The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-07-22
osCULAToRY HARVEST CONTEST.

IOSCULAIORY HARVEST CONIESI.
 The Pretty Kansas Girl Whose Offer
 of Her Lips Saved Her Fathers Crop.
 Although Saline County has been drenched with rain and many farmers are mourning their ruined wheat crops, the yield belonging to S. H.
 Huston is safely stacked, all, because 1 his pretty daughter. Mabel, offered
 kisses and hugs to the first three men
 to do the heaviest work just before the heavy rains set in.
 The greater part of the Huston
 wheat was unstaeked and the farmer
 saw the loss of a crop worth $60,0O0 staring him in the face when Govern ment reports came that continuous
 and heavy rain was expected. The
 loss of his crops meant financial ruin to Huston and he and his daughter,
 who is IS, took to. horseback and rode far and near, gathering up men and offering double wages for any that
 would go to their farm. But hands
 were scarce and others were offering
 night prices, and things looked as gloomy as the sky above when the hands started for the fields. Unknown to her father, Mabel, who is as pretty a Kansas girl as ever rode a mustang, told the servant she would carry out termilk to the fields that morning, and
 keep on filling the men up with the grateful drink until every head of
 wheat was shock. So she appeared in the fields with gallons upon gal
 Ions of the cool drink, and after every man had his fill, the girl call them around her.
 Boys" she said, blushing to the tips of her pretty ears. ''Daddy's wheat must be saved before the rain comes, or I won't be able to go back to school this fall, and you all know
 how fbadlytI want to have just one sea- son more of preparation for college so I won't be behind those bright
 Eastern girls. We'll, am going to off, fer prize for the best workers, and lit's prize that no man has won yet kisses and hugs for the best men here. 1To the man who stacks the most Iwheat today I will give three kisses and real old-fashioned Kansas girls
 hug. < To the man who Is second I
 will give two kisses; and the third man shall have real hard hug. So please
 save daddy's wheat"
 Never was there such a harvesting 1 in all Kansas as that of the Huston
 wheat. Every man worked, not as if the crop were his own, but as If it be- 1 1onged to Mabel and her college career depended on it, as it really did. The | hand to a man refused most gallantly | to stop work even for dinner, and for
 hours the contest seemed even that any one of dozen husky fellows might have been the winner. Toward
 evening it was noticed that three men
 were leading all the rest, and when
 Miss Mabel brought the buttermilk
 again and noticed their progress she
 grew pinker and pinker and prettter and prettier. Finally the contest was
 seen to be almost a tie between Fred Norton, the brawny son of a neigh bor, and two young college men who | had left their universities earlier than usual for the health giving work in
 the fields. Besides the test of brawn, it began to be felt that there was an- other reason for the determined ri-
 valry of the two pale Eastern stu
 dents, who had overdone athletics a little, and the boy from tae Norton
 farm, who had deserted his fathers
 work to join the lists for Mabel's car-
 esses.
 The way those college youths hus- tied that wheat was caution. No one would have believed it had he not seen one breast the tape in a record-break- ing relay race and the other lift his shell out of the water on the long four miles. Finally one fell back a little and it was between the other and
 young Norton, who plainly was work
 ing himself to death for. the love of the pretty Mabel. It was nearly the quitting hour, and the college man
 was ahead, and looking as pale and undisturbed as when the race was be- gun, while Mabel, sympatheticallyi watched only the heroic struggles of Norton. Maybe there was a tear in
 her eye, and maybe there wasn't. Any way, the former varsity sculler top
 pied over in a faint, and while they were pouring water over him young Norton struggled in a. winner by two stacks. r
 There, were tears in Mabel's eyes as she paid the winners and told them they had saved her father an her, too. With MT. Huston as judge she
 bestowed the kisses and hugs, the col-
 lege man miraculously 'reviving to get his share before the cheering hands. If he got an extra kiss Mabel didn't care, nor did he. Nor was Norton angry, for he wrung the college man $ hand, but nary wink was there in the Eastern mans eye.-Topeka Special.