St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1886-10-09

of Dakota as an agricultural country.
When it comes to the question of dilatlOn.
Mr.. Groat has master hand, and the
stories told heretofore by him regarding
that Northwest country have brought him
into prominence as the great American
dilator, with large d.
Rich and outrageous eXtravaganzas are
looked for in his forthcoming pamphlet,
and already the proof-sheets have been
placed in the hands of few
of his most intimate friends
for perusal and criticism. and the verdict is
that the coming book will be the greatest
effort of Mr.. Greats life. 1t will not be an
objectionable betrayal of confidence to give
the public an outline of few pages of the
work, and warn them of the avalanche of
''lurid, perhaps" that is about to be hurled
upon them. Mr.. Groat opens the third
chapter in the following cheerful strain:
In the East, thousands of people plant and
SOW sin the moon" to insure rapid growth,
but in Dakota it is dangerous to plant in the
prolific phase of the MOON so they are care
full to plant at such time that the moon will
exert its influence in holding the crop back.
have known several disasters to result from
neglect of this precaution. One day last
January 1 got lost out in the
country. While l was tolling through the
tall new grass saw man with nothing on
but his suspenders, tearing along like mad.
He stopped just long enough to tell me what
was up. and off he went again for the Iowa
side of the Sioux river, which he cleared at
bound and fell into a snowdrift four feet
deep. He said that himself and his wife
had looked up the moon business and had
planted their garden the evening before, but
happened to get hold of a last years almanac
and missed it about four days. The result
was that when he woke up that morning, the
hot hn nj Cd nrtx Foot fha
house had crushed in his cellar walls and
squash vine had taken the door off its hinges
and was just hopping the floor with all there
was left of his hired man, whom it had
snatched out of bed in the attic. He didn't
know where his wife was but he saw some
shreds of a nightgown and several agate butt
tons in the front yard as he fed. He said
there were pea vines after him with pods on
them large enough for ferry-boats. One
could see by the way he was dressed that if
he was liar at all, he was not Dakota thor
oughbred sample"
After painting beautiful portrait of the
climate of the territory, in water colors,
Mr.. Groat takes his pen off his ear and lays
himself out in this style:
about two weeks ago l saw farmer out
behind strawstack gathering into heap a
lot of old bones and pieces of hides and
sprinklihg salt on them. Yesterday saw this
same man selling fine pair of steers to
butcher up town. They were so fat and had
filed out so fast, that he had pieced out their
hides with an old buffalo robe. This granger
was a Sunday school superintendent before
he came to Dakota, but he swore that these
were the same cattle had seen him kicking
together behind the straw stack. He said all
they had eaten was some wild grass that had
sprung up in his doOr-yard where the women
folks had thrown out few tubs of warm
soap suds on wash days. He said that he had
l@l,a 80 Oal-.
Dakota was to knock them all to pieces in
the fall and set them up again as wanted,
otherwise, unless there was blizzard every
week. they were liable TO get too fat and
round on the native grass.
One would think that man of Mr..
Greats unselfish disposition would be salts
fed with this display of his fertile mag
inaton but instead, he spits over his
shoulder and giving his pen an extra grip,
goes on in the following wild, unsubdued
strain:
Last fall while in the territory, I stopped at
a house to borrow match to light my pipe
with. The man told me to go right out in the
garden and pick all 1 wanted. 1 did not know
what he meant at first, but he went out with
me and there was about half an acre growing
of the finest parlOr matches l ever saw. He
said he had a poor crop the year before, be-
cause the seed was too good for such soil.
one-fourth tooth picks and got
splendid yield. L went out
after breakfast and saw the man blowing up
Hubbard squashes with gunpowder. They
were too large to be moved and the farmer
wanted the land.
/ noticed that one of his wife's legs was
about eight inches longer than the other, and
the man explained it thus: He said when
they first came to Dakota they lived in dug
out, with nothing but the ground for floor,
from which they had to NOW the grass once
a day to find the baby. He said his wife had
a habit of sitting with one leg over the other
knee, and the leg that remained IN contact
with the soil got such a start that the other
could never catch up.
These are but few samples of the light,
easy way Mr.. Groat has of writing about
the great territory. He finishes the last
chapter with these words:
This territory must be divided sometime
before the day of judgment, for how could
the Almighty ever audit its accounts with
only one set of clerical angels at work at a
time?