Weekly Chillicothe crisis. (Chillicothe, Livingston Co., Mo.) 1878-19??, 1882-01-19
The Native Michigander


n. Quad, in The Detroit Free Press
l have been studying him for a
week. About seven O'Clock every ev-
ening he comes in from his farm and
takes seat beside me on the veranda
of the country hotel. No one intro
duced us. He came stumping along
the first evening, flung down his old
straw hat and exclaimed:
"Durn nay hide if it isn't burned
hotr
had been roasting all day, and so l
struck hands with him at once. He
has never asked whether l was the
Duke of Sutherland or a railroad
switchman, and l have never asked
why he didn't cut his hair, shave off
his matted whiskers and fix a tin spout
in one corner of his mouth to accom-
modate the flow of tobacco juice.
The native Michigander is q good
fellow at heart, but he has his eccen-
trcities.
"Yes, | struck this state over fifty
years ago." he said to me the other
evening, as he hunted in his hind
pocket for his plug tobacco. "I've
heard the wolves howl, the bars roar
and the panthers scream"
"You have, eh?"
"You bet havel Yes, sir, and I've
lived all winter on acorns, slept all
summer in tree.top, and walked for
ty-two miles through the woods to
prayer.meeting. Say, did you ever live
in the woods forty miles from the
nearest human hyena, black or white?'
"Never."
"Did you ever have to go barefoot
in snow four foot deep?"
mo"
Ever shake with the ager right
along for 284 days, Sundays included2"
"No."
"Dod rot your pampered counte.
nance, of course you never did. What
did you ever do towards making Mich
igan the great and glorious state she
now is?'
"Nell, I've run a laWn-m0wer."
run a thunder to blazes How
many acres of forest do you 'spose I've
cut DOWN."
Two"
"Two! Why, you onery hyena, my
old woman has slashed down over for
ty herself, and she's left.handed, at
that. | calkerlate, sir-I solemnly cal
kerlate that I've cleared off at least
three hundred acres of the toughest
kind of forest, Ali sir, you petted
and pampered children of luxury little
dream of what us old natives had to
endure, How much tea do you sup
pose | had in my house the first ten
years Of our pioneer lifep"
"Twenty-live chests"
"Twenty-tive, what" he roared, as
he hunted for more plug. 1--WE had
just two drawings and no more"
Couldn't you get trusted at the cor
ner groceryp"
"Get trusted! Corner grocery Why,
you internal young lunatic, wasn't l
located forty miles from the highest
grocery! That's what I've been tell
ing you all long. Old pioneers couldn't
afford such luxuries as that. How
much do you 'spose our outfit cost us
for housekeepil'gp'
"Perhaps $4,000, but that's accord.
ing to the style of your carpets, piano
and paintings. Did you have lace cur
tains hung on poles"
He jumped up and down like a man
with a piece of beefstake in his wind
pipe, and | thought he was goner.
However, after higher jump than his
crooked old legs seemed capable of he
blurted out:
"You Internal burned fool, but we
didn't have nothing that we couldn't
carry on our backs Do you 'spose we
was a-foOlin' around with pianers out
there in the virgin wilderness! Lace
curtains hung on polesl Not much
If I'd had spare shirt on a pole I'd
have been perfectly satisfied. None
of you spilled children of luxury kin
have any idea of how we had to get
along in them old days"
81 presume not"
"One winter when the old woman
was sick | h I'd nothing to feed her but
salt coon and corn dodgers"
"Oyster soup would have been
nice"
"Oyster thunderl Who knew any
thing about oysters fifty years agoY
Don't l keep telling you that l was
miles in the woods?'
ayes, but why didn't you get out y
"Gt outl What furp'
"Why, you might have got out and
lived on your mother-in-law and had a
trotting horse, plug hat, diamond
pin and a high living. You were very
foolish to stay in the woods, where
they had no ward caucuses, Or military
parades, or circus professions, or ginger
beer or banana puddings."
We generally end here. The old ma.
tive chocks and gasps and jumps up
and down and kicks his hat into the
street and goes away saying:
"Them burned pampered idiots of
luxury wouldn't keer two cents if the
hull state was growed up to jackpines
so thick that a rabbit couldn't get
through"
But next night he comes again to
wrestle me for the companionship.