tangoes, rottenness, and shame. Keeley cures, jails, penitentiaries, poorhouses, brothels, cabarets, and insane asylums. Thieves, robbers, safe blowers, beggars, pick-pockets, delirium tremors, and death. Leave it alone!
Some people say there is no harm in it; there isn’t if you leave it alone. You can take a loaded revolver and lay it alongside of a well-filled whisky bottle and they will get along side by side peacefully as long as timeexists. Each one separate and apart are harmless; but let a sane man come along and drink the whisky, pick up the revolver, and what happens? Every nationality without distinction to race or color, Irishmen included, will run for safety.
A well-educated young man with brilliant prospects, neatly attired, attractive, and of fine, honorable parentage, was passing a saloon one day when a friend standing in the doorway invited him in. He had never been in a place of this kind in his life. His parents had taught him, friends advised him, and a sweet faced girl had warned him. Conscience told him to decline and go on, but, like millions of others, he heeded the invitation and stepped in. “Come up and take something,” the tempter said. “No,” he said, “I never drink.” “Come on,” urged the tempter. “Itwon’t hurt you.” “NO,” he said; “it’s beneath the dignity of a true gentleman and it would break my mother’s heart.” “Ah, come on, don’t be a kid,” he urged, and still the boy said no. After continued and repeated solicitation he finally yielded and drank his first glass.
Alas, the fatal mistake was made. Years of careful training were swept aside. Hopeful aspirations of his mother when she looked on his innocent face in the cradle were all for naught. Solemn advice from a kind father was lost sight of, and the deed was done. That first drink fired his brain. Others were taken and his eyes shone, the house treated, and the once quiet, manly lad was loud and boisterous. Self-respect was cast aside and foul utterances flew fast and thick from a once clean mouth. The end came. He reeledin drunkenness and fell to the floor in a gibbering drunken stupor. He was put to bed and when sober he felt the shame and remorse so keenly that he was at the point of self destruction. He thought of his mother, his father, the dear little sweetheart, and his friends. He was so afraid they would all hear of his ignominy that he kept secluded. He couldn’t bear to face them, tell all and start anew.
The humiliation was more than he could stand and he slipped farther and farther down the steep and rapid descent to hell. Back in his cheerful and once comfortable home a dear old mother sat waiting and watching year after year the lamp was kept burning. A kind old father sat with bowed head thinking and thinking. A dear little girl was weeping and weeping, and still he didn’t come. Where,O where was he and why didn’t he come? Alas! how sad as he sank lower and lower. Drunken brawls were common, nights spent in revelry very often; the dissipation was telling, his once clean countenance was haggard. His step was languid, lethargy was settling upon him, and his whole being was repulsive. His character was no longer clean and a thing of beauty. Brothels caught him and God’s penalties were discernible for the violation of his laws. Decent men shunned him and pure women scorned him, but still the light was kept burning. The mother watched, the father waited, the sweetheart prayed, and the friends yearned; but down, down, down he went. Even dogs hurried by him, the filth and disease was nauseating.
The years sped quickly and there he is clear down at the bottom, an object of disgustand scorn. Behold him, beneath the mass of stale and putrid slime, a castoff, friendless and penniless vagabond. Beneath the most loathsome and foul degeneracy conceivable; even beneath the filthy sewer. He lay on a bundle of rags in a drunkard’s hut. As he moaned and groaned, an old friend passing by heard him, stepped in and stood looking at him. With tears streaming down his cheeks the boy looked up and said, “my life is ebbing, I am at the border line, my career is wasted; I am a drunken, despised and worthless sot, friendless and alone. I can see nothing ahead but the blackest despair. Oh my poor old mother, my poor old father, my dear little sweetheart, My Sav—oh—oh.” Another spell grasped him and as he tossed and shrieked and moaned, grappling with the demon, writhing in mental anguish, terror clouded his countenance,his eyes rolled, his limbs jerked, the mouth dropped open, the tongue protruded, he clutched until the blood trickled from the torn flesh, a loud, gurgling, terrifying scream, and he was dead. Died with the delirium tremens caused by the rum demon. As the old friend wiped away the tears and stood looking at his pitiful form he noticed in one of his torn and ragged pockets a slip of paper. He pulled it out and read:
Listen, friend, today,
To what I have to say,
Don’t let temptation sway
And miss the narrow way.
When you are young and gay
And anxious for the fray
Be ready to say “Nay”
And tread the narrow way.
The debt I have to pay
As here near death I lay
Wouldn’t hold so much dismay
Had I trod the narrow way.
Oh tread the narrow way
And never miss a day
Ask Jesus how to pray
And tread the narrow way.
How can America, the foremost nation of the world, that has long boasted of liberty and advancement, allow the liquor traffic to continue when the condition it causes are so critical. It is stealing away her brains, increasing her crime, lowering her moral standing, demoralizing her citizenship, and giving to posterity a weaker race and causing such poverty, misery and unhumanitariandistress. Can this enlightened nation afford its continuance and let it remain when it has a grasp so powerful that it is endangering its very vitals? Can America, with her unsurpassed institutions of learning, her brilliant and scholarly statesmen, her great mineral and agricultural wealth yet unfound and developed, allow a traffic so alarmingly demoralizing as to let her constitutional principles decline? Can she sit still, under her broad and world famed methods of progress, and allow such a traffic, that devastates from every source, for a revenue wrung from women’s tears, that is so rapidly depreciating her citizenship. Is she prudent? Is she applying the Christian principles of her constitution to obtain revenue from a traffic so nefarious and debauching? If she realizes the danger ahead why delay an amendment that enhances citizenship and principle.
America, ’tis thee I prize,
’Twas underneath thy azure skies,
Where heaven’s light first met my eyes.
I love thy thrift and enterprise,
To me beloved and so wise
Thy name is one I idolize.
Thy blood did purchase liberty,
To make this land so great and free,
And quench forever tyranny.
Oh may thy name forever be
Embraced within a righteous plea,
That lessens pain and misery.
It is for thee that I will fight,
When’er thy cause is for the right,
For none but these e’er use thy might.
I’ll heed your call with keen delight,
But should I fall before the night,
Let freedom’s flag be my last sight.
Look out for the man whose face shows it pains him to say “Good Morning.”
Never be afraid to trust the man whose dog meets him with a bound.
The mad rush to join the appendicitis club and sing in the choir invisible has lost its popularity, both for the good of posterity and the pocket book.
Some people take a great deal of liberty with the English language, when they speak of work.
Stick to the boys who borrow a five occasionally andpay it back; rather than the fellows who love you like a fly does molasses when your roll would choke a lazy mule.
It’s cheaper to buy your coal from your regular dealer and take short weight, than to steal it from the railroad and pay court costs.
It’s an ice cold fact that the fellow who is continually condemning others’ faults and pointing with pride to his own great meritable achievements, is not entitled to a premium for sincerity.
It’s often the sour, surly looking man that goes down in his pocket and gives you his last quarter, when hunger is beating a fast tattoo against your breastworks.
Because a man joins the church and becomes a pious and strict respecter of Sunday observance, don’t cast all caution aside and let him sell you gold mine stock on Monday, unless you know something about the mine.
Some men tell you the wonderful things they have done from the corner store dry goods box and then let their wives earn the living over the wash tub.
Many a man has nearly grasped St. Peter’s hand, when his wife’s razor edged tongue drove him clean down to perdition.
The fellow who is always harping hypocrite and hurling cheap invectives against the church isn’t the man to arouse confidence, the only one he helps is the devil.
Take away profanity from some men’s conversation and you haven’t enough left to know what they said.
When a man buys an Auto or a Ford on credit and lets the whiskers grow on his coal bill they say he’s got the fever. I don’t think it could be the brain kind.
If money and whiskey would lose their influence in the courts, juries and legislatures would go to sleep and jail doors rust on their hinges.
When the Lord turns his X rays upon the people, the churches will fill so rapidly that Easter bonnets and dress suits can be picked up anywhere.
I know a wealthy man by the name of Moore who never was satisfied.
Obituaries are not a safe guide to the real truth.
Recollections become dim on the witness stand.
It’s better to faint in the arms of truth and die in poverty than to lie for the lap of luxury and die disgraced.
A drunken man’s breath is preferable to the wagging tongue of a gossip.
Any man could live with a woman who has the patience to bathe in a wash tub twenty-one inches in diameter for seventeen years without complaining.
Marry in haste and repent in alimony.
It’s a sad fact that many a man has missed his calling and there is elegant material for day laborers among the professions and vice versa.
If it wasn’t for $$$ a great many people would be wearing the stripes.
Some men are so economical they go without socks to buy whiskey.
If some women were better cooks there would be less dyspepsia and fewer divorces.
If too many cooks spoil the broth, could too many church denominations spoil the man?
The longer you use the Christ-like religion the better you like it and the better it makes you.
The man who makes careless remarks about women does not possess the fine attributes of a gentleman.
If religion cost money, how some church members with bible names would grab for their purses when the lights go out.
Religion and sympathy cost nothing, but you’d think they were diamonds the way some people use them.
The first marriage is for love, the second for convenience, and the third a cold business proposition. Don’t try for a four-bagger.
The cleanliness of the tea towel is a safe criterion to a good house-keeper.
The great jewel “Consistency” cannot be bought with money.
Some people are so hard hearted, onions would have no effect at a funeral.
If you don’t like the taste of life’s medicine, be your own doctor and change the ingredients.
If some weak-kneed marshals and sheriffs would do their duty, there would be less bootleggers.
Some women join the ladies’ aid and use the lemon extravagantly.
Many a woman can hardly keep from yelling “Hallelujah” when her husband dies.
If some mothers don’t spend more time with their children and less with politics this country will be over-run with pick-pockets.
If all mis-mated marriages were suddenly annulled, it wouldn’t take an expert mathematician to count those left in wedlock.
If it wasn’t for their money, thousands of women would leave their husbands.
Whiskey has killed more men than all the surgeons.
Lay the rod on the child before he gets too strong.
Better be a lady waiting than marry a sot.
Honesty stops millions from becoming millionaires.
Women born in Alaska seldom get married; too long in cold storage.
The undertaker’s sympathy never interferes with his profits; he gets the last crack at you and you can’t kick.
Many a woman, who never had an extra pair of hosiery at home, loses sight of economy, after her marriage, and plunges into extravagance so heedlessly that her husband gives up in discouragement.
Live within your means, but don’t borrow money to do it.
Spend your money when you are young, if you want to spend your old age in the poor house.
Put a strong proviso in your deed before you turn it over to your children, if you expect to buy your own tobacco.
The boy who criticizes his father’s depleted finances on account of hardships and honest failures, should be bodily removed into the open air with the same amount of clothes he had when he was born and let the thermometer show forty degrees below zero.
A court or jury that will convict a man forstealing a ten cent soup bone and acquit the man who made thousands by going into bankruptcy ought to have a steady stream of hot tar running down their aesophagus.
Many a rock-ribbed democrat votes for a Republican, if there is something in it.
The tramp, with his back against the water tank, studies as hard on his side of the problem of existence as does the fellow with greater resources, who is up against it.
The man who can fulfill the bible by taking the slap on both sides of the cheek is seven parts lamb and one part Irish.
The difference between a cackling hen anda cackling woman is, one cackles when she lays and the other cackles all the time she don’t lay.
Trust in God but look out for everybody else.
The man that totes a whiskey blossom on the end of his flue carries a cheap add for the devil.
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.
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 theywere 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 shining 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 onewho 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 aroundmuch. 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 embarrassing 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 ofa 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 ofthe 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 assist 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 andfleet, 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 fashioned 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 lassie 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 Dick. 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 assented 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 nobody, it did the controling, i. e., oil and whiskey. I’d cover up this last ingredient and give it a better concealed classical 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 directionsI 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 pass 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 menuwas 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 thehottest 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 hisparishioners 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 passages 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 inhell. 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 Saturday 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. Itbeats having the Fourth of July come on Saturday, 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 shivering in an undershirt. 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 God show the way. Sunday churches or Saturday churches carry no guarantee that you’ll reach Heaven.
Before I invested in “Good-wills” and “Bonuses” and other losing investments, Iwould 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 goddess 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 cushions 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 ofthe 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 classy company for a boy from Lodge Pole. Of course there are snubs here and there, you find them everywhere. They are in a class 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 willnotice 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 nonentity 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 fashioned 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 tocarry 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 attitude 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.
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 isrehabilitated 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 theattorney 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 onthe 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 accumulation 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 failingten 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 Washington 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 theway 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, fortypeople 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 isstill 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 Washington 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; Ihoped 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 class of people that fell so in love with “Casey Jones.” But it seems this class 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 thecountry. 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 goanywhere 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 Association 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 wouldhave 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 hasa 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 thischapter 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.
I’ll show the ones who think they’re it
That Johnnie Jones has got the grit
To make a name that will be felt
Like Astor, Gould or Roosevelt.
It makes the pain come home when you look back from fifty and realize that a man at twenty-one is a darn big fool, at thirty still a fool, at thirty-five a little foolish, and at forty he still has some, at forty-five wisdom breaks in gently, and at fifty he stands on the threshold of learning ready to apply and absorb, and at sixty he’s a valuable asset to his community and country.
Something has been gained and our life has not been futile if we can say we owe no man and there is no obligation through which we have passed, financial or otherwise, of which we are ashamed. We may not have acquired honor, wealth or position but if we have lived up to the teachings of the plumb and the square, we have a record that will stand the closest investigation when we knock for entrance at the pearly gates. If we can stand with our whole soul bared before our maker and he sees that chastity and the sweet purity of any girl or woman has never been trespassed upon we have acquired something that brings smiles to angels’ faces. If wehave stood firm when temptations surged and tossed and clamored and we met them and conquered, we have through our moral force a better right to the precious gems of God’s kingdom than those saved in the eleventh hour. If we have never repeated unwholesome stories or spoken slightingly of another’s character or said disrespectfully something that we knew untrue, then we have lived well. Each day’s battles must be fought alone and leave tomorrow’s till they come. Never tear down character, it is the choicest gift in the universe and constitutes life’s work. Remember a pure woman or a pure man is the noblest work of God. Don’t let your footsteps slip from the path of virtue but plant them firm and deep in the path of righteousness. Keep away from people whose thoughts are degrading, and never harbor foul and indecentlanguage. Make it your most earnest desire to avoid using profanity and vile utterances, an immoral epithet has a clinging effect which takes years to erase, and those that emulate and make us better takes determination and purity.
I am now approaching the half-century mark. I can look ahead a few years and see the fiftieth mile post. In all the years that have past and gone I can recall none where my conditions and prospects are so alarming, serious and discouraging as at the present time. I have a peculiar ailment in my left side that has baffled the medical fraternity and caused extreme anxiety to myself. I have endeavored with courage and determination to exterminate it. I have tried assiduously physical culture, osteopathy, dietics, Christian science and medicine. I have consulted freelyand often the great physician and all so far have failed. With treatment at Hot Springs thrown in as good measure. The surgeons say an operation is the only hope through which they can discover the cause and eliminate it. I dread operations like I do “Good Wills” and “Bonuses.” My wife had one and the doctor in charge said she would be a well woman in three weeks, but those three weeks were worse than that two weeks’ loan. They stretched into six long, bitter years and were the direct cause of an outlay of money in excess of three thousand dollars. Glad again of the early use of that harrow, for there was surely a gross violation of the truth on the part of the surgeon. On account of dearie’s precarious health I was forced to try a lower altitude, and this not being sufficient it wasnecessary to try the balmy, sunny air of California and sojourn there among the orange blossoms and the singing birds for seven long months. This caused me to give up my position of clerk that netted me in my four years’ labor the tidy sum of ten thousand dollars.
Today as I stand looking at that fiftieth mile post I realize in the vernacular of the day “I am up against it.” My money is gone, my ailment bothers me, I have a family to provide for, and the wolf stands on the threshold with his mouth open and his long, gaunt body in readiness to make the jump. In some way I must appease five empty stomachs from consuming five back bones. My investments were bad. I tied up thirty-five hundred dollars in a partnership lumber business, fifteen hundred dollars in a home to shelter my loved ones, and the rest wentfor food and clothing. I struck a highly modern town with all the up-to-date conveniences, property depreciated fifty per cent, business was stagnant, interest kept gnawing, and taxes went skyward. The two sad mistakes I made was: first, to visit the office of the County Treasurer and learn about the taxes; and the second was to stay out of business unless we had enough money to pay for it and keep to the leeward of that ten per cent interest, but I didn’t and so much more for experience, the grandma of teachers.
I do not lack courage and determination but knowing and being able to see that fiftieth mile post causes a shudder and slight touches of despondency. I think my training is more than is alloted the average man. I have been a day laborer on the farm, railroad and hay field. I have worked for a large number oftask masters and I failed to remember when I was ever criticised for not keeping up my end. I have held a good many positions of trust such as census enumerator, section foreman, extra gang foreman, county clerk, clerk of the district court, abstractor, town trustee, and member of the school board.
The first time I was a candidate for county clerk I ran on the Republican ticket. I am not telling this in any spirit of the braggart but as a sample of confidence. In my old home precinct I received one hundred and twenty votes out of one hundred and thirty-two, and in the precinct where I worked as section foreman I received forty votes out of forty-eight, and this had always been a strong Democratic precinct. My opponent was a strong candidate and entirely familiar with political tactics, an old scholar in the school.But when the votes were counted I received the certificate of election and laid down the tamping bar and took up the pen. I could have established a precedent and been elected again but dearie’s health would not permit and I declined to run.
Some say the hand of fate guides our destinies and it was so to be, but I am at a loss to understand why it should so be. I have lived clean, I have always met my obligations with the strictest honor, no marks of dissipation, inwardly or otherwise, have scarred my form and thank God he nor any other can find any danger signals that can isolate me from a free transport to the narrow path. I have been economical, conservative and kind and I think I have done my very best. I have treated every one with the closest application that can be unravelled from the ten commandments andthe additional commandment established through Christ.
All through my married life I have been attentive to my wife and in any room of our mortgaged home you can see many tokens of affection that she has received. I have endeavored to lighten her domestic burden and almost every Monday morning for the past twelve years I have been the propeller at the washing machine. Hundred of times I have arisen between the hours of three and four and wended my way to the family kitchen and waded in on the soiled linen. I never sneaked out the back way to avoid using the tea towel on waiting dishes. I can use the broom, duster and make the beds. I can scrub, polish the stove, cook the steak, and perform almost the entire category of domestic needs; but when it comes to baking Iwould rather face the cannon’s mouth (a silent one like in the city park in Denver) and die like a martyr. I have often acted as maid. I recall once when I was a maid my wife was bed fast for three weeks. We lived in a strong church town, somewhere near eighty per cent, it seemed nearly all were Christians but during dearie’s sickness there was not a single Christian woman or suffragist came to see her, offered her services, or was in any way interested. I am sorry this happened in this broad land of boasted Christianity and civilization. Some of these same Christian ladies never failed to appear when the dues for foreign missions were bordering on delinquency or when some rations were needed for a church spread.
I believe in doing good and giving cheer. You can always notice a gleam of pleasure inyour wife’s face when you give her a box of candy, a dress, a dish, or some little token, and how she clings to the missiles of love that you may have penned on scraps of paper, chunks of wood and other things. They always speak for something I think meritable. I think the pathway of dearie can be made more cheerful if she is remembered daily and not all in one chunk at Christmas time, and then let her wait for another twelve months. I never feared I would kiss my wife too much. I kiss her more now than when I courted her and they are just as sweet as ever. It helps to keep the love light in her eye.
I have three fine children. I am not conceited about them; other people say they are good. I have done my best to raise them well. Two of them are in the County HighSchool, the eldest a girl of sweet sixteen and the other a noisy boy of fourteen. The remaining one is a baby of two and one-half years. I must leave these three children and dearie and look for employment. You can realize how pleasant it is to be separated from them. How sad it is to kiss dearie and the others good bye and have the many cute sayings of a strongly attached baby ringing in your ears, not only through the dreary, lonesome days but long after the shadows fall.
Such is life with its pains and sorrows. They come to us all and while I may think my road is rougher than is allotted the ordinary individual I suppose others think the same. The one great consolation I have is that dearie is almost a strong, well woman, and that is worth all I have passed through and I would gladly undergo it again for her. I must begetting ready, the colonists reduced rates of our liberal hearted “S-T-E-E-L” railroads is near the finis of the twelve-day limit. The parting is at hand. I kiss the loved ones good bye, cling tenaciously to my second-class ticket, guard well my pneumatic pocket book with its ragged puncture and try again in pretty California among the salty ocean breezes, the cheerful flowers, the fragrant orange blossoms and the shady pepper trees to find work and health for those I love. GOOD BYE.