, 1908-09-17

due west, and / bet that when she does
go, what for litter on the track there
won't be a train get by for a week.
And OF Bailey's "Top-o'-the World
the three-silently as bedtted the
occasion-rtook just another taste.
Humanity hath its woes-eyen a
AS a sort of benevolent bonus Uncle
monument may nave its troubles, too.
Sam gave the Union Pacific Railroad
company the full width of twenty
miles every alternate section of gov
eminent land lying along its right-of
way, on one of which the Ames mem-
oriaI was presumably located. A local
surveyor happened to make a discov-
cry one day while shopping pou the
hills with his tripod, as result OF which
a Laramie shop hand named William
Murphy hustled over to Cheyenne and
made a desert filing of a certain tract
lying and being in the vicinity OF Sher-
man-and thereupon wired the Union
Pacific people to take their memorial
stone pile OF his landee'Se ne would
use it for q patent medicine bill board.
A high priced civil engineer came
out from Omaha who verified the
calamity of location, and after him q
claim agent by special train with q
yalise fufi Of current coin and instruc.
ton to jar that Irish thier loose some
how even though the price demanded
ran up into the thousands. tbs the
shame Of every true Laramieife today.
tearfuliy confessed, that Murphy
though q resident of that cultured n
enterprising metropolis wasn't the
ninth, part OIL man. He Is believed to
have been the, only freebooter in his
tory who actually had an octopus by
the tail with limit to go as TAR as ne
| liked-could sit meath the shadow OF
eternal peaks and watch the cohorts
of capital go by in sackclothian, plead
ing procession-who could straddle Z
%mausoleum Commemorative Of soul
less greed and snap his fingers at the
rotten rich as he spat on those sacred
lions tween joyous pulls at his pipe.
And did he rise to his opportunity
make good, did Murphy? Not he, the
s~palpeen! A local agent and the I'M
ported lawyer got him in a corne and
talked him out OF his heritage for two
measly town lots! What a sin and a
shame-and he there all the time with
the dead immortal! However, taking
my.tip from this tragedy and the pas
sage of a bunch of artists through
town who were decorating livery sta
bles and landscapes with advertis-
ments for somebody's oil of allevia-
ton, l wired both a Chicago and a
st. Louis paper the distressing details
adding that the Ames memento had
that very morning following its re-
demption been found covered with
signs extolling the virtues Of that
justly celebrated prescription OF
good st. Jacob az certain panacea for
pain. The general Offices at Omaha
fell into another ft until assured
that the reported decoration was q
dream; but 1t was actual enough to
bring a substantial draft from the pat
ent medicine ~sub-treasury. AS my
friend Bill Nye remarked and Tor
whom I was then working, the time to
pick raspberry jam is when it is ripe.
Two or three years ago the Union
Pacific was driven through stress Of
traffic to improve and shorten its line
by reducing elevations and cutting
out primitive kinks. 1t was found that
the original survey over the Medicine
Bow range was q mistaken economy
and that to rebuild some twelve miles
of the roadbed, although expensive,
would materially reduce both grade
and mileage-the which with the max
Ing OF heavy cuts and fills and boring
a tunnel through the mountain was
accomplished. Today. south and full