The silver state. [volume] (Winnemucca, Nev.) 1909-1925, 1923-01-04
And Yet
a Fool
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Copyright. 1o27, BY the Macmillan Co.

"HE exchanges that come to a
country newspaper like ours be-
Il come familiar friends as the
years pass. One who reads these pa
pers regularly comes to know them
even In their wrappers, though to an
Impractical eye the wrappers seem
much alike. But when he has been
poking his thumb through the paper
husks In certain pile every morning
for score of years, he knows by some
sort Of prescience when a new paper
appears; and, when the pile looks odd
to him, he goes hunting for the stran-
ger and is not happy until he has
found It.
One morning this spring the stranger
stuck its head from the bottom of the
exchange pile, and when we glanced at
the handwriting Of the address and at
the one-cent stamp on the cover we
knew 1t had been mailed to US by some
one besides the publisher For the
newspaper "hand" Is as definite form
of writing as the legal hand or the
doctors. The paper proved to be an
Arizona newspaper full of saloon adj
vertising. restaurant cards, church and
school meeting notices, local items
about the sawmill and the woman's
club, land notices and paid items from
wool dealers. On the local page In the
midst of circle of red ink was the
announcement of the death of Horace
z. Sampson. Every month we get no.
tices Ike this, of the deaths of old
settlers who have gone to the ends of
the earth, but this notice was peculiar
In that 1t said:
zone year ago our lamented towns
man deposited with the firm of Cross
kurtz, the popular underwriters and
dealers In Indian goods and general
merchandise. 500 to cover his funeral
expenses, and another hundred to pro-
vide that huge boulder be rolled over
his grave on which he desired the fol-
lowing unusual inscription: Horace
+. Sampson, Born Dec O. 1910, and
died -. And is not this rare
fellow, my lord? He's good at any
thing and yet fool
We handed The paper to Alphabet
cal Morrison. who happened to be In
the office NJ the time. paving through
the discarded exchanges in the waste
basket. looking for his New York sun.
and, after Colonel Morrison had read
the item. he began drumming with his
fingernals on the chair seat between
his knees. His eyes were full of
dreams and no one disturbed him as
he looked off into space. Finally he
sighed:
"And yet a fool-a motley fool !,
Poor old Samp-kept Ii up to the end !
take 1t from the guarded way the pa
per refers to his faults. as who of us
have not that he died of the tremens
or something like that" The colonel
paused and smiled just perceptibly.
and went on: yet | see that he was
good fellow to the end. notice that
the Shriners and tie Elks and the
Eagles and the Hoo-hoos buried him.
Nary an insurance order In his Poor
old Samp; he certainly went all the
gaits"
We suggested that Colonel Morrison
write something about the deceased
fOi tut nut INT fblouti
admitted that he knew Sampson like
book" there was no persuadlng Nor
rison to write the obituary.
::'After some urging and by way of
compromise" he said. I'm perfectly
willing to give you fellows the facts
and let you Ak up what you please
Because the reporters were both
h,to h.
had the colonel's story taken down as
he told Ito be rewritten into an
obituary later And IL IL what he said
and not what we printed about Samp-
son that Is worth putting down here
The colonel took the big leather chair
locked his hands behind his head and
= began:
let me see. Samp was born. as
he says, December g. 1910, In Wlscon-
sin. and came out TO Kansas right af-
ter the war closed. He was going to
college up there, and at the second call
for troops he led the whole senior class
into forming a company, and enlisted
before graduation and fought from
that time on TIL the close OF the war.
He was captain, think. but you
never heard him called that. When he
came here he'd been admitted to the
bar and was good lawyer.-a mighty
good lawyer for that tlme--and had
more business n bird pup with a
gum-shoe. He was Just a boy then.
and. like all boys. he enjoyed good
time. He drunk more or less In the
army-they all did s far as that goes,
but ne kept 1t up in a desultory way
after he came here, as "A sort of ac-
cessory to his main business of life.
which was being "A good fellow.
"And he was good fellow-an aw-
full good fellow. We were all young
then; there wasn't an old man on the
town site as | remember IT, We used
TO load up the whole bunch and 20
hunting-closing up the stores and
taking the girls along-and did not
show up TIL midnight Samp would
always have little something to take
under his buggy seat. and we would
wet up and sing coming home.
HE made a lot of money and blew
II In at Jim Thomas saloon, buying
drinks. playing stud poker, betting on
quarter horses. and lending 1t out to
fellows who helped him forget they'd
borrowed II. And-say In two or
three years. after the chicken hunting
set had married Off. and begun In