Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1896-01-31
GARNETT, KANSAS, JANUARY 81, 1896.
THEKANSAS OLD BOYS.
An Eloquent Tribute to the Men who Made the
State Free.

From Or.on by Web wilder at Wathcna, July l. 1881
That gay party is all gone only one lef
probably to tell the story twenty-five years at
forwards. They died on battle fields on lane
and sea-ol, how many hundreds of the boys
are dead, whom we, then in this beautiful
naked territory, lovely as a cultivated park
these endless, undulatng fields OF green, the
deer the buffalo, the Indian, Bob White, the
prairie chicken, the occasional delicious spring,
the eternal ham to eat (always tasting good ,
the Kansas appetite that the healthful prairie
brings to all her travellers and keen enough Tor
shark to envy the Indian trail to follow and
hard to follow-a narrow, beaten path when
you found it, covered with grass the old mil
itary road, winding away so peacefully, black
but beautiful ribbon on ground of green-so
graceful were its curves and folds that the rib
bon seemed to have dropped from the sky and
to be floating there the loveliest lawn that
the eye ever gazed upon. A little thread of
trees following the creeks the sky touches the
horizon everywhere, as if cut off, the immense
expanse open on all sides before you. Not
house to be seen one cottonwood tree miles
away, and known as land mark to every trav-
eler few Indians on loping ponies, disap-
pearing over the divide, their size greatly en-
larged as the sun is when setting. Whenever
you stop on the prairie to lunch or to camp, and
gaze around, there is picture such as poet or
painter never succeeded in transferring to book
or canvas. No wonder it fascinated the boys
who came in here from the mountainous North,
81 +1,o
while life lasts. We ought to have saved a
state park in Kansas, 1000 acres broad-the
prairie as it came from the hand of God not a
foot or an inch desecrated by Improvement"
and "cultivation." 1t is only memory now.
'It is gone-gone with the boys who made it
free, gone to the Elysian land, the land of hope,
and home, and immortility." If ever we
should reach that home in Heaven for whose
sweet rest we fondly hope and pray, there, i'll
"the company of the forgiven" may we not
trust to see the dear old Kansas faces, the boys
of long ago. the boys so long sleeping here and
on other fields, where Kansas boys marched and
Kansas influence triumphed ? May we not
meet and greet the old, old boys, evel young
on the immortal campaign ground of those who
lived and wrought and died with honor, and
whose lives and loves are more dear to us than
any earthly possessions l fancy that the
pioneers will all have good homes in the Faith
er's spacious mansion that those who died in
making homes here died before they had them,
will not be forgotten in the day of final redemp
ton and if fellow don't have soldier war
rant, guess they'll let him homestead claim
get a quarter with little "stock water" on
it, a little climber in the bottom for the
sheep, and the goats, too, and the hillside for a
dugout.
FROM what see and near believe foreign
war would be welcomed by nine out of ten
Why? Well, because the times are out of joint
and there is feeling that any change would be
fo- +Lo ha+tar CucL a continent dOec,,,t ,,ro,n