The Arkansaw traveler., 1883-09-08
AQuARrER OF A CENTURY AGO
peek'sSan

AQUARTER OF A CENTURY AGO.
 peek's sun
 The Whitewater CI,osi. 4. a paper published by an old sohoolma,e of ,he editor of the .SEs. starts out an article scoring the boys as follows:
 A, ,he risk of beng thought ioo fas,idi9 GUS. and sailed a E.arseef, the Ases...s wishes for aheu; the ionrSeenih time, ic make few mud remarks upon ~hai il considers I ereNins eNIL There has fo' long ume past seemed 10 be a strong tendency on the lart oi qui,e number oi ,he Iisins generation to
 indulge ia ageod deAi of ,dioiie enthusiasm and genera devilisAaess.a
 Stop right there, old pard. When any m an who has been a boy himself. as we know the editor of the C1,oa;.ls has, at tempts to pu, on dignity and take the boys of the present day across his ]ourn- alstic knee. because they indulge m " idiotic enthusiasm" he starts ,he lnsh in us, and the red hair snaps like s,rok- ing the fur of cat the wrong way. Let the editor Of the CAyoSi.is look back t~en,y-6ve years, and think of the devil. |try that was going on among boys al that time. and compare ii with the quiet of to- |Aay. He complains because boys ~ho Fcan raise two shillings 70 to the hall and ge, ID the gallery and whistle and stamp and shout as an entertainment. Twenty Eve years ago, in that same town. boys never thought of paying to go in a show at that same hall. but crawled up 10 the window on boards, and 20, Tn. and the audience could consider itself in luck if | they didn't raise the roof. The boys of . quarter of a century ago, in that town, were regular cow-Soys compared wi,h lyour truly good boys of the present day. Why, man, don't you remember when a Sunday morning Tn summer would have seemed tame indeed if the people on ,he ! way 10 church did no, md a procession of nifty wagons on Main street, placed there the night betore by the boys" Don't you remember how every wagon contained crockery crate. with a dog inside, and each cage labeled wi,h the name of some rare animal. caught m the ,ungleS of Africa, or lassoed on the plains of Venezuela by the Indians. You re-
 member how a man had to chain down the outhouse at the back oi his store or he would be apt to fnd i, on Main street n the morning. with a sign on II full of information. Of course your great mind can go back 10 the time when every sign in town that was not printed on stone, or GU, m marble in the sidewalk. would appear m the wrong place m the morn- ing. and you can recall how the long faced citizens who could no; see any fun in such monkey work, said those boys would all fetch up in state prison. We have watched the state prison record for a quarter of a century, and no, a single name of one of those old Whitewater boys IS recorded in any prison, but we can poin, out fifteen of them who occupy high positions in all branches of business. There are lawyers, as good as the state can produce, among those nocturnal menagerie organizers and smoke-house movers. of the olden time. There is z judge of a western state who used to make speciality of putting zebra stripes on white dog wi;h backing brush, for his sisters, who never could he made to believe that the son of a baptist min- isser had in the nature ot things, any of the kittenishness of other boys, but he had II bigger than anybody. And yet his deeisions, on the judical bench of Colo rado, are said 10 be marked with no evil dence that he ever worked half the night 10 carry the north corner of A smoke house around block to have it ready m the morning. There is capitalist living in this city, who helped place a two hundred pound wooden boot. stolen from . in front of shoe store, upon a school house al Whitewater one night, but the exercise did him good, and nobody was harmed. Some of the best merchants, bankers, manufactures and professional men of the state, grew up from these devils, who made Whitewater fairly howl on dark nights twenty-five years ago. and I, is astonishing tha, paper, published by one of the boys, should kick because the boys of the present day whistle and stamp their fee, no~-a-days. The .San does not wish to have boys do such things no~, because II is no, necessary, and there are other ways to stir up the blood, bu; 1t does not want people to feel that boys are all going 10 the devil because they do occasionally saaSr cte..