Year: 1876

y
young man on the border who is not
there for speculation, who is not in search
of a home, who is not dabbling in Indian
affairs. whose occupation, in short, will
not sufficiently account for his presence
you may pretty safely set him down as one
to whom civilization does not vouchsafe
as much freedom as suits him. | leave
due margin for those whom the heroines
in the newspaper stories iilt and send
West, and then wish they hadn't 1t is
curious to observe. by-the-way, the local
changes in the directions which these
much-manip ipulated characters take. Eu-
rope, for instance, may be considered the
sanitarium Of the ''crossed'' of New Eng
land and the Atlantic sea-board generally.
Such ones eagerly court the dangers of an
ocean voyage. only to teer sclear of them
all and turn up. safe though unforgetting
in Rome or Paris Your disappointed in
lander. on the other hand, depends upon
the railroad He commits himself, with
all his troubles, to the care of the first
snorting steed Of iron which passes with
its fiery head turned westward. Not the
centres, but the rarefied suburbs, of civil
izaton are cougenial to his soul. He
would give his care to the free winds
rather than have it .jostled out at his ell
bows in crowds of human beings,


But none Of this is pertinent to 10. The
simple fact concerning him was this he
had quarreled with his father, comfort
able Pennsylvania farmer, who had set his
heart upon a thrifty increase of his prop
erty in the hands of his son when he
should finally be laid on the shelf. JOS
L.. ,tb nd fbo ,bol
affair ended in his giving up his own pet
plan and crushing that Of his father at one
stroke. For one day he cutloose from the
old home moorings, and was carried, like
a piece of drift, westward. Whereupon
Fate, to whom he committed himself,
shuttlcd him back and forth from Nebras
ka to Texas and from Texas to Kansas,
with occasional side ventures which car
ried him out on the plains, SO he had
been nomad for two years Once hay
ING taken up the role OF the rover, it had,
in turn, taken possession of him, for he
could not keep his heart out of whatever
he did. He did not make his own plung
es so to speak for, as | said, he was COM
mittcd to Fate. But once in, he accepted
the new element, and proceeded to ride
the wave with enjoyment if not with inde
pendence. His manners sunk by degrees
to the level of his life; not that he became
u bore-lar from it--but simply that he
followed the law of conformity which
rules us all, and makes us more or less
like our nearest neighbors Perhaps his
experience was not calculated to put any
very fine edge upon his morals, for that
panoply must be extra indeed, which will
protect one entirely from the rough at
mosphere OF the frontier. l have called
him scape-g grace but. after all, it mi ght
have been great deal worse.


And he was tired of border life at last ;
50 it came into his head to turn his back
upon it once for all lie had acquired
enough money to show for his time, and
ined himself to have before essaying to
pack it up. Then there were the sparsely
scattered shanties of the settlers to visit
before going-shanties to which JOS re-
sistless good nature insured his free-and-
easy access. He never found latch
string in; and so it came about in one Of
his parting visits that the nerve Of his old
desire was unexpectedly set a tingling.
For what visitor but 10 would, on that
day, have been welcome at Mrs. Whites? !?
The two beds in the only room of the
dwelling were, apparently, full of chill
dren, who cried or shook or tossed with
fever, as the several stages of the generic
ague fit overlook them. Mr.. White HIM
self was in the trembling act of surrender
to the same arch enemy, while the imple-
ments of his fruitless warfare-tea-cupS
bottles, spoons, hot-irons, etc.-were scat
tered about on the hearth at his feet.
Now and then he ventured upon a chat
tering jest with the CHEEKY neighbor wo-
man who had come in to lend hand, or
exchanged notes with his sallow spouse
with whom it happened to be an off day
for chills Thus did 10 find the house
hold. Instantly the situation inspired
him. An old passion famed anew in his
healt He felt the thrill Of an instinct
which had been the beckoning spirit of
his former dreams, Turing him on to op-
pose his will to that OF his father. 1t was
the instinct for relieving physical suffer-
ing-the prime prerequisite of the good
physician. His eye snapped at the pres
ent chance How he longed to hound
that ague down! But the slender knowl-
edge, the poor resources at hand, were
giants in his way; so he merely sat and
looked on while Mrs. White poured the
inevitable white powder on a bit of dried
apple in spoon, and capped the whole
mass with another piece of apple designed
to conceal the medicine. On his way
home he dropped his head and ruminated
more than was his wont. ''Blamed if l
dont!" he ierked out at last, as he kicked
into bunch of fallen cottonwood leaves
in his path, and sent its parts flying in
every direction.


After that he lost no time. The next
morning he might have been seen in his
Sunday best, whatever that was, seated by
the side of teamster, who was driving
him to the nearest railroad station 1t had
been raining, and they must needs travel
slowly. 1t seemed to 10 that they fairly
crept through all that long day, and he
ground his teeth, if not worse, when they
drove up to the station at sunset, and saw
in the distance the smoke of the departing
East bound train


Plenty of time to look about, but little
to look at Half hundred one-story
houses scattered about with some pre-
sumptuous attempt at regularity, which
was worse than any degree of disorder
were not inviting to the eye, a newish. un-
finished, weather-boardy place, for which
the railroad was wholly responsible-a
place, albeit, which the enterprise of the
circus, and the patent medicine had evil
IDENTIFY followed closely up. 1t had been
livelier two or three years before than it
was now, they told him for at that time it
had been the terminus Of the road But
that ruthless maker and unmaker of cities
and towns had crept on in course of time
and left this possible metropolis 'laid-
out" city in double sense. 1t was now
only one of the many unimportant beads
which the track had strung on its line.
and so business was dull. Yet to 10 it
was suggestive of the bustling world to