Arizona republican., 1892-08-20
THE GREAT yITALIZER ,

| that the Platte would be a good river if set on edge, and Bill Nye describes it as having a wide circulation, but little in- tluence. Perhaps in future years, when irrigating ditches have been dug across 1t, the brother-in-law of waters will not be the subject of so many heartless jokes.
 This feverish stream is in one respect the superior of any other in the world. As resort for people who earnestly contemplate suicide it has charms pecu- liarly its own. When the world weary pilgrim on life's rough way goes to the ordinary river to end his existence the only thing he can do is to jump into the water and be drowned, which plan lacks all the elements of originality and does not commend itself to the educated mind, When the suicide goes to the Platte, however, he cannot drown him. self unless he brings water along with him for the purpose; but there is no oc- casion for despair. All he has to do is to walk along the river bottom until he strikes quicksand. and the probabili- ties are that he won't be wear1ed by the journey, for quicksands are freuuent. Having done this much the suicide may take it easy, for the sand will do the rest, and he will find himself sinking slowly and gracefully to mysterious grave. The process gives him plenty of time to think and also an opportunity to yell for help If he changes his mind when half engulfed and decides that there is really no rush about dying.
 Many man has been lost in these QuicksandS with no idea of suicide, and old settlers tell weird tales of travellers who ventured to cross the apparently safe river bottom and were seen no more; step into the yielding mass meant an awful, hopeless struggle for life and a disappearance from the sur face of the earth forever. If half the stories are true land a good many of them are known to bel there are hun dreds of dead men and women in the kingdom down under the sands.
 Years ago, according to one legend, related by an aged man with a beard like that of a Druid, two brothers lived together in a rude dugout near the juno I They spent their days hunting, quarrel ing and drinking, and occasionally amused themselves in romantic way by throwing such animals. as they had wounded or captured into a great, hun gry quicksand which adorned the bed of the Platte, and which had an all absorb ing appetite.
 One of their quarrels developed into fight, and the larger and stronger of the two succeeded in pushing his brother into the hungry sand. and then sat on the river bank and watched with grow ing interest the strange process of a liv- ing entombment. The man who was in the slimy embrace of the sand cursed great deal at first, as he thought it was merely an innocent jest, such as he might have played himself but when he had sunk to his waist he quit cursing and implored his brother to help him out, but the brother was enjoying the scene and said nothing; and then the sands crawled to his breast, and to his throat, and he cursed again, calling down awful maledictions on the relentless brother who watched his agony in silence; and then there was a gurgle and he cursed and prayed no more, but had vanished. Those who admire the theory of the eternal fitness of things will be glad to learn that, as the legend was related, the surviving brother met a similar fate, for he swallowed an unusual quantity of hquor one day and managed to stumble into the sand and went down to join his victim in the unexplored regions be- meath the treacherous Platte.
 If congress intends to do anything with this absolutely improbable and inexcusable river nothing could give greater satisfaction than to repeal or abolish it and have it stricken from the records. It serves no good purpose where it is; it does not even point moral: it takes up more room than a new political party, and lacks the prom ise of future usefulness that distin- guishes such an organization. It is con stantly growing wider, for the banks tumble in now and then, and in the course of time its weary width will stretch from a given spot to another point about hundred miles beyond the horizon.
 There never was such an absurd, un- reasonable and altogether reprehensible l river as the dry and dusty Platte.
 WALT MASON.