The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-07-01
ON SECOND THOUGHT
BY JAY e. HOUSE.
(From Philadelphia Public Ledgsr.l
Grandfather HARRISON.


Two or three letters of inquiry con-
corning Grandfather Harrison lie on
the desk. If we set down here such
vagrant memories of him as we re-
tain, those letters will have been the
motivating impulse of a pleasing Sum
day task. AS a grandfather he was,
shall we say, vicarious. Is that the
right word? We don't want to bother
to look it up. To phrase it simply, we
were bound to him by ties of esteem
and affection and not of blood. But
he married grandmother long before
we were born, and so became the only
grandfather we ever knew. He came
into the family over the protest of
those concerned with grandmoth
future. Neither the relatives nor the
neighbors approved the match. He
went out of it with the affection of all
of the former and the esSem of the
latter.
One day in August, 1857. a short,
stocky, polite stranger stopped at the
well in grandmother's yard and asked
for a drink of water. His hands bore
the marks of toll; his boots were caked
| with mud. He was friendly but con-
| tanned and non-communicative Grand
| mother, however, had the gift of
speech and a talent for cross-exam-
nation. If it was anything she wanted
| to know she found out, And SO, be-
| lore ne l0II, lne Stranger OTSCIOSSo
the fact that he had charge of the
men who were draining Whipporwill
Lake, two miles to the eastward, and
who were, at the moment, excavaNng
| the ditch thru grandmother'S pasture.
| He came again on the following day.
| In the course of a week or two he
| fell into the habit of coming around
occasionally in the evening and sitting
| for an hour or two on grandmother s
doorstep. The talk that Mary Ann -
oh
| grandmother had a beau ran thru
the neighborhood. The children all
grown or nearly grown by that time.
protested. The neighbors came in te
talk confidentially with her and advise
her. Grandmother merely said she
guessed she was old enough to know
! what she wanted to do and dismissed
| them with a wave of the hand. Grand
| mother was Il great person to wave
her hand, and the gesture meant that,
| so far as she was concerned, the dis
| cussiop was closed. She passed the
| gesture along. Every once in a while
we find oursek waving hand as a
| token of finality. For seven years
| widowhood had hung like a milestone
around grandmother's neck. All she
| had to do, and all she had done in the
hard years of the Civil war, was to
| find a living for herself and five help
| less children on half-developed
prairie farm. To Henry IIolton, who
| came to expostulate, she said she had
| reared five children and if she wanted,
| in addition, to support a man, she
guessed that was ker privilege. Any
how, one morning in November the
word got around that MARY Ann"
and the 'tEnglishman," as they called
| him, were married and that the Eng
| l1shman" had moved his scant belong
| ings under her rooftree.
1t was eight or ten years before
the neighborhood managed to piece
| together the vagrant and unrelated
| episode of Grandfather Harrison's
previous career. But when they
pieced his story together they found
he had run away from his home in
Lincolnshire at the age Of fourteen to
sail before the mast of an English
merchant vessel There followed, in
| the course of time, many whaling
voyages to the North Seas and voy-
| age of exploration to the polar re-
gions. He had finally got his pa
pers" and had been a first mate.
When the California. gold excitement
broke out he was in Michigan. He
never told how he got there; that was
ever a missing link in the chain
of his experiences. But he followed
an ox-team across the plains, partici-
pated in half a dozen bloody fights
with hostile Indians in which he was
| twice wounded, turned up on the Sac
ramento and became one of those
who for a period of years sought gold
with Indifferent success. Then the
fever for gold drove him to the Aus
tralian diggings, where the mirage of
| wealth again floated before his eyes
! only to dissolve and fade away after
another period of striving. After that
there were whaling and sealing voy-
ages TO the North Pacific and ex-
periences in merchandising and
farming in Oregon. But in 1857, in