The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-05-26
LOCATING TREE CLAIMS.
The Barrenness of the learning for Dakota
"A Leaf from Experience.

"A Leaf from Experience.
Bill Nye in Laramie Boomerang.
am up here in River Falls Wis, patient
ly waiting for the snow banks to wilt away
an d gentle spring to come again. Gentle
spring, as l go to press, hath not yet doomed
up. Nothing in fact, hath doomed up, as
YET save the great Dakota boom. Every body
from the servant girl with symphony in
smut on her face and the boundless waste of
freckles athwart her nose, up to the Nor
NAL school graduate, with enough knowl-
edge to start grist-mill for the Gods,
has "a claim" in the promised land, the great
wild-goose orchard and tadpole aquarium of
the new Northwest. The honest farmer
deserts his farm around which cluster a
thousand memories of the past, and buckiing
on his web feet, he fees to the frog ponds of
the great northern watershed to make a
tree claim" and be happy.
Such is life. We battle on bravely for years,
cutting out white-oak grubs and squashing
army worms on shingle, in order that we
may dwell beneath our own vine and plum
tree and then we sell and take wings toward
Wild unknown country, where land is dirt
cheap, where the wicked cease from troubling
and the weary are at rest.
That is where we get left, if 1 may be al
lowed an Americanism, or whatever it is.
We are never at rest. The more we emigrate
the more worthless, unsatsfed and trifling
we become. l have seen the same family go
through Laramie City six times, because they
knew not of contentment The first time
they went West in Pullman car "for their
health" The husband rashly told sad-eyed
man that he lied and in a little while the
sun was obscured by loose teeth and hair
The ground was torn up and vegetation was
killed where the discussion was held
Then the family went home to To-
ledo. They went in day coach and said a
Pullman car was full of malaria and DEATH
Their relatives made sport of them, and lifted
up their yawp and yawped at them inso-
much that the yawpness thereof was as the
town caucus for might. Then the tourists
on the following spring packed up two pill
lows and pink comforter, and a change of
ralment, and gat them into the emigrant
train and journeyed into the land which is
called Arizona, where the tarantula elm beth
up on the innerside of the pantaloon and
tickleth the limb of the pilgrim as he Jour-
neyeth, and behold he getteth in his work,
and the leg of that man is greater than it was
aforetime, even like unto the leg of piano
Well, to cut long story short, that family
got to going to Montana by bull team and
every time the light of hope was in their
eyes, the tint OF joy for its future was on
their cheeks. Sometime one of the children
would die, but the kind angles would fork
over another one and all would go we'll again.
but at last they had to go on foot. l saw the
old man not long ago starting for Dakota.
He had set of store teeth that didn't
match by an inch or two and looked as
though they were made for larger man
than he was and he talked like
one whose vulcanized rubber roof
didn't fit his mouth and who is q
little skittish for fear the sealing wax
gum of his wisdom teeth will get mixed up
with his tonsils and shut off his wind. but
he was hopeful and almost tckled to death
with the idea of going up into the wild goose
country and communing with nature and
living on frog legs and angle-worms The
more l think OF these things the more l be-
lieve I'd rather have contentment and por-
ter-house steak with mushrooms, than to
have tree claim in Dakota and seaweed and
pelican on toast 1t is better to be poor and
patient, seems to me- than to squat on del
uge and prove up with quo warranto and a
double barreled shotgun.