The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1897-03-19
"rHE TRAIL OF THE REFoRMER -
The Gem of all the Speeches made a
the last Meeting of The Kansas
Day Club.

DS htHIA D. ahcA
The riddle of the sphinx may in
time be solved: the hanging gardens
of Babylon, the leaning tower of Pisa,
the great American Niagara and the
Siamese twins may all become COM
mnnplace. Generations may grow
fatigued with the wonder of the two
beaded calf and the wild man from
BorneO; but the trail left i'm Kansas
history by the refOrmers will excite
the establishment of every generation.
so long, at least, as the Egyptian
pyramids continue to maintain that
unanswering silence we have all re-
Gently heard so highly spoken of.
The demagogue has been with US
since the beginning, and he will be
with us till the end of time, but the
original Kansas reformer was the last
offspring of period which had been
preparing itself not TO be surprised at
anything.
He came as fitting climax to a civ
iIization grown blase through an era
of watered statistics and real estate
speculation and town lot fraud. The
circumstance which surround his
advent make certain the hope that he
will soon pass away, but if his vital
organs had all been made of the same
substance AZ his lung, he might have
lived to rock the cradle of thousand
nations yet unborn.
When the reform began to break
out in Kansas it was the last thing
which ought naturally to have been
expected. Naturally, then, it ought
to have been the most expected, be-
cause it is the least expected which
always happens here
Kansas civilization has Oscillated
from high tragedy to low comedy;
from John Brown, the martyr, to Jer-
~ Simpson, the clown; from Ingalls,,
who stood in the highest deliberative
body in the world and taught the
people of the earth that Kansas was
the navel of the nation. to PETER, who
stood i'm the same place as his success
sor and proclaimed that if this fair
commonwealth were put up at auc-
ton and sold to the highest bidder,
she would not bring enough to pay
her mortgage Indebtedness.
The Kansas refOrmer has made
Kansas history ironical. Apparent
ly the same people, who leaned for
ward, eager to catch the first faint
note of the battle song of human free
dom, were the first 10 swallow the
Omaha platform.
The men VINO toiled and endured
and builded, who conquered the
veiceless desert and made the wilder
ness to blossom with plenty and with
loneliness, who nvercame all the OBJ
stacles with which their pathway
toward the stars was stIewn. and
builded in single decade a temple
VI anu VII
civilization so high that it excited the
envy of the Inhabited world, then
hired some vOciferous political vag-
rants as lecturers, To go out aud
SANDER and defame aud tear it down.
1t was, perhaps, inevitable that the
refOrmer should have reached in Kan
sas his rankest development. Thirty
years of eventful history have been
teaching US that nature made no pro-
vision in Kansas for the prosaie or
commonplace. Hence, when reform
broke out a. a mere rash in other
states here it became a constitutional
disease. Elsewhere it was q slight
attack of the blues, here it became
the very orgies OF poverty and woe.
When the reformer made his APP
pearance in Kansas we did not tax
him seriously. We saw him lingere