The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1880-03-18
OVER SUNDAY IN NEW SHARON.

We reached New Sharon, my friend
Eastman and /. at noon of a radiant
Kansas Saturday. Our visit being
merely one of curiosity, we could not |
fail to notice at first glance the uncouth |
and striking newness of every thing !
and yet it somehow seemed to us that |
the town might have been there ALWAYS, |
so strongly did it hint in its very depth |
of grotesque freshness a strange, pa
thetic notion of decay, which even the
! all-pervadiag glare and scent of unpaint-
ed pine but slightly Tefuted. The build
| ings were of such varying and irrelevant
! patterns, and so lacking in neighborli-
ness of size and attitude, that one was
! justified in wondering if they had not
| been bought at auction. Few of them
! boosted any UNDERMINING, and many of
them sat dizzily perched upon awkward
| cOrner-prOps, as if fearing a flood
| There were no fences, and hence no
| doOr-yards; no trees and no awnings,
and therefore an unchecked excess of
sunlight Above the town, a spray of
sandy loan blew northward in frequent
and rapid whirlwinds, and settled with
sort of resentful disdain about the over
looking cupOla at the center of the pub
lie square (''the park by courtesy,
which proved to be the ambitious top of
a structure designed to serve in time
the purposes of a courthouse, but con-
tenting itself for the present with the
humber, though more popular. uses of
a shooting gallery. Here and there,
too, tents were pitched, with blankets
spread upon the guy-rOpes; and oppo-
site our hotel, railroad freight-car,
shorn of its wheels and squatting in the
dust, abjectly besought patronage with
a placard announcing "Meals at all
hours.''
The railroad denoted the boundary of
the town proper on the south; and
thence spread a succession of yellow
pine-board pens, filed with cattle-ant-
Tered, uneasy, alien looking cattle-out
over the level bottom land, pen after
pen, until the boards became shadows,
and the beasts lost their identity, and
} all that was left was a queer, sinister
) perplexity of uplifted and tossing horns.
For New Sharon, let me hasten to ex-
plain, was what is known out West as
/ g a cattle-town that novel frontier
village which belongs to a branch of
: commerce, an aspect of life, unknown
, elsewhere under the sun. Indeed, it
was not possible even here so recently
/ rs fifteen years ago, when the vast
2 plains of the Kansas border were the
sheer of geOgraphers, and their short,
mOss-ike grass was supposed to be little
f more than a mimicry in nature, fit only
} for fire and frost to sport with and make
2 ridiculous. But the railroad came
along at length and spanned the desert,
and the nimble-witted Kansan, putting
< this and that together, evolved the idea
, that a pastIIrage upon which the plenti-
| full buffalo had lived and fiourished for
= ages, perhaps certainly ever since 1912,
A when the Spanish explorer Coronado
: crossed it and saw it populated with the
5 humpbacked oXen,'' as he described
= them-might be profitably utilized in
/ grazing cattle to supply eastern markets.
2 And SO the immense herds roaming half
e wild upon the Texan pampas, and there
4 valued only for their hides and tallOw,
were turned in this direction; and the
} scOrned expanse of Kansas prairie from
| which the locomotive had but yesterday
frightened the buffalo soon began. to
2 furnish fat, sleek beeves to New York,
2 Philadelphia and Boston at the rate of
hundreds of thousands a year. In
round numbers, over four million head
have thus been disposed of since 1870,
and more than once the cattle-men of
Kansas have been able to dictate prices
! rs far away as Liverpool.
AS direct outgrowth of this new and
important business, evoked from chaos,
, as it were, came the cattle-town-the
cOnverging point of the narrow, ram
bling trails to and from the outlying graz
ing grounds, the rendezvous of the drov-
ers and herders, the agreed depot for
the collection, assortment, branding,
sale and shipment of the cattle; and
New Sharon, at the time we saw it, was
chief of its class, and at the flood-tide of
its activity and consequence. The town
-fN IaI TOD 1Oer- = ,say,
before, it is true; but already the pOpu-
latiOn-'' counting transients,n as the
landlord phrased it-numbered as many
as three thousand, while fully fifty thou
sand cattle were gathered there, await
ing purchasers and transportation and
! all that the young city required to make
, her SO the metropolis of the Southwest, -
{ the landlord assured us, was a second
railroad and some artesian wells, for dry
E weather.
! The street along which we strolled,
while making our observations, was
the main one of New Sharon
, Grand Avenue, it was named; wide,
like the road to Avernus, and side
: walked with long, slender, creaking
: planks, laid in the perfunctory and I'M
certain style of a midnight pontOOn.
+ The symbols and inscriptions over the
E doors and on the windows were largely
o of a nature to unsettle our confidence in
what the landlord had told us in praise
of the water of the locality; for the
/ neutrality-suspicious. Outnumbered all other
! places of business, three to one. We
| counted seventeen of them in distance
I, of half as many rods, bearing such signs
: as "The AlamO,'' "The Snuggery, -
. " Wallapus," Old Fruit 'sDew-
q drop Inn, - and in front of one of them
9 we stopped to read, over the pier-glass
and the pyramidal display of tumbers
: on the shelf behind the counter, this
: unique monition: Drinks Cash.
That's Nine is Played Out" They
n were surprisingly quiet, though, it
1 seemed to us, for summer afternoon
o purveyOrs of good cheer; and in many
cases the bar-tenders, whom we recog-
nized at once by their characteristic lit
. tie white aprons and the pink elastic on
p their shirt-sleeves, were lounging out
side the open door, idly fumbling their
= long, gaudy watch-chains, or exchang-
; ing lazy chaff with their fell
, | lows across the street. The whole
E town, in fact, wore an ambushed
E and waiting air. Occasionally a solita V
!. herder would canter by on his faded d
!. unwilling pony; at times we caught the
+ subdued hum of a sewing machine and
!. once a woman, the first we had seen
, since our arrival, drew aside a curtain
: and glanced out at us furtively, with red
/ and curious eyes. But these were the
6 only interruptions of the general leth-
: argy, if we omit the solemn lowing of
the cattle, which really tended to deepen
rather than disturb the stiffness.
Not until v-o boI laft tho Lost of tba