Los Angeles herald., 1907-05-19
DESERVED COMPLIMENTS
FOR LIBRARIAN LUMMIS
From the New York Life.

From the New York Life.
Ulysses of the wandering foot ulti-
mately settled down. And so has
Charles F. Lummis. Mr.. Lummis is
quite the most accomplished tramp that
ever swapped the saddle of Shanks'
mare. He acquired the walking habit
early in the sos, when he abandoned
newspaper desk in Ohio and took a
pleasant roundabout stroll from Gin
cinnati to Los Angeles-a matter of $500
miles: and it clung to him through his
subsequent explorations in the land of
POGO tempo and elsewhere.
1t is good to settle down in Los An
geles, in a house built with ones own
hands. 1t Is even better to have earned
it. And Mr.. Lummis has been earning
many things-including an enviable
literary reputation-since he left home
and Harvard to teach New England
that the wonderful southwest is older
than Plymouth Rock.
The zeal of the late Frank Gushing
led him to cast his lot for time in
Zuni; and 1t killed him. But it is not
easy to kill Charles F. Lummis. He,
himself, for five years lived with the
Indians of another New Mexico pueblo
-Isleta; and that was the least of his
hardships.
There are some things in his singu-
lar and successful career that you will
not find in the current biographies. To
be paralyZed, to lose every dollar you
possess finally, to be waylaid at your
own door by assassins and riddled with
buckshot; these are sore Affections
that few men could live to overcome.
They fell upon Lummis suddenly and
in swift succession. Vain of his physi-
cal strength, he overtaxed it in the
joy of battling with the forces of po-
litical corruption. A little clot of
blood on the brain-and his usefulness
as a militant western editor was over.
For q time he lay helpless in a hos
pital, fighting his mental incapacity.
Then, without means, with his right
arm crippled, he sought a refuge
among his Mexican friends. There
after strength of will wrought against
inhrmity of flesh-and conquered.
Even in the little things he deter
mined from the first to prevail. He
learned to mount a horse without as
sistance. He would not smoke until
he had taught himself to roll a cigar
cite with the fingers of his left hand.
When the little community could spare
no able bodied man to fetch it's flour
from the distant town, it was Lummis
who drove the mule team with the
lines wrapped around his body. And
when a bolt broke-far from human
aid-and the sacks strewed the
ground, this paralyzed man managed
somehow, with his teeth and his one
good arm, to get them back into the
wagon again, to repair the wagon it
self, and to drive triumphantly home.
His lawless enemies tried to do what
paralysis could not accomplish. "Ev-
cry now and then someone would take
shot at Lummis,'' said a former New
Mexican, reminiscently, the other day
Few men have carried so much lead
i'm them and lived to be efficient. Yet
it was not long before Lummis was
again exploring the ruins of a lost race
and scaling the mountains of Mexico
Scientists have covered the same
ground but to Lummis was given the
vision and the literary touch that
make the redoubtable Apaches live
again, and which enabled us to see
in a sort of a mirage the people pro-
jected by his imagination.