|ANOTHER land-mark of Laramie has gone. Another wreck has been strewn
upon the sands of time. Another gay bark has gone to pieces upon the
cruel rocks, and above the broken spars and jib-boom, and foretop
gallant royal mainbrace, and spanker-boom euchre deck, the cold, damp
tide is moaning.
We refer to L. W. Shroeder, who recently left this place incog., also in
debt, largely, to various people of this gay and festive metropolis.
Laramie has been the home, at various times, of some of the most
classical dead-beats of modern times; but Shroeder was the noblest, the
most grand and colossal of dead-beats that has ever visited our shores.
Born with unusual abilities in this direction, he early learned how to
enlarge and improve upon the talents thus bestowed upon him, and here
in Laramie, he soon won a place at the front as a man who purchased
everything and paid for nothing. He had a way of approaching the grocer
and the merchant that was well calculated to deceive, and he did, in
several instances, make representations, which we now learn, were false.
He was, by profession, a carpenter and joiner, having learned the art
while cutting cordwood on the Missouri bottoms, near Omaha, for the
Collins Brothers. Here he rapidly won his way to the front rank, by
erecting some of the most commanding architectural ruins of which modern
wood assassination can boast. He would take a hatchet and a buck-saw and
carve out his fortune anywhere in the world, and it wouldn't cost him a
cent. He filled this whole trans-Missouri country with his fame, and his
promissory notes, and then skinned out and left us here to mourn.
Good-bye, Shroeder. Wherever you go, we will remember you and hope that
you may succeed in piling up a monument of indebtedness as you did here.
You were industrious and untiring in your efforts to become a great
financial wreck, and success has crowned your efforts. We will not
grudge you the glory that coagulates about your massive brow.