Dodge City times. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1876-1892, 1878-03-23
TIMOTHY WARE, ESQ.

den gate anu IoOheU uoWH tne rotu
You might have noticed him, perhaps,
as you passed aiong-a wrinkled, keen
eyed. elderly man. Now elderliness, l
take it, is further off from the sweet
ripeness and flavor of old age than youth
itself. To be elderly presupposes some
thinness of blood, some sort of inexpres-
sible poverty of nature, such as there
seems to be all about this region where
r. Wares house is located range of
long, low-lying. uneasy hillocks that
could never settle themselves to any
thing: a sandy, incapable stretch Of
thread-bare grass and stunted wood
land.
1t was not an easy thing to imagine
that Just over the south ridge lay a
smiling and fruitful country, a thrifty
settlement n Quaker farmers, who held
themselves, perhaps, a little too much
aloof from this inhospitable neighbor-
hood.
1t was chill October afternoon, and
the low, slant rays of the setting sun
looked furtively out from blue-black
ridge Of cloud over the garden and the
gardens owner. There had been a frost
over night, which had wiped out almost
every lingering vestige OF summertime.
A few elderly beans chung shrinkingly
to their poles in the bleak background;
scanty patch OF corn rustled its sere
leaves forlornly in the wind, with here
and there pumpkin ripening sparsely
between, and turning out its yellow ro-
tundity to the sun, as resolved to put
the best face on things that was possible;
while, tall and stark, a row of suntlow-
ers, tapping gauntly above the hedge,
overlooked the desolation.
As old Ware stood there at his gate
and looked about him, with his faded
red cap on his head and his lank dress
ing-gown clinging about him, he seemed
verify part of the frost-bitten scene,
illustrating it feebly, like an ill-cut
frontispiece in badly printed volume.
Yet there was tradition that he had
once upon time been the chief figure
in great concern somewhere in town,
and that in some forgotten period long
ago the old weather-beaten house had
Haunted gayly in new coat of paint
and bright green shutters, and was
bright with new carpets and curtains to
welcome a coming bride. But all that
was so far away now that people had
forgotten the date, and could not recall
that they had ever been interested in
any thing concerning old Ware.
Tin Ware, Esq, the boys called him
"a nickname based, perhaps on float
ing legend of miser-made wealth slowed
somewhere away in the loose clap
boarding of his tenement, or perhaps
intended briefly to bear testimony to
the value set upon him in the commu-
nity-Tin Ware, Esq, was not a popu-
lar man among the lads of the village.
They had a persistent inclination to boot
him, to gibe at him, and to torment his
lean, ill-tempered dog, which followed
his master everywhere with snarling
and Objectionable faithfulness. The
boys, considering all these things, felt
themselves called upon to yindicate the
claims of justice by robbing old Wares
orchard and breaking into his melon
patch. Things in this way were brought
to a sort of balance. l myself saw one
day, as passed his fence, a huge char
coal placard, reading thus:
B. Ware of the DAWG.
And many 4 bare-legged youngster,
have no doubt, hid snickering in the
hedge at the sight of old Ware slowly
deciphering the scrawlin wrathful spec
tacles.
But very few besides the boys ever
troubled the old man with attentions,
either for good or i'll. He seemed to
have slipped from the mind of both man
and fate-an elderly, shriveled old figure
whom Time had forgotten to dignity
with gray hair.
He looked up and down the road
keenly with his frosty blue eye, not as
man who expected any thing or any
body, but simply because it was his
habit to look sharply. And yet as this
northeasterly glance swept the road,
there came along 1t something far from |