| OCR Text |
Show HI I I I I I 1T1 1 t l t l I I I I I I I f M 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 II 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 I t li And Yet If I a Fool ! j WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE IE Fiiifi i m u nun ii u n n u i li 1 1 1 1 1 1 im muTi fir. Copyright, 19.2, by the UacmLUa Co. THE exchanges that come to a coin. try newspaper like ours become be-come familiar friends as the years pass. One who reads these papers pa-pers regularly comes to know lliein even in their wrappers, though to an unpracticed eye the wrappers seem much alike. But when he has been poking his thumb through the paper husks in a certain pile every morning for a score of years, he knows by some sort of prescience when a new paper appears; and, vU.en the pile looks odd to bim, he jjoes hunting for the stranger stran-ger and is not happy until he has found it. One morning this spring the strangei (tuck its Head Hum the bottom of the exchange pile, and when we glanced at the handwriting of the address and at the one-cent stamp on the cover we knew it had been mailed to us by someone some-one besides the publisher. For the newspaper "hand" is as definite a form of writing as the legal hand or the doctor's. The paper proved to be an Arizona newspaper full of saloon advertising, ad-vertising, restaurant cards, church and school meeting notices, local items eboui the sawmill and the woman's club, land notices and paid items from wool dealers. On the local page in the midst of a circle of red ink was the announcement of the death of Horace P. Sampson. Every month we get notices no-tices like this, of the deaths of old settlers who have gone to the ends of the earth, bLt this notice wns peculiar In that it said : "One year ago our lamented townsman towns-man deposited with the firm of Cross & Kurtz, the popular undertaken and dealers In Indian goods and general merchandise, $100 to cover his funeral expenses, and another hundred to provide pro-vide that a huge boulder be rolled over his grave on which he desired the following fol-lowing unusual Inscription: 'Horace P. Sampson, Corn Dec. 6, 1S40, and died . And is not this a rare fellow, my lord? He's good at any- j thing and yet a fool.' " j We handed the paper to Alphabetical Alphabeti-cal Morrison, who happened to be in the ollice at the time, paw'ng through the discarded exchanges lu the waste-basket, waste-basket, looking for his New York Sun, and, after Colonel Morrison had read the Item, he begnn drumming with his fingernails on the chair seat between his knees. His eyes were full of dreams and no one disturbed him as - he looked off into space. Finally he ! sighed : "And yet a fool a motley fool 1 Poor old Snmp kept It up to the end I I tnke It from the guarded way the paper pa-per refers to his faults, 'as who of us have not.' thni he died of the tremens or something like that." The colonel paused and smiled Just perceptibly, and went on : "Yet I see that he was B good fellow to the end. I notice that the Shrlners and the Elks and the Engies and the Hoo-hoos buried him. Nary an insurance order in his! Poor old Samp ; he certainly went all the gaits I" We suggested that Colonel Morrison write something about the deceased for the paper, but though the colonel admitted that he knew Sampson "like B book," there wns no persuading Morrison Mor-rison to write the obituary. "After some urging and by way of compromise." he snld. "I'm perfectly - willing to give you fellows the facts Bnd let you fix up what you please." Hecaup" the reporters were both busy we called the stenographer, and had the colonel's story taken down s he told It to be rewritten Into an obituary Inter. And It Is what he said and not what we printed about Sampson Samp-son that Is worth putting down here. The colonel took the big leather ehnlr. locked his hands hehlnd his head, and begnn : "Let me see. Samp was born, as he says, December 6, 1840, In Wisconsin, Wiscon-sin, and came out to Kansas right after af-ter the war closed. lie was going to college up there, and at the second call for troops lie led the whole senior class Into forming n company, and enlisted before graduation and fought from that time on till the close of the war. He was u captain, I think, but you never heard him called that. When he nme here he'd been admitted to the bar and was a good lowyer a mighty good lawyer for that time--and had more business 'n a bird pup with a gum-shoe. He was Just a boy then, and, like ull boys, he enjoyed a good time. He ;!.-nnk more or less In the army they all did ' far as that goes, but he kept It up In a desultory way after he came here, as a ort of accessory ac-cessory to his main business of life, which was being a good fellow. "And he was a good fellow an aw-fnl aw-fnl good fellow. We were all vung then ; there wasn't aa old man on the town site as I remember It. We used to load up the whole bunch and go hnnttng closing up the stores nd taking the girls along and did not show up till midnight. Samp would always have a little something to tnkei under his hugey seat, and we would wet np and sing coming home. "He made a lot of money and blew It In nt .I'm Thomas' saloon, buy'ng s drinks, playing stud poker, betting on quarter horses, and lending It out to fellows who helped him forget they'd borrowed It. And sny In two or three years, after the chicken hunting aet hart married off, and begun In a with the next set coming on ; he married mar-ried and got the prettiest girl in town. We always thought that he married only because he wanted to be a good fellow and did not wish to be impolite to the girl he'd paired off with in the first crowd. Still he didn't stay home nights, and once or twice a year say, election or Fourth of July he and a lot of other young fellows would go ou and tip over all the board sidewalks side-walks In town, and paint funny signs on the store buildings and stack beer bottles on the preacher's front porch, and raise Ned generally. And the fellows fel-lows of his age, who owned the stores and were in nights, would say to Samp when they saw him coming down about noon the next day : " 'Go it when you're young, Samp, lor when you're old you can't. And he would wink at 'em, give 'em ten dollars dol-lars apiece for their damages t ad Jolly Ills way down the street to his office. "Now, you mustn't get the idea that Samp was the town drunkard, for he never was. He was Just a . good fel-ow. fel-ow. AVhen the second set of young Mlows outgrew him and seltled down, lie picked up with the third, and his vlfe's brown alpaca began to be no-ciced no-ciced more or less among the women. But Sump's practice didn't seem to fal off it only changed. He didn't have so much real estate lawing and goi more criminal practice. Gradually he became a criminal lawyer, and his fame for wit and eloquence extended over all the state. Colonel Morrison chuckled and .rossed his fat legs at the ankles as he continued, after lighting the cigar we gave him : "Weil, along In tue late seventies we fellows that be started out with got to owning our own homes and getting on in the world. That was the time when Samp should have been grubbing at his law books, but nary a grub for him. He was playing horse for dear life. And right there the fellows all left him behind. Some were buying real estate for speculation ; some running run-ning for office; some starting a bank; and others lending money At two per cent a month, and leading in the prayer pray-er meeting. So Samp kind of hitched up his ambition and took the slack out of his habits for a few months and went to the legislature. They say that he continued to eoai up a little -not much, but a little. He never was drunk in the daytime, but I remember there used to be mornings when his ollice smelled pretty sour. I had an office next to his for a while and he used to come in and talk to me a good deal. The young fellows around town i whom he would like to run with were I beginning- to find him stupid, and the j old fellows. except me were busy and he had no one to loaf with. He decided, de-cided, I remember, several times to brace up, and once he kept white shirts, culls and collars on for nearly a year. But when Harrison was j elected, he filled up from his shoes to 1 his hat and didn't go home for three days. One day after that, when he j had gone back to his flannel shirts and dirty collars, he was sitting in my office looking at the fire in the box stove when he broke out with: " 'Alphabetical what's the matter with me anyway? This town sends men to congress; it makes Supreme court Judges of others. It sends fellows fel-lows to Kansas City as rich bankers, it makes big merchants out of grocery jlerks. Fortune just naturally flirts ,vlth everyone In town, but never a rtink do I get. I know and you know I'm smarter than those jays. I can .each your congressman economics, and your Supreme judge law. I can think up more schemes than the banker, bank-er, and can beat the merchant In any kind of a game he'll name. I don't lie and I don't steal and I ain't stuck up." What's the matter with me, anyway?' "And of course," mused Colonel Morrison as he relighted the butt of his cigar, "of course I bad to lie to him and say I didn't know. But I did. We ull knew. He w as too much of a good fellow. His failure to get on bothered him a good deal, and one day he got roaring full and went up and down town telling people how smart he wns. Then his pride left him, and he let h's whiskers grow frowsy and used hm vest for a spittoon, nnd his eyes watered wa-tered too easily for a man still in his forties. "He went West a dozen years ago, about the time of Cleveland's second election, expecting to get a job In Arizona Ari-zona and grow up with the country. His wife was mighty happy, and she told our folks and the rest of the worn- -Alphabetical What's the Matter Wl th Me, Anyway7" he certnlnly did have a good time, though, when he got there. They remember re-member that session yet up there, and call It the year of the great flood, for the nights, they were filled with music, mu-sic, as the poet says, and from the best accounts we could get the days were devoid of ease also, and how Mrs. Sampson stood It we never could find out, for, of course, she must have known all about It, though he wouldn't let her come near Topeka. He began- to get pursy and red faced, and was clicking it off with his fifth set of young fellows. It took a big slug of whisky to set off his oratory, but when he got It wound up he surely could pull the feathers out of the bird of freedom to beat scandalous. scan-dalous. Cut as a stump p.eaker you weren't always sure he'd fill the engagement. en-gagement. He could make a jury blubber blub-ber and clench his fist at the prosecuting prosecut-ing attorney, yet he didn't claim to know much law, and he did turn over all the work In the Supreme cimrt to his partner, Charley Hedrlck. Then, when Charley was practicing before the Supreme court and wasn't here to hold him d.iwn, Samp would get out and whoop it up with the boys, quote Shakespeare and make stump wpeeches on dry goods boxes at mldn'ght. "Where was I?" asked Colonel Morrison Mor-rison of the stenographer when she had finished sharpening her pencil. "Oh, yes, along In the eighties came the boom, and Samp tried to get In It and make some money. He seems to lmve tried to catch up with us fellows of his i age, and he began to plunge. He got In debt. and. w hen the boom broke, he was still living In a rented house with the rent ;en months hehlnd; his partnership part-nership was gone and his practice was cut down to jo'nt keepers. Ramblers, and the farmers who hadn't heard the stories of his financial irregularities that were floating around town. "Yet his wife stuck to him. forever exp'a'nlrg to my wife t.'iat he would be all right when be settled down. But en that when Horace got away from his old associates in this town she knew that he would be all right. Poor Myrtle Kenwick, the prettiest girl you ever saw along In the sixties and she was through here not long ago and stayed with my wife and the girls a broken old woman, going back to her klnfolk In Iowa after she left him. Poor Myrtle! I wonder where she Is. I see tills Arizona paper doesn't say anything about her." Colonel Morrison read over the Item again, and smiled ns he proceeded : "But It does say that he occupied many places of honor and trust In his former home In Kansas, which seems to Indicate that whisky made old Samp a liar as well as a loafer at last. My. my I" sighed the colonel as he rose and put the paper on the desk. "My, my ! What a treacherous serpent It is! It gave him a good time literally a hell of a good time. And he was n good fellow fel-low literally a damned good fellow 'damned from here to eternity,' as your man Kipling says. God gave lit m every talent. He might have been a respected, useful citizen ; no honor wos beyond him; hut he put aside lame and worth and happiness to play with whisky. My Lord. Just think of It I" exclaimed the colonel as he reached for his hat and put up his glasses. "And this Is bow whisky served hlui : brought him to shnnie, wrecked his home, made his name a by-word, nnd lured him on and on to utter ruin by holding before him the phantom of a good time. What a pit'ful, heartbreaking heartbreak-ing mocker It Isi" He sighed a long sigh as he stood In the door looking np at the sky with his hands clasped behind be-hind him. and said half audibly as he went down the steps: "And whoso Is deceived thereby is not wise not wise. 'He's good nt anything and yet a fool !' - That was what Colonel Morrison gave the stenographer. What we made for the paper Is entirely uninteresting and need not be printed here. |
