The Ketchikan miner., 1908-04-11
TELLS OF HIS TRIP
Mir. J. E. RyaS Describes Places He Visited During His Trip
 Through tte States

Webb City is a mining town and a boomer when all miners are at work. Lead and zinc, is the ore. A Il Of that part of Missouri is uuderlaid with this ore from Carthage to Pittsburg, Kan sas, and mills in some places are so thI, k it $ hard to drive between the dumps when the mills are at work. Al of the towns are tlourishng, the principal business streets at night re- semblng midway at some ot the eX- positions. We were in Joplin one evening. My brother insisted upon our going to see what was all right. For twenty y-fve blocks down Main street it was a push ana jam to get through Street cars were bIoekaded 1 half of the time. Here we saw what Is said W ill be the finest hotel in Mis- souri when completed. The building was all inclosed and the finishing work we'll advanced. Some one has said, either Mark Twain or John Di e Il guess it was John Doe-that it + l bad luck to turn back or change ones mind So won't turn back, hut just back up few miles to when l missed quite bit of our trip in my former letter. "Chautauqua '-how could ] fcrget this interesting place? We were there twenty-three years ago. l There was nothing there at that time. except the lake, that could be recog- niZed this time. Chautauqua is q beautiful place and the permanent homo of a good many people. We were too late to be at the assembly hut we did take seat in the ampi- theatre which can easily seat 30OO people, and imagined services going on. Isn't it strange that this is | l Methodist institution, but that nearly every protestant denomination, eXcept the Methodists, have home and headquarters there. The trolley cars l from Westlield to Jamestown run through Chautauqua, which makes 1t very desirable place to live in. Two miles to the north of Chautauqua is the town of Mayville. very beauti- l fu place and one of the oldest towns 1 in Chautauaua county, and it is the county seat of this county Near May vile Ms Ryus passed her chidhoot days. In company with her brother and his wire, we drove all over the surrounding country and vent to the church where sine attended Sunday school and services. She pointed out to ne the seat in which her grand father invariably sat at preaching services. She also pointed out the place where the red school house stood and which is now gone, the hill down
 which she and other girls coasted with the sledges purloined from the places where the boys had placed them. not knowing that some of the girls were watching from the windows he secreting act. In Mayville we visited Mir. ard Mrs. A. B. Tracy, old and intimate friends of ours. Mir.
 Tracy's brother was named Perry
 after Commodore Perry. The lad wa but a week or two old at the time oj 1 Perry's battle on Lake Erie. Young Tracy's mother was so afraid the h. lians would get her babe she hid him in hollow log and left him there during the battle. He lived to he an old man, dying in Cheyenne. | Wyoming. number of years ago.
 X. B. Tracy is cabinet maker by trade and built nearly all of Judge Peacock's furniture which is yet in existence, the material being mahog- any. What is now the Peacock Inn, at Mayvile, was the residence Of Judge Peacock. He was the first Dis trict Judge of Chautauqua county. h
 eaving Webb City for Texas we went by way of Kansas City, then taking the A. K. 6 $. F. railway, througL Kansas and Oklahoma. At Burling- ame, Kansas, we stopped over to look over the ground of my boyhood days.
 In 1860 my parents and four sons ar- rived in Kansas from New York, our native state. shall never forget our first day in Kansas. It was in Lcaven
 worth and the first day of April, 1861.
 An A pril fool trick headed off by an old gentleman turning the would be fooler into the fool is he cause of my acute memory of that day. We were stopping at what was then the Leav- enworth hotel said to be the hest in the city at that time. l guess it was nearly as good as the one Mrs. Vevoe used to run in Ketchikan. But there is no use to dwell upon the house-it's $ the sidewalk in front of the hotel that enabled the trick above mentioned to be played so nicely. The walk was Of plank, running length ways from the house and like our sidewalks in Ke.chikan, discl 1sed reasonable sig ed crack between each plank. A kid (ddn't call them kids in those days) about twenty-five years old was going to fool some one and he did. Attach ed to nice two dollar pocket knife was a string sufficiently long to reach from the center of the walk back to thIa i.,cila ,f tLc, cafH La; l