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Show KIT CARSON. Tin! broad piazza of our home at St. J.jiiis was always tho welcome gathering place of tho trappers and huiitard, as well aa of the tradaia to Santa lre, and the mouutairl men generally. With these my father loved to talk and gain the knowledgoafier-wartls knowledgoafier-wartls put to bucIi good uso. "Iicre, also, narratives of endurance, ea-gaoity, ea-gaoity, daring, and Belf-relymg courage cour-age were told in the quiet, matter-of-course manner of men to whoji the opposite qualities were unknown. When Washington Irving was about to mako bis journey in the In dian country, he was ofLon at oir bouse whilo in St, Louia, and bis comments upon the simplicity as woll as the fine courage of these men was my first perception that there was anything unusual in them. I am not qualified to do justice to Lio best of these only men who have shared their lives can do so. Bit. as a child in St. Jjouis, then in our water wa-ter home in Washington, and br many years after on our own frontier, fron-tier, on that of California, and m long weeks of camming out travel, I had many opportunities of knowing tuera well. Ibey were "princes in their way," as one of them sad to me when he bad his feelings a iiitle hurt by a man of high ponititn in Washington. " Who would liavo thought it of him, such a fair - ook-ing ook-ing gentleman, too. They aro real men here-princes in their way but when they come out to the plains, wo are the princes, nnd they coiid not live without ug." y When needy King John tied to collect revenue by requiring each noble to produce his titles anil yriten deeds, or, failing, forfeit them. t the crown, one old earl's auswen was charming. He drew his great word, and flung it on the table befoe the king's envoys: "Tell yeur master I am no icrc, nor were my ancestors beforemo. These landB are ours by the svord, and by the sword we will hold then." So with our mountain men hey were not clerks, but they were yeat men. One of them, to whom I had Ufon reading Alazoppa, said to mo: "Head that part again whero 0,0 comes back with twice five hundrec men to thank htm for his courtrous ride. That's the way I felt wien the Blackfeel destroyed my dimes, and I went back and thanked tlem for it. Now if I had had rearing like that I might have made a eckl-, ar. I was a young boy in the scbotl house when the cry oame, 'Indians!' Ijumped to my rifle, and throw dom the spelling-book, and thar it laysi' Our good, dear friend Carson moo his mark true and high, howeve, without the need ol any more shcola-ship shcola-ship than the frontier school-houe gave. j His instinct was true and delicaf?, and led him to act3 as correctly courteous cour-teous aa the most thorough trainiig could do. 1 When the first boat that hod evir rested on the lonely, silent waters at the Great Salt Lake made its wayio the island in the center, and the mm at the bow was jumping ashoroio draw her up, Carson held him dom with "the captain steps there first" I liked greatly an expression of lis referring to a man who had done hm a mischief; "If I ever get the charcc I will do him an honest injruy" Nothing that was not honest and fiir and open and of good repute fouid its place in this wholesome naturei Carson had eminently the natrre that comes from gentleness combired with strength, from that innate seise of justice which gives to others wlat we require lor ourselves, irom a healthy nature to which cheerfulness is bo natural that instinctively ttey feel its lack and seek to impart.it. To Buch a nature the morbid, he nervous, the heart-sick and wotry, come and are comforted, and' fee as invalids do when they get into tlcse favored climates where an even tan-perature tan-perature and the certainty of dily returning sunshine and no surp-Bea of frosts or rains insensibly bing calm and healing. Such a nature attracts to itself and retains only what is best in all it meets, and as the character engnves itself upon the countenance, sctho many years since I had seen Canon hud done their ennobling wore so ellsctually that my old friend was perfectly in keeping with the biau-tiful biau-tiful library of the friend's hoiuo in which we met again. Ho hod lived ,what we idealis in writings and love to road of. And about him, too, was the digniy of coming death. I hod been written to from Wvsh-ington Wvsh-ington that Carson was there, ill and depressed; that ho had not consilted a physician yet, but thought h hod had the heart injured in an acciient; that if I would uree him to cone to mo and be well-nursed and se a physician, something might y be done, although his condition s&'ined very serious. Carson had been for years at important im-portant part of my life, when i was filled with energetic action, and when it was all filled with enorgetic action, and when true friends in tie olu home watched for and protcctel the absent, and welcomed them ba;k on the return from long dangen: and now that death, aDd political lifler-enccs lifler-enccs as relentless, and tho war had had completely ended that ifc, I saw, for the last time, ono of tic few who had not changed from that old time of youth and heal hand friends and a complete home. But Carson was only troubledoymy emotion, and told mo, with hs own simplicity of courage, that to bad seen Dr. Sayre, who had told hm ho might live to reach his bono (at Tuos, near Santa Fe), but hat ho might also die at any moment, as his heart was .fatally injured by .bo accident ac-cident from which Carson da.ed his illness. In trying to Bave a mule, he had become wound in its lariht, and both fell together over a steep precipice preci-pice Carson's ieft side getting the blow as bo fell on the rocks below. His open-air and absolutely temperate tem-perate life delayed the inevitable end. Hia only wish now was to gi t home and not let his wifo have tho shook of hearing his death. "Yesterday I thought I was gone," lie told me. The Indian chief who was with him in his room told him what he had said he himself only knew that all at once he "felt the bed rise with him," and with that a "drowning feeling," but with a new strange element which made him cry out, "Lord Jesus, bave mercy I" "1 did not know I said it, but I know 1 might, for it's only the Lord can I help me where I am now." 1 The chief had taken him from tho bod and carried him to an open window. "I noticed he was crying 'What's that for?' I asked him. 'Because 'Be-cause you looked dead, and you called Lord JesuB.' " I give this much of our dear old friend's sacred last talk with me because be-cause those who know him best were the most pained by tho singularly untrue use made of his name oy one incapable of understanding him. And as Old Mortality kept the mosses from hiding the inscriptions on the tombs he cared for, so it is needed that some should not allow the fungus growth on honored names. Carson did reach home. And hiB wifo did feel the shack he had bo hoped to soften to her; she even felt it ho much that sho died. Then Carson's Car-son's friends at the fort made him come to stay where they and the surgeon of tho post might do all they could to lessen his suffering. And so surrounded by his friends and love and honor, his end came. His wifo was of one of the good New Mexican Spanish families, and their children belone; with the most respectable and wealthy old settlors there, although Carson's post aa Indian In-dian superintendent left him no rloher than when he was only guide and hunter. Gon. Sherman, who waa among his most valued and attached friends, had tho good fortune to bo able lo ofler a free scholarship in an Ohio college to one son. He, I am Bure, and all who knew Carson best, when they hear him spoken of, will not think of him only as the brave man, or the great hunter, or the cool, sagacious, sa-gacious, admirable, guide, but first and tenderly aa their "Dear old Kit." Mrs, Jessie Bcnlon Fremont, in New York Ledger. |