Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1884-03-07
A journalistic Tcndcrfoot.

nind as he reads THIS ltelu lnlS nlOrn-
; n n similar experience, perhaps,
,,hhao,oh-perhaps not so pronounced and
porly one summer morning 81 gawky
-onna tcndcrfoot, both as TO the West
sud he details of journalism, came into
.he ollice md asked me for Il job as a
a laarrrcsnondent to write up the mines in
W",.,h PARK. He wore his hair longish
a,d tried to make it curl. The result
' ".s q Greasy c%oat-collar and the gen.
wal ioHt ensemble of tho genius ''smart
,io.k.n He had also clothed himself
~ the extravagant clothes of the dime
- vel scout and beautiful girl rescuer
-, the Indian country. He had been
W 1r;ven West by a wild desire to hunt the
t,aaraut Sioux warrior and do a general
Mid Bill business, hoping no doubt
,ofore the season closed to rescue enough
n'.utjful captive maidens to get up q
Yong Vassar College in Wyoming or
Montana.
told him that we did not care for a
mining correspondent who did not know
n niece of blossom rock from a gerani-
nm, | knew it took q nan a good many
Years to gain knowledge enoughto know
where to sink q prospect shaft even,
and as to passing opinions or a vein, it
would seem almost wicked and s%acrilc-
oiors to send a man out there among
those old grisly miners who had spent
their lives in bitter experience, unless
tbe Young man could readily distinguish
,be noints of difference between a chunk
Of free milling quartz and a fragment of
bologna sausage.
He still thought he could write us let
tcrs that would do the paper some
eternal good, and though 1 told him, as
he wrung my hand and left, to refrain
from writing or doing any work for us,
he wrote q letter before he had reached
lhe home station on the stage road or at
least lent us a long letter from there. It
might have been written before he
started, however.
The letter was OF the s'we-have- WENT
md .l-have-never-saw" variety, and
lie spelled curiosity ''qrossity." He
worked hard to get the word into his al
leged letter, and then assassinated it.
We'll, we paid no attention whatever
to the letter, but meantime he got into
the mines, and the way he dead-headed
feed and sour mash on the strength Of
his relations with the press made the
older miners weep.
Buck Bramel got a little worried and
wrote to me about it. He said that our
soft-eved mining savant was getting us
a Good many subscribers and writing
ND every little gopher hole in North
Park. and living on Cincinnati quail, as
we miners call bacon; but he said that
none OF these fine blooming letters, re-
gardjng the assays on the weasel
ASleepS,' 1.-The Pauper's Dream"
.Ihe Mary Ellen" and "The Over
Iraft,' ever seemed to crop out in the
paper.
Why was it?
Iwrote back that the white-eyed pei
lean from the Observation-Disclosures
plains of Arkansas had not RENTED,
was not employed by us and that l
would write and publish u little card OF
Introduction for the bilious littcrateur
that would make people take in their
domestic animals and lock up their front
fences and garden fountain.
In the meantime they sent him up the
eulch to find some ~"Iloat." He had
wandered awag from camp thirty miles
before he remembered that he didn't
know what ''float" looked like. Then
hethought he would 90 back and inquire.
He got lost while IN a dark brown study
and drifted into the bosom of the I'M
movable. He d dn't miss the trail un-
til a perpendicular wall of the Rocky
Mountains about 900 feet high, rose up
and hit him athwart the nose.
He communed with nature and coy
otes one night and hal a pretty tough
time of it. He frozc his nose partially
off and the coyotes came and gnawed his
little dimpled toes. He passed a
wretchcd night and was greatly annoy
ed by the cold, which at that elevation
sends the mercury toward zero all
through the summer months.
OF course he pulled the zodiac par
TALLY over him, and tried to button his
alpaca buster a little closer, but his
sleep was troubled by the sociability OF
the coyotes and the midnight twitter OF
the mountain lion. He ate moss agate
rare and spruce gum for breakfast.
When he got to camp he looked like a
forty-day starvationist looking for q
Job.
They asked him if he found any float,
and he said he didn't find a blamed
~ "oICl, say uoCAAllS Ao"o
and then they all laughed a merry laugh
and said that if he showedup at dayligh
the next morning within the limits o.
the park the orders were to burn him p
the stake. E
The next morning neither he nor thu
best bay mule on the Troublesome wa:
to be seen with the naked eye. Afte'
that we heard of him in the San Juar
country,
He had lacerated the finer feelings O
theminers down there and had violated
the etiquette of the San Juan, SO they
kicked a flour barrel out from under
him n day when he was looking the
other way, and being a poor tight-rope
performer, he got tangled up in a piece
OF inch rope in such a way that he die.
OF his injuries Bill Nye. IN Detros
Free Press.
Some malicious fellow, whom thu
law ought to put where he can do Nc
harm, put five bars of soap in the waite
tank on the Brunswick Il Western Road
near Waycross, Ga, the other day. Ih'
night express, that came along next