The writer remembers, as if it were but yesterday, when he edited the
Hang Tree _Herald_. For six months he devoted his best talent to
advocating the construction of a railway between that place and
Jayhawk, thirty miles distant. The route presented every inducement.
There would be no grading required, and not a single curve would be
necessary. As it lay through an uninhabited alkali flat, the right of
way could be easily obtained. As neither terminus had other than
pack-mule communication with civilization, the rolling stock and other
material must necessarily be constructed at Hang Tree, because the
people at the other end didn’t know enough to do it, and hadn’t any
blacksmith. The benefit to our place was indisputable; it constituted
the most seductive charm of the scheme. After six months of
conscientious lying, the company was incorporated, and the first
shovelful of alkali turned up and preserved in a museum, when suddenly
the devil put it into the head of one of the Directors to inquire
publicly what the road was designed to carry. It is needless to say the
question was never satisfactorily answered, and the most daring
enterprise of the age was knocked perfectly cold. That very night a
deputation of stockholders waited upon the editor of the _Herald_ and
prescribed a change of climate. They afterward said the change did them
good.