Arizona republican., 1907-01-13
CCopyright.)

 Slocum-nOt personally, perhaps - but you know the palatial residence the great mining senator built on Fifth avenue, and you remember his sensa- tiOnal marriage a few years ago to the reigning beauty of two continents-a woman for whom a prince was ready to ahdicate his throne-Of course you do; well. this is about a girl who might have been the Honorable Mrs. Slocum and declined.
 l knev the Honorable William in the day when he was plain Bill Slocum of Slocum Creek: when he was poor and none to steady. and my lady wouldn't have looked at him only as a curiosity yet he was loved. Loved with a love that would have lasted to the end of time and all eternity if he hadn't shown so plainly he wasn't worth it.
 Slocum Greek when first saw it was not what il is now. A typical mining camp: the school house. used on Sun days for a church. the largest building and the most ornamented in it; for its the women and the children that count in the West, they keep us a little near CT Gold Almighty than we'd be without 
 first thing to catch the eye would be the school house; and the next, if she happened to be standing in the door, would be the school mistress. Dolly Britton: for she had the prettiest. trimmest little figure you ever saw. and a way about her that was convincingly attractive.
 Of course the men were crazy about her. There's a touch of the primeval in passion at all times. but it's more than a touch in a mining camp. The smell of the earth gets into a mans nostrils. mingles in his brain with the fragrance of spruce trees tWinins their signing branches about each other; and the thickets are full of calling birds birds and chattering squirrels; and overhead. along the cloud line some where. comes the distant challenge of the mountain sheep. blowing defiance. Why. it gets into a mans very soul! He wants to below defiance. too, only hes got his ethics. Perhaps you think being a bit primeval there were quar- rels. fights, passionate contests and re- prisals-not a bit of il. She was queen and what sine said went When Mike NurgatrOyd got his dismissal it's true he kicked Freddy Fanshawe out to the sidewalk. but that was for getting in his road. and Freddy needed kicking anyway. We all tagged along for awhile. but she dropped us one by one until only Bill Slocum was left.
 He was a kind of gentleman miner with more money than the rest of us. He bough out sam Blair's claim, re- puted to be the richest in the camp, but not the kind for a poor man tu work. IL was all right for Bill though He imported the latest machinery from the East and a high-class engineer tO sink the shaft. and spent no end oi money on the business. Expectation ran high. If Bill was made We were all made. And when Dolly BrittOn pin ned her faith on Bills success that as good as settled the matter for those of us who were still young enough to feel the blood move quicker at anything she might do. But il was an anxious time. We worried a good deal. Slo- cum declared himself one night at a little evening We had over at Reming tons.
 'Its make or break. boys. The whole shooting match has gone into the shaft"
 And 1the whole shooting match stay cd there God Almighty gives some men sense the others gets credentials l don't believe with all his certificates that engineer knew as much about that vein as old sam Blair did. He clean missed it anyway. Wed have made him find it. by heaven, only he slipped of one night before We knew what he was about.
 Bill started drinking That's a way some men have I never can understand as if they wanted to assist Provi- dence in wiping them out. There was Q little chap came to the school house one Sunday. a few years before, with q face like an angel God had forgotten l think it was that look in his eyes which made me remember so well what he said:
 What is man that Thou art mind ful of him." he spouts. Thou ma dest him little lower than the angels tC crown him with glory and worship Here We have the explanation, my men of ali life's trials and its sorrows. God Almighty tests our fitness for His king dom. Nothing will discourage us, no difficulties perplex, if We remember 1t made a little lower to be crowned
 And I did remember it. I never found myself in a tight place but that little chaps face didn't shine out like a vision in the darkness, and l heal him say as plain as if it were only yesterday:
 Made a little lower to be crowned.
 I'd like to have told Bill Slocum that but he'd have said d., and that's all thcre'd be to it.
 So things were in bad shape when Charlie Cuthbertson drove into Slocum creek: coming down the main street with pelting chatter which sent every thing which way. We didn't know who Charley was then. and we didn care: a man with a mare like that was friends with the universe. and we made them welcome. She was little beau- iy. ] can tell you; a dark bay with white hOOfs and a white star in her forehead like a sign of baptisnal grace Switchtail he called her. from a trick she had of nerVOuSly whipping her tail from side 10 side with an energy that never ceased. At ReminEtOn's that night the arrival of a new chum made discussion more bibulOus than usual. and before the evening was owe some mighty good claims were offered in exchange for the mare. But Charlie declined them all with his deeu. hearty