The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1922-03-09

Way back when folks were just
common like an old shoe; way back
with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, old
timers, that we all used to swear by;
when the family bunch rode to
church in the farmers wagon; when
/ the -Four Hundred wore panties with
edging (sh--, now, manD round the
: bottom with which they made a
demonstration when they climbed
out of the wagon bed and descended
upon earth. My! I feel like cover
ing my face with both hands and
drawing my head down inside my
coat collar as the recollection fits
across my mental disk. Confound
those old times anyhow; they are al
Ius sticking their noses up out O.
water when you've no use for 'em.
But can talk to you, cause you're
an old timer and don't care.
Well, as I was "asayen" or about
to say, I looked up across an open
space in the Milliner's Shop and
there in full view, in the gallery, sur
rounded by industrious girls steeped
in millinery, sat the Man-Milliner,
stitching flowers on a woman's hat /;
his head swinging right and left like
a pendulum in defiance of my petri-
fed amazement, ass as I was; any
how, 1 had a companion with me
who had left a commission at the
shop in the details of which I was
not concerned. We bundled into the
buggy for home in an almost uncon-
sciOus condition, the cataclysmic eff
feet upon me not having yet worked
off. A mile or two out on our way
as we cOmmuned on the incidents of
the day, a glance at milady's head
gear gave me an explosive guffaw-I
roared the simpleton's unadulterated
roar. She had left the trimmings of
her hat-to my wonderment-in the
shop, and for some inscrutable rea-
/ turning home in her lamentably
| mutilated old hat. Now, she was a
very nice person, the pink and choice
of her encourage, which only added
fuel to my abominable concatena-
tions; she came out ahead of me of
course, with her heavenly smile, her
miraculous serenety, and the deft
manner in which she cornered my
stupidity. There is a momentous
moral attached to this yarn: Don't
accompany wise one to a milliner's
opening.
10000
I was in the mountains west of
/ Boulder and Denver before the Civil
War. Boulder was in its pulsing in
fancy with two log cabins, one of
which was occupied by a squaw man
and his dusky Sioux mate; and Den
yer was a collection of cheap board
dance halls and gambling dens. A
confused mass of the rag-tag and
bob-tail, disreputable adventurers
filled the streets. Kit Carson and the
scouts and trappers of his class were
in their prime.
The lure of gold had brought a
horde of the unsophisticated get
rich-quick into Colorado the decade
following the discovery of placer
mines on the Sacramento river in
1849-the Colorado hegira followed
in 1859. These credulous folk had
no conception of the fact that for
tunes must be invested in stamp
mills, crucibles, and chemical form
uIas for reducing and refining the
precious metal from obdurate quartz;
that the reward must come by the
sraight and narrow way of incredible
toll and few there be that find it;
that where one Tabor or Cripple
Greek magnate issued out of the
struggle with his pockets full of gold
hundreds perished from hunger and
privatiOn.
There are no placer mines in Colo
rado and never were.
I can see them now, the long
trains of disappointed sitting at the
front of their prairie schooners sing
ing an old camp-meeting hymn in
whining falsetto-the picture of dis
appointed ambition-on their way
back to the States"
Some of the determined prospect
ors-a few Of them, drifted down in
to South America, and others in re-
cent years found their way to the
Klondike.
To revert to that man Tabor; he
deserted the wife of his youth who
had stuck by and suppored him in his
years of poverty, when she took in