I most humbly beg your pardon for inserting here a short address to a
Republican Convention when I was aspiring to the office of County Clerk
for the second term. The chairman having instructed the secretary of the
convention to cast the entire vote of the delegation for myself, I
addressed the convention as follows:
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the Convention: Accept my profound thanks
for the splendid manifestation of honor that you have conferred upon an
humble individual like myself. I wish to impress upon you the political
principles I outlined to you briefly two years ago, are the same today
as they were then. I would rather be defeated honorably, squarely and
honestly than to be successful with a tarnished character obtained
through disreputable methods. I realize, as do all intelligent reasoners
withholding myself to be the humblest among you, that character is
something that is not acquired while we sleep. It is a constant every
day struggle, a life-long battle. Take away our character and what have
we left.
I desire to say to you gentlemen that during my lifetime I have been
intimately acquainted with labor in its most aggressive form. I know
what it is to stand between two shining bands of steel under a scorching
July sun. I know what it is to stack hay under a sultry and oppressive
heat. I know the loneliness and privations that comes to one who has
tended stock in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. I fully realize that
these different pursuits require grit and determination, they are the
hardest kind of labors, but I can say to you in all candor that I have
never worked harder in my life than in the past two years endeavoring to
serve the citizens of this county in the capacity of clerk.
If I have been competent, if I have been faithful, if I have done my
duty, that is not for me to decide. You are the judges of these
conditions, if you think I have, then I ask for your support and
influence. You are a body of men from all parts of this county; if each
one of you will work for the best interests of the party I see no reason
why we should not be successful at the polls. The campaign this year is
short; I wish to say for myself that I will not be able to get around
much. The duties of my office for the past six weeks have been very
strenuous and will continue so to be for some time to come. The state
board of equalization were late in sending their report and not only
being late, but were unkind, and raised the valuation on several of our
taxable properties and this makes extra work for the clerk, so I trust
you will be like the turkey in the tall tree and keep one eye open for
the boy from Lodge Pole.
There has happened in my short career as an American citizen a good many
things that I have felt elated over and proud of. I am proud that I am
an American citizen, born under the stars and stripes and belong to a
nation second to none. I am proud I was born in a state whose brow is
bathed by the mighty Missouri and upon whose bosom flourishes the most
productive crop of the union. But if there is one thing that I am
prouder of more than any other, it is the fact that I belong to a party
whose motto is principle and good government, and whose loftiest aim has
always been to make America the ideal nation of the world. I thank you.
I will here relate an incident that happened when I first encountered
experience in her knee breeches, I have termed it a fighting, explosive
nauseating cough remedy. I would prefer calling it an egg nogg; but
there is one extra ingredient that disfranchises the egg and in a
peculiar way leaves the nogg there in a somewhat embarrassing condition.
When I was a youth, I had some peculiar traits in my makeup. My main
instruction was received from that old professor, experience, and day by
day I gained some valuable knowledge in the school of hard knocks. Being
of a peculiar turn of mind I had implicit truth and confidence in all
mankind, and on account of this trait I have often met with misplaced
confidence.
For instance, the "Bonuses" and "Good Wills" heretofore related. I had
contracted a bad cold of tenacious irritability down near the little
hamlet of Paxton, Nebraska, while performing the menial labor of an
every day workman on the renowned line of the Union Pacific. The work
being accomplished was known as bucking steel. Through climatic
conditions of contraction and expansion the rails on one side had gained
from nine to twelve feet over the rails in the other side. The side that
was ahead was being pulled back to the point opposite the other by a
locomotive attached to a large cable. Some said this strategic work
swelled the premium of the water soaked stock; but this contention is
left to philosophers and those who study economic problems, as to
whether or not the corporation was ahead rails at Omaha or short at
Ogden.
The days were exceedingly warm, it being in the autumn of the year. I
lost more perspiration than was due me and along toward evening, when
old sol was getting ready to retire and also largely due to a scant
wardrobe, a chilliness would steal over my spare physique. The ride home
from the work in the evening, on flat cars, at a hurried speed, caused
the night air to condense in the locality of the throat. Nature not
doing her part, I tried to assist her in removing the obstruction and,
as soon as the speed of the train would allow, I shot from the car in a
mad race for the boarding house. Being sure footed and fleet, I was
generally first at the wash basin, erasing from my countenance
Nebraska's productive soil and leaving what the water didn't loosen on
the old fashioned long rolling boarding house towel. These repeated
conditions day after day commenced to tell and the slight cold became a
hacking cough that embraced more forcibly than a Dutch lassie reared on
eastern corn.
After the work was completed, the men were returned to the various
localities. Upon arriving safely at my destination, I went to the home
physician. "Doc" when not incarcerated in the county bastile for
dispensing a compound familiarly known as whiskey but better known to
home residents as hades corked up in a bottle, prescribed, from his oft
water stock. (I pause for a scalding sensation felt on my cheeks.) Poor
Old "Doc" is sleeping beneath the sod.
Constant concoctions bringing no relief, I was at last listening to a
well meant prescription from my co-laborer Dick. He said his remedy
would give unwavering satisfaction to ailments like mine. I don't think
his remedy would stand the pure food law test; but when you get to
clutching you'll clutch anything. So I listened to the unlearned
pharmacist and keenly assented and he started to compound two well known
ingredients in equal parts. One ingredient was controlled by that
magnetic dollar chaser, John D., and the other was controlled by nobody,
it did the controling, i. e., oil and whiskey. I'd cover up this last
ingredient and give it a better concealed classical standing but
ignorance is bliss and there you are. This carefully prepared drink, my
friend said, should be taken five minutes before breakfast. So according
to directions I hoisted the tin cup and down went the fluids. Just
enough oil in it to make it slip quick, and you had it before you really
knew it.
It is now twenty-three years since I swallowed that conglomeration and I
can't hardly pass a home one-gallon kerosene can full or empty without a
keen desire to kick the bottom out of it, but you have to be careful
with other people's property, whether it's mortgaged or not. No matter
how keen or fertile your imagination may be you can't realize a dose of
this character unless you taste it. Take the minutest equal parts of
each, mix them, drink them and be convinced. Was I sick? Of all the
great guns of all our wars, Civil or uncivil, I will take my oath before
any judge of common jurisdiction, sitting as a court of record and say I
WAS.
The only recollection I have of the breakfast menu was the two hard
boiled eggs and a faint remembrance, as I was leaving the table, of a
fruit picture on the wall tipping up and down. That was the first time I
ever saw anything inanimate acting so. Mercy, the taste of that oil and
the remembrance of it, mixing in a place the size of your fist! Think of
that rip-roaring, sizzling tobacco flavored, ingredient, trying to slip
one over on that kerosene and knock out those two hard-boiled, well
matured, boarding-house eggs. I say in all candor, I don't blame John D.
for watering the oil. Water it more, John, it will be milder to take. I
went through the oil belt in Indiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and all the rest,
I visited all the stills, illicit, and otherwise of Kentucky, Tennessee,
and Colorado; and as soon as brother Pat could get me to my room and my
head out of the window I hoisted the hottest fluids and food stuffs ever
contained in the stomach of man or beast. I have always felt sorry for
those eggs on account of their age.
I must take a short glimpse here of a peculiar incident that transpired
under my roof between two men of the cloth. One was a M. E. minister and
the other a seven day advent. The advent had been staying in town for
several weeks and I became fairly well acquainted with him and his
estimable wife, and he asked me if they might have a few meetings at our
home in the evenings, and I said certainly and he came. Both he and his
wife were scholars, well cultured and refined and we enjoyed listening
to their version of the scriptures. How the M. E. minister came to be
there one evening is still a mystery to me, but I think some one of his
parishioners must have told him that Satan had entered our home and he
had better intervene and see if he couldn't extricate us from the wary
gentleman's clutches.
The evening entertainment was progressing nicely and the advent man was
in charge of the machinery, when suddenly the M. E. man took issue with
him over his version of one of the scriptural passages and quick wit and
repartee was fast and furious. The advent was the superior in scriptural
knowledge and the way he got the other fellow in the meshes and so
completely tangled him up is an event that can never be erased from my
memory. The M. E. man was nonplussed, red of face and angry; and so
ungentlemanly as to let all the fireworks in his dignified Sunday nature
explode and told the cool, calm advent that teachings of his kind should
be in hell. You may lay this excitement to anger, being worsted, or
anything you like, but I think the gentleman he came to remove from our
home entered him one hundred per cent strong. Why he was on his feet
with his Methodist fists clenched, ready to fight, and if it hadn't been
for the soothing, pacifying utterances of his good wife saying, "John,"
"John," I don't know what would have happened. The other fellow laughed
at him and I really think if the worst had occurred he would have given
the angry man a fuller meaning of the Bible and turned the other cheek.
I think if an Advent says Saturday is the Lord's day and should be
observed on the Sabbath, the Methodist says Sunday is the day, and some
other denomination says Friday is the day, I'm willing to be convinced.
It beats having the Fourth of July come on Saturday, and if I had enough
money so I needn't work I'd say let seven different denominations have
seven different days, and no matter which home I observed I wouldn't be
left out shivering in an undershirt. Something peculiar about church
denominations, all of them headed for the same place, but each one
anxious to route you. One tells you they have the old travelled road,
founded on the Bible, another a different way, founded on the Bible, and
others another different way, also founded on the Bible. I conclude the
best and surest way is to be a Christian and read the Bible, live it and
let God show the way. Sunday churches or Saturday churches carry no
guarantee that you'll reach Heaven.
Before I invested in "Good-wills" and "Bonuses" and other losing
investments, I would occasionally take my family for a little trip on
the Los Angeles limited and rub against the aristocracy and the
diamonds. Years before when I was a day laborer on the same road over
which this elegant train glides, I thought to travel on such a goddess
of beauty was a luxury only for wealth and culture, and a pleasure
unequaled, but hope beats eternal in the human breast and as I had lived
largely on hope for over thirty years, I finally said hope can go to
blazes, the opportunity is here and why not embrace it.
Well, it is certainly a big taste of wealth and affluence to settle in
cushions a foot deep with all the wrinkles eradicated for once in a
lifetime by a well filled stomach of the choicest viands in the culinary
art. And oh the lofty thoughts as you settle down in the deep upholstery
and listen to the clicking of the rails as you speed away on this
overland beauty. There is a peculiar feeling under your vest as you
notice the well groomed man, the well groomed woman, the sparkle of the
electric lights and the glitter of the diamonds. Elegance everywhere.
The very height of ingenuity. Then when you enter the dining car with
its rosewood finish, tastily decorated tables, superb linen, and cast
your eye over the choice menu and have the black gentry all attention
and ready to care for your smallest want, you may feel as I did, pretty
classy company for a boy from Lodge Pole. Of course there are snubs here
and there, you find them everywhere. They are in a class that is well
known for nineteen hundred years. They took the leading part in the
crucifixion of the Nazarene. We can't exist without having them, and if
you will notice in any walk of life, there is a pain for nearly every
pleasure, with corns and bunions thrown in.
As a hunter I never received any distinction and am forced to admit as
such I am an entire nonentity and failure. My father owned a rifle which
was the only one of its kind in our community for years and years. Its
early history I am unfamiliar with and never learned it. It was in his
possession when I was born and I suppose it was the gun he carried on
the hand car for protection when the Indians were numerous in the latter
sixties. At some time it received a broken stock and ever after its
being repaired it was known as old splice. For many years when the old
year died and the new year was born, old splice spoke forth at its birth
and its missile of death generally lodged in the tail of the railroad
wind mill.
Old splice was the type of one hundred years ago, when people weren't
killed as quickly as today, the loading was slow and gave one chance to
escape; I remember brother Pat used it to shoot a dog that he had tied
up with a rope. He took steady aim, pulled the old fashioned hammer and
fired. When the smoke cleared away the dog was running with the fullest
capacity of its limbs. The ball had cut the rope.
I never shot old splice but once and I'll always remember the incident.
A chicken hawk had been tormenting the poultry for a long time and I got
bold and reckless one day, grabbed old splice (some one had been kind
enough to leave it loaded) and sallied forth bent on destruction. The
hawk was soaring high in the air but didn't seem to want to descend any.
Old splice was supposed to carry half a mile and as I knew this was not
the distance from the gun to the hawk, I concluded to test out old
splice and see if the prowess of the old fellow had been exaggerated. I
had heard some one say you must get down on one knee, as an attitude of
respect, I presume, and hold the stock solidly and lovingly against the
shoulder. I did both of these things and fired. I felt my head strike
the ground so amazingly quick and hard that it confused and startled me.
I knew I was committing no crime and couldn't account for such harsh
treatment. At first I thought the bird might have struck me in the face
and, it coming from such a height, would cause a terrible compact when
one body met another, but I abandoned this idea, as no hawk was anywhere
above or below. Then I thought I might have torn some planet loose, but
this was an asylum idea also. Then I thought some one may have overfed
old splice and made him bilious. I afterwards learned this was true. The
miscreant still lives.