Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1897-10-21

y
grades, by walking over the now al
most obliterated pathway which
formed wavering hypothenuse across
the angle made by the junction of the
trail with the county road A fond
ness for flowers led the young man to
| stop to pluck one of the great creamy
blossoms that fingered on the rubus
| bush; and then, idly beating with his
| heel at the unnoticed rock below while
| he waited for his companions to over
take him, he laid bare the secret which
had been hidden from the beginning OF
| the world. A bit of the stone crumbled
away under his foot; idly CHANGING
| down, his eyes were caught by the
simmer of free gold; and the Mascot
mine, as he chose to call it, was dis
covered.
| Harvey Neil was type OF adventurer
by no means uncommon in the west.
His father had been large wooden man
ufacturer in Connecticut, who had
failed in business and died of heart
failure-of a broken heart, his widow
always contended-just at the close of
the boys college course. 1t had always
been tacitly accepted in the family that
Harvey, the only son, should eventual
ly devote himself to the mills, as his
father and his grandfather had done
before him; but now, hampered by lack
of both capital and experience, this
| course appeared scarcely practica ble-
while his mother, moreover, evinced q
deep repugnance for the calling to which
she charged his fathers untimely death.
| What with the mischievous tinkering
| with the tariff which was forever a
| menace to the business, and the labor
| troubles to contribute endless turmoil,
she would have her son look to some
other field for the success which she
| could not doubt must ultimately be his
| whichever way he turned. And the lad,
full of youths longing for adventure,
was only too glsd to leave the hackneyed
paths he had known all his life, electing
to go west and grow up with the coun-
TRY.
1t was something of q shock to him
to find the country rather more grown
up, and the opportunities for profitable
adventure decidedly more meager, than
his dreams had pictured. He had chosen
Colorado as his field of operations, and
| in his eagerneSs to attain riches he
turned naturally to mining, where in a
few brief months the little money he
had brought with him had gone in allur-
| ing ventures which returned him moth
ing beyond the experience he so surely
needed, but for which he was anything
but grateful. And now, wholly un-
equipped by education or training for
any labor open to him here, knowing
no more than L pampered child of any
principle of economy, Harvey Neil eX-
tperienced few years of very hard times
| indeed. The insurance on his fathers
life had placed his mother in compare
tive comfort; but, after the 1uXuries by
which he had always seen her surround
ed, it s. emad to the son so near to the
borGerland of poverty that not for the
world would he allow her to con-
tribute another dollar to the undertake
ings in which he had come to feel him
self fairly predestined to failure. He
would not even grieve her by telling of
the ill-luck which had pursued him; and
more than one letter he wrote dilating
upon the glorious chances which the
great west offered, chances which be led
her to infer he held in his grasp-when
he had to wait for days merely to COM
PASS the purchase of n postage stamp to
send the letter. To her, if somewhat
vague as to his doings. he was always
gay and hopeful. When he went to
iwOrk as a harvest hand in the summer,
such work as blistered his untried
hands and brought strange aches to
every bone in his body, he only told her
that he had been invited to stay Ga a
ranch for awhile, and amused her with
his droll accounts of the primitive ways
of living affected by the natives to no
manners born; and never was she al
lowed to know that he left the ranch
like common tramp at last, having
been cheated out of every dollar of the
wages due him. He sent her q merry
description of strengthening, which he
tried later, as it would seem simply for
the fun of it; while a few months after
that, when he had found job shoveling
coal in one of the Denver smelters, re-
duced to such living as must have
wrung the mothers heart could she
have known, the gentle lady was moved
to innocent remonstrance for the wan
dering life he was leading. She feared
he was having too good a time, she
wrote, sugar-coating the pill of protest
with many q tender phrase; she liked
to know that he was enjoying himself.
but, since his future depended SO wholly
upon himself, his life could not we'll be
all holiday. Was it not true, she
gently asked, that he should put his
shoulder to the wheel and go to work in
earnest? His shoulder to the wheel!
Well that the good lady could never
know what tears blotted the admoni-
lions it had cost her such pains to
pen.
But he who Iabors as did Harvey Neil
at this time. unstintedly giving the best
that is in him to honest effort, though
seemingly but to poor ends, seldom fails