EATUMUP JAKE'S LIFE STORY.
He said his father was a poor Methodist preacher in a little country
place in western Kansas where he was born. Said they lived there many
years because they was so durn poor they couldn't get away. His father's
salary was paid promptly every month in contributions and consisted of
one sack of cornmeal, one sack of potatoes, two gallons sorghum
molasses, four old crowing hens, seven jack rabbits, one quart choke
cherry jelly and one load of dried buffalo chips for fuel. He said his
father was one of the most patient beggars he ever saw, that he took up
collections at all times and on all occasions, morning, noon and
night--week days and Sundays he passed the hat. He had seventeen
different kinds of foreign missions to beg for. He had twenty-one
different kinds of home missions to beg for, and while it was the
poorest community he ever saw, most people too poor to have any tea or
coffee, or overshoes for winter or shoes in summer, yet his father
begged so persistently that he got worlds of flannels for the heathens
in Africa, any amount of bibles for the starving children in New York
City and all kinds of religious literature for the reconcentrados in
India.
Finally his mother died of nothing on the stomach, his father and a
woman missionary went to Chicago, his nine brothers and sisters was
bound out and adopted by different people, and he, the oldest child, was
taken in charge by a professional bone picker, and although he was only
10 years old at the time, yet he picked up bones on Kansas prairies
summer and winter for two years till a bunch of cowpunchers came along
and took him away from the bone picker. He said he never had anything
much to eat till he got into this cow camp, and just eat roast veal,
baking powder biscuits, plum duff and California canned goods till all
the cowboys stopped eating to look at him, and one of them asked his
name, and when he said Jacob, they immediately nicknamed him Eatumup
Jake.
He said he never had seen any of his folks since all this happened, but
one night he had a dream, just as plain as day. He thought he was in a
big city and a one-legged man with blue glasses was following him, and
when he stopped the man said: "Jacob, I'm your father," and he asked him
how he lost his leg, what he was wearing blue glasses for (a placard
saying he was blind), and why he held out a tincup, and his father said:
"I aint lost any leg, it's tied up inside my pants leg, and I'm wearing
glasses so people can't see my eyes." And he said his father told him
that his training as a Methodist preacher had peculiarly fitted him for
a professional beggar.
When Eatumup Jake finished telling his story he fell to weeping and wept
very bitterly for a long time, and when I tried to comfort him by
telling him a man wasn't to blame for what his folks done, he said no,
but cowmen were to blame when they fell so durn low as to spend the best
part of their lives on a special stock train associating with a hobo and
two sheepmen.