The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1901-12-17
A kANsAN's RETURN.

William Allen White. who has been in
The East for few weeks upon returning
home writes:
There Is really TO town ii the world Ike
Eaporia- Kan. T. :. a, and no country
Ike the steer country. For tTvo weeks the
writer has heard just two kinds Of talk
on trains and IN hoteis-taik OF politics.
deals, combinations. jobs. and the Lord
knows what Of intrigues, and also talk Of
cotton 1t was cotton for breakfast. cot
ton crops for dinner and cotton prices Tor
supper And for a man VINO knows notn-
ing OF cotton Il IS 2 duh, DRY ana unprofit-
( able subject But yesterday morning on
the sleeper these words filtered through
the thick curtain in the gray Of the morn
ing: w ell. the poor feeders The Lord 5
certainly got Il IN Tor them. They haven I
made dollar except on their feed for
FIVE years. Then a passing freight train
cut IN after waich the voice resumed; Il
set bunch down IN New Mexico, though
LAST year. / did pretty well on them BIZ
lost out on them Texas cattle. for he only
got his. feed back" and then the nearer
knew that he was in the land OF pure de-
light and began TO long FOR TIE scene OF
the Lang wreck.
washington IS a fine town for loafers.
II is hard town To work in. y man who
gets fifteen or twenty things done in a
things done in a day at Washington x
he works like a dog. Every enc YOU
want to see IS 0ut-generaily at lunch
They eat too much IN Washington. as
they do in all cities. So the men become
rat. blear-eyed and puffy-cheeaed. II
isn't whisky. but beeIsteak, that IS kill
ing the great men OF the country Inc
most important loss by death Kansas
ever sustained came from Over-eatins-
not from overwhelming, as was once
whispered. Two meals a day are enough
for anyone. In Washington some men
eat four whopDing big ones. It is the
men who keep house at home who do the
real work in Washington.
Chester I. Long is one OF. these. Long
IS easily the head of the Kansas aeiega-
ton. He not only gets things for tne
Seventh district but he stands with the
very best men IN the United States. He
is known in the exclusive set. where the
dozen men move who absolutely control
congress. Long is one Of them The av-
erage man who goes 10 congress IS q
chicken. He IS only important where
there are visitors. No one pays any at
tention to him. He doesn't know what's
going on till he sees il il the paper Long
can tell YOU today not only what hap
pened yesterday. which is more than NEST
congressman can but he can tell You
what VIII happen next week. How he
does so much work in committees and
looks after so many candidates IS very
strange. Probably he does it by avoiding
going out for lunch and loahng two hours
in the middle OF the day. Mrs. Long is a
gOod cook, and the Longs keep house
about one hundred yards from the CAPT
toll
Bowersock. Curtis, Calderhead and
Scott are all good members, and stand
well. Curtis doesn't care much about
congress but he does care for his con-
stituents, gets them jobs and Is a great
log-roller He has no equal in the Kan
sas delegation. He is a hustler from
hustlersville. Miller, no one knows. He
was absolutely the last man in the whole
congress of the United States 20 get his
seat this year. Some people call that
luck. 1t isLMillers luck. He has intro
duced a bill for 100000 building at En-
poria. It he gets it through and signed
the Gazette Will admit that he is a better
congressman than he seems. But he
won't, Of course.
Virginia Is a disappointment to Kan
sas man. He has read so much about the
big colonial houses. with their white col
umns which indicate that their builders
used to own slaves. that he is disappoint-
and little farm hOuses-even smaller than
the Kansas average. The farms are poor
ly keDt-from the Kansas mans stand
point, the land is weedy and the fences
broken and ramshackle The outbuild
ings are implanted and there seems to be
no poultry or live stock about the place.
The hills, however are beautiful. and the
few big houses that one sees all look like
boom houses in Wichita three years after
oil laI a 10 hoy 10 no
going through foreclosure proceedings.
and they are all rnodern-built during the
tower and portico season of the early
eighties They look pTetentious and shah
by The best farms between Kansas and
the Atlantic ocean are in Ohio, Indiana
and Illinois. Some way. when a man
lives in kanssss. he doesn't look at a land
scape much for scenery, but TO size il uD
as a crop producer. Down in Wichita
there used TO be quarrel as to how
many acres Of land we're represented in
NiiIet's picture, tie "Angelus." The quar-
rel brought out the fact that the land in
this famous picture had not been plowed
deeply enough. and that il needed cross
narrowing So no man from Lyon coun-
ty where the farmers are particularly
neat hOusekeepers. even at the expense
OF picturesque scenery, Is capable OF just
judgment OF a one-mule country. The
Kansas man can't appreciate its beauty
and he underestimate its worth.
Kansas has good name all over the
East. The idea prevails that all Kansaus
ere rich. The Popuusuc black eve has
disappeared. Also people have ~ last
got it into their heads that calamity sto-
ries about Kansas are fakes. They re-
tell them as jokes. This is very encour-
aging George Peck vas in Washington
The other dav. lie referred 70 Kansas rs
the Cinderella Of the sisterhood OF states
just now Kansas Is wearing the glass
slipper. according to Peck's idea, and IS
dancing with the prince. This idea IS
such good one that ali Ksnsas people
writing Christmas letters back East this
YEAR should steal it bodily and spread il
broadcast