Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1883-1888, 1884-11-21
THE STORY OF LAPPIN.

The Commonwealth yesterday announced
that Samuel Lappin was back in the Shaw
nee county Jail from whence he fiitted-if
the word fit can be applied to so ponder
Gus body--so many years ago; back again,
and so tired that he fell asleep as soon as
he reached the shelter of his cell.
Lappn's case adds another to the million
illustrations of the truth, ''the way of the
transgressor is bard. He was swell fixed"
when he was the financial "boss" up in
Nemaha county. He was a big. gross, dull
eyed man, eager for money and hard-faced
in its accumulation, but many people blind
" associate bowels with benevolence, and
in spite of his ferceness for money Lappin
enjoyed sort Of popIarity among his towns
men. He never did any real, pure, unselfish
good that we have heard of, but he was an
.'enterprising" citizen, which may signify,
after all, only very mean man who pushes
the public along before him as a
screen for his own covetousness; who dis
COURSES on railroads, court houses, and even
churches, because they are good for his own
town lots. If all the orthodox theologians
are not mistaken, there has accumulated by
this time a great deal of enterprise in
hell.
In time Lappin appeared in a state con-
treasurer. His face, and such little scraps
of his history as had become public proper
tv, ought to have warned the convention,
but it did not. He was nominated largely
through the efforts of a man who was his di-
rect opposite in character; as big-hearted as
I.appin was narrow; as careless Of money as
I.appin was tenacious about it; as much be-
loved as Lappin was disliked; as honest as
Iappin was..tricky,.. late Nathan Price
1t was big, broad-shouldered honest Price
making a speech about ''honest old Sam
Lappn" that nominated Lappin, a man of
iron covered with ;allow.
Iappin was hardly esconsced in office till a
| change was ,ticeable in his appearance.
He became pre-occupied and sombre, and
one fine day It was discovered that "honest
old Sam Lappin" was a forger.
They put him in jail-he who had been so
much of man in Seneca, and had been en-
trusted by the state with her treasure-but
that jail was nothing to what followed.
There chung to him in jail and everywhere a
soldier, or rather child of fortune, whose
sketches of life in South America the read
ers of the Champion looked over not many
months ago, and to this man Lappin owed
the miserable gift of liberty. Better for him
had he gone through il ali; the trial, tine YER
diet of guilty, the standing up in the court
room, pierced by thousand eyes, to bear
the sentence of the judge. He fled
from comfort and shelter, even
with disgrace, to peril, wandering,
exile, forlornness, and disgrace still.
Guided by his faithful friend, he went
north, then to Duluth, through the long
chain of the "fresh, unsalted seas" to Mon
treaI, then to South America. He was
heard of in vague, unrealistie way, much
as we hear of the sea serpent, on the coast
of South America, where there is no rain,
where the earth shiyers, hot as il is, with
then at Valparaiso, then he had gone to
Uruguay. always wandering. OF the pitiful
history of his family in these years We do
not care to speak-once happy, by his act
made miserable. The only figure we regard
is the fugitive, wandering in deserts or An
dean SHOWS; thinking all the time of the
pleasant homes and the wide streets, and
the rows Of maple trees, and the court house
| and the public square in Seneca.
| He was safe enough in South America,
| but he could not stay there, and so in some
wav he got away to the northward from be-
low the equator to above the tropic of Can
Ger. He found himself in Washington ter
ritory, in bis native country at least, where
| he could hear from his old home in a few
| DAYS and perhaps once in while the Cour-
| Ter and the Tribune, wrinkled and greasy
and worn in the mail bags, or from being
| blown about the streets, but still with
enough legible to show up the old familiar
names in the legal notices and the advertise
meats. lie could not wear his own name
| he called himself Richardson's; and Richard
son, it may be, stood in a group and heard
some man from Kansas talk about the
country. The story goes that he went
around and peddled books and pictures, and
4 i may be that in some houses the women
talked to him about their homes in sunny
Kansas which they left to come to watery
| Washington territory. Then he got up and
left the house and walked away, but he met
| man from Kansas at last, by name Weiss
| bach, once small politician out at Frank
| fort, and who has gone to Washington terri
tory, and with his oifiee-seeking intellect had
got II be mayor of the little city of Tacoma.
| lie saw Lappin, and hoping himself TO get
paid for trip back to Kansas, informed on
| the old weather-beaten wanderer, and so he
| is back again where he started.
Kansas people are not ''old Romans" by
any means. They are kind hearted as d rule
! and know when a man has got enough. They
do not seem at all proud of Weissbach in
his great amateur detective act and actual
ly seem to sympathse with poor old Lappin
after his twenty thousand miles of wander.
| ing. The money he filched was long ago re-
stored; the small hole he made in the treas
ury was stopped up again, the witnesses are
dead, gone away, or have become lost; jus
tice had put up her old sword, and for all
anybody in Kansas cares, some kind hand
might leave the Jail door open SO that Lap
pin conld arise and depart without delay,
nor longer see in ''eyery bush an officer"