Sturgis advertiser. (Sturgis, Dakota [S.D.]) 1887-1???, 1888-12-20
JACK WHEELER, CRANK.
BY LA MOBILE.


there was no manner Of doubt All of
the neighborhood said so. All the men
avoided him; the ladies We're patronlz-
ing, as if they felt their superiority to
him with his impracticable schemes and
manageable ideas. The very children
In the street would say to one another:
aThere goes Jack Wheeler. He's
crank.
Now, it must be proved to the salts
faction of any reasonable person that
Jack Wheeler really was crank; but
there are cranks and cranks in this
latter-day world Of ours. He might be
a crank to some men and not to others
Some communities might condemn him
as crank and others laud him as
public benefactor. Not to mention the
army of lesser cranks of various kinds,
he would probably be considered crank
by some if he were a man of one idea;
if he had single life work, and devoted
all his time and energy to that, to the
exclusion of the fashionable follies and
vices of the day; if he were deeply
learned and progressive in any OF the
sciences; if he lifted his voice for the
suppression of vice; if he urged human
ity to beasts; if he believed (and voted
that one man has no right to transform
his fellow man into brute;if his ideas
on any of a thousand-and-one other
things differed materially from those ac-
cepted by the mass of his fellow beings,
he ran great risk of being dubbed
crank.
But Jack Wheeler was not any one OF
these cranks At least, not any one OF
them alone. He had not sud
denly become a crank. 1t had
been growing upon him from
childhood. As a boy he was reflective,
imaginative. At school he was not a
success. While his classmates We're
struggling with the fundamental facts
of arithmetic, Jack sat dreamily
watching the ceiling, and wondering how
it must seem to the flies to walk with
their feet upward; or gazing out of the
window and marshalling the number
less feecy clouds into vast armies OF
angels waiting upon the pleasure OF
their yelled King, the Sun; or seeing
in the angry storm-clouds the dark hosts
of rebelIious angels of whom he had
read in his Bible stories; and once he
was kept after school because he had
emptied his ink-bottle into the pail of
drinking water to illustrate what his
grandma had told him of the effect of
original sin. The fact is, Jack mar
rowly missed being great poet OF
artist Tin which case he would probably
still be called crank by half OF those
who knew him), but nature had re-
pented or failed of her purpose; and in
failing to become an artist or poet he
became nothing. While the other boys
who were growing up with him were at
work in shops and stores and banks,
learning the business of making money
and getting on in the world" Jack
Wheeler was sitting rather idly around,
sometimes reading, often meditating
and often talking with anybody who
would listen to him. At one time in
deed, his father tried the experiment of
placing him in grocery store, with a
view to his learning the business; but
he soon lost the place. His mind would
90 wool gathering while his customer
was deciding whether she would take
the Is or 20 cent can of peeches; he was
to prone to go to the Oolong chest when
he wanted young Hyson; and he had
foolish prejudices on the subject of the
grocer's thrifty expedients of grinding
chicory with his coffee, and putting
peas in his pepper.
From early years Jack took an active
interest in the questions of the day, as
he heard them discussed by his elders;
and his lack Of serious employment gave
him ample time to reflect upon them ;
but he had never mingled with the
world enough to get that practical wis
dom Of which the world talks SO much
and knows so little, yet prizes so highly
and SO it came that in almost every
question he advocated the side which
the world called impractical, visionary,
cranky. He was successfully (the first
at a very early period of his LIFE a
Granger, Greenbacker, and Prohibi-
ZIONIST; he was deeply. interested at one
time in the woman's suffrage movement;
he had even dabbled in spiritualism
all this in limited and humble sphere,
of course. Some of these movements
no doubt were worthy and possessed of
the support of much greater men than
Jack, but it was his peculiar misfortune
to be connected with each of them at the
time when the world deemed them most
visionary, and to allow his enthusiasm
to cool and his allegiance to slacken be-
fore the world recognized the practical
wisdom" of the movement. Thus he
could never vindicate himself from the
reputation of being o crank.
Another form in which Jacks woefnl
lack of practicality showed itself was in
supposing himself an inventor. Now,
Jack was not born with the inventive
faculty, but he fondly imagined that he
was, and even as boy, he had
spent days and weeks in arranging
impractical contrivances for doing inn
possible things, until his fathers wood
shed looked Like miniature model
room. He had not outgrown this ten,
dency when he became older, and his
ideas of fire-escapes and fire-extinguish-
ers, hying-machines, and diving appar-
atus, carpet-stretchers, and gate-fasten-
ers, were always on the point of rev
oIutionizing the world and never
did.
And Jack had had his nance He
had known Nellie Aver since they had
played together on their way to school,
and Jack had carried her books for hel
and helped her over the stile. They
we're very fond Of each other in those
days. As time wore on Jack deyotionf
became WarmPrs but Nellie WBs pretty,