The Mena weekly star., 1906-08-02

with ordinary coffins even at this time,
 This is not fiction.
 In the morning after breakfast we took a walk around the public square, went to the court house, where we made the acquaintance of our now fellow townsmen and one of Mena's leading attorneys, Pole McPhetrige, who had his office there and who was said to be the greatest legal light and most suc- cessful practitioner in Polk and ad- joining counties. Later we went to the printing office in small frame building, where we met w. M. Pip kin, who held the honorable position of proprietor, editor and compositor and devil-printer's devil--of the New Era office and as we viewed the old Washington hand press, the wheelbarrow full of type and ma terial, and knowing that cord wood was no object in this timbered coun- try as legal tender for subscrip- tions, and the season too dry to grow pumpkins, we wondered what sustained the paper, except as it had an occasional land office notice at S5 per, unless, perchance the wife of the editor was school teacher and taught the "destrict" school.
 We were not at this time very social or communicative, not feeling any too "pert."
 We were fresh from the Republi- can National Convention at St. Louis, where as a free silver Repub- lican we, with Senator Stuart and others had gone down to a more disastrous defeat than Colonel Bryan suffered in the same cause few months later.
 We, however, told Mir. Pipkin that we expected to start paper at Mena and would call it 'tThe Noun taineer," and while we thought we could see by the twinkle in his eye and curl of his lips that he would make it warm for us when we did, which he did, until he sold out, later be- coming a good county clerk and still later an attorney at law. Yet,he gave us a good notice and mentioned ''The Mountaineer" in the next issue of the New Era.
 That name "The Mountaineer," conceived in one of our day-dreams, was never used. When our son, Virgil, came from Kansas City to help install the plant, fresh from viewing the wonderful influence of and strides made by the Kansas City Star, he wanted to callit "The Mena Star" and his younger brother vot- ing with him, my choice of name never saw the light, but somehow, even now, as from my mountain home I view the pretty mountains at the north and those which en- circle beautiful, thriving Mena on the west and south, there is some thing in ''The Mountaineer" which strikes with pleasing rhythm upon my imaginative ear.
 The Star, however, lives to shine for all the people, particularly of Mena and Polk county, and in the ten years that have rolled by since it was conceived much time has been saved, in these strenuous times, in writing and setting type for "The Star" instead of 'The Mountaineer." "
 We, however, saw Dallas and was glad we did. The quaint old town-a county seat for fifty years, but now, alas almost a deserted village the old brick court house standing like an eyeless sentinel without glass in its windows un- used except by mice, rats and bats. The old saw and grist mill disman- tied and going to decay, no store, blacksmith shop or post office all having been moved to Mena, where the farmers of the country sur rounding now go to get their mail and supplies all following the coun- ty seat which the voters of that pre- cinct at the county seat election by a majority of thirteen said should be moved to Mena.
 We saw the broad, fertile, we'll titled valleys extending as far as the eye could reach were all that poets, or real estate agents, like John Hamilton and George Dennis ever sung, and we found that there was more surrounding Mena to make a town and sustain paper than we at