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Show the rich County news, Randolph, utah pmiiiiLumnmiimmmnininnnimimH The Stonj of Aqua Pura j 1 d WILUAM ALLEN WHITE nimiiuiHHiHniuriuiiiiiHuiiiiiiinntfiii j Copyright, 1922, by the Mecmilleii Co PEOPLE ringer held on and lived, rent free, in thp two front rooms of the barn of a hotel. His daughter, Mary, frail, and withered by tanned, hollow-eyethe droughts lived with him. In 1890 the hot winds came again in the summer and long and steady they blew, blighting everything. There were only five hundred people in Fountain county that year, and they lived on the taxes from the railroad that crossed the county. Families were put on the poor list without disgrace it was almost a mark of political distinction and in the little town many devices were in vogue to distribute the county funds during the winter. There was no rain that winter and the snow was hard and dry. 'Cattle on the range suffered for water and died by the thousands. A procession from the little town started eastward early In the spring. d wagons, sought the rising sun. Christmas eve, 1891, the entire village, fifteen souls in all, assembled at Barringers house. He was hopeful, even cheerful, and talked bitterly of what one good crop would do for the country; although there were no farmers left to plant it, even if nature had been harboring a smile for the dreary land. The year that followed that Christmas promised much. There were spring rains, and in May the brown grass and the scattered patches of wheat grew green and fair to see. Barringer freshened up perceptibly. He sent an account of his Indebtedness on home-rule- d manlira paper to his creditors in the East, and faithfully assured them that he would remit all he owed in the fall. A few wanderers straggled into Fountain county, lured by the green fields and running brooks. The gray prairie wolf gave up the dug-oto human occupants. Lights In the prairie cabins twinkled back hope to the stars. Before June there were a thousand people in Fountain county. Aqua Puras business houses- - seemed-tliven up. There was a Fourth of July celebration in town. But the rain that spojled the advertised fireworks in the evening was the last who write about Kansas, write Ignorantly, and of 'the state as a finished product. Kansas, like Gaul of old, is divided Into three parts, differing as widely, each from the other, as any three countries In the same latitude upon the globe. It would be as untrue to classify together the Egyptian, the Indian and the Central American, as to speak of the Kansas man without distinguishing between the eastern Kansan, the central Kansan, and the western Kansan. Eastern Kansas Is a finished community like New York or Pennsylvania. Central Kansas is finished, but not quite paid for; and western Kansas, the only place where there is any suffering from drought or crop failures, is a new country old enly in a pluck which is slowly conquering the desert. Aqua Pura was a western Kansas town, set high up, far out on the (prairie. It was founded nine years ego, at the beginning of the boom, not thy cowboys and ruffians, but by honest, ambitious men and women. Of the six men who staked out the town site, tw Johnson and Barringer were Ha. card men; one, Nickols, was from Princeton; and the other three, Bemls, Bradley and Hicks, had come from inland state universities. When their wives came West there was a Vassar reunion, and the first mail that arrived after the post office had been established brought the New York magazines. The town was like dozens of others that sprang up- far out in the treacherous wilderness in that fresh, green spring of 1SS6. They called it Aqua Pura, 'choosing a Latin name to proclaim to the world that it was not a rowdy town. The new yellow pine of the little village gleamed in the clear sunlight. It could be seen for miles on a clear, warm day, as it stood upon a rise of ground ; and over in Maize, six miles away, the electric lights of Aqua Pura, which flashed out in the evening before the town was six months old, could be seen distinctly. A schoolhouse that cost twenty thousand dollars was built before the town had seen its first winter; and the first Christmas bail in Aqua Pura was held in an opera house that cost ten thousand. Money was plentiful; two and three-storbuildings rose on each side of the main street of the little place. The farmers who had taken homesteads in the country around the town had prospered. Barringer was elected mayor at the municipal election in the spring of 87, and he platted out Barringers Addition, and built a house there with borrowed money in June. There were two thousand people in Aqua Pura then. There was not a lawless element There was not a saloon in the town. A billiard hall, and a dark room, wherein cards might be played surreptitiously, were the only Institutions which made the people of Aqua Pura blush, when they took the innumerable "Eastern capitalists over the town who visited western Kansas that year. .These "capitalists were entertained at a three-stor- y brick hotel, equipped vwith electricity and modern plumbing ln order to excel Maize, where the ho-twas an indifferent frame affair. 'This Is the story of the rise. has told it a thousand times. (Barringer believed in the town to the llast When the terrible drought of 1887, with Its furnacelike breath singed tthe itown and the farms in Fountain county, Barringer led the majority which proudly claimed that the country was all right; and as chairman of the beard of county commissioners, he sent a scathing message to the governor, refusing aid. Barringers own bank loaned money on land, whereon the crop had failed, to tide the farmers .over the winter. Barringers signature guaranteed loans from the East upon everything negotiable, and Aqua Pnra thrived for a time upon promises. Here and 'there, in the spring of 1888, there was an empty building. One room .of the opera house block was vacant. Barringer started a man in business, selling notions, who occupied the room. Barringer went East and pleaded with the men who had invested in the town to .be easy on their debtors. Then came the hot winds of Jnly, blowing out of the souhtwest, scorching the grass, shriveling the grain, and drying up the streams that bad filled In the spring. During the fall of that year the hotel, which bad been open only in the lower story, closed. The opera house began to be nsed for "aid" meetings, and when the snow winter wind blew through the desolate streets of the little town. It rattled a hundred windows In vacant houses, and sometimes boards from the high blew sidewalk that led across the gaily to the big red grade of the unfinished "Chicago Air Line." Barringer did not go East that year. He could not. But he wrote wrote regularly and bravely to the Eastern capitalists who were concerned In his bank nnd loan company; and they grew colder and colder as the winter deepened and the Interest on defaulted loans came out. Barringer's failure was announced in the spring of 89. Nickols had left. Johnson had left The other founders of Aqua Pura had and their families had died in gone, and with them the culture and Iba ambition of the town. But Bar - White-canopie- store buildings. He walked up and down in the little paths through the brown weeds in the deserted streets, all day long, talking to himself At night when the prairie wind rattled through the empty building, blowing snow and sand down the halls, and in little drifts upon the broken stairs, the old mans lamp was seen by straggling It Is doubtful if there has ever been travelers burning far into the night. a medicine endorsed by so many miniswas he He told his daily visitors that ters of the Gospel as has Tanlac. Inkeeping his books. there Is scarcely a faith, creed Thus the winter passed. The grass deed, or denomination in all the land In March. of came with the light mist which one, or more, of the clergymen By May it had lost its color. By June has not expressed their Init was brown, and the hot winds debtednesspublicly to the Premier Preparation in the came again August, curving for the benefits they have derived from warped boards a little deeper on the Its use. floor of the hotel porch. Herders and out In One of the latest to travelers, straggling back to the green this connection is Rev. Bspeak M. Bridges, country, saw him sitting there at twia widely known and beloved Baptist light, looking toward the southwest, a preacher, residing at Mooresboro, N. a with old man, grizzled, tfnkeinpt C., whose statement follows: shifting light In his eye. To such as Tanlac has given me a good appethe made he him to always spoke renewed same speeqi : "Yes, it looks like rain, tite, toned tipininy system and a gratifying nay such my strength but it cant rain. The rain has gone to recommend It to anythat I am They say it rained at one who glad dry here. Is In a run down condition. it. I doubt Hutchinson, maybe so, ten years past I have had such There is no God west of Newton. He aFor case of indigestion that I severe dried up in 90. They talk irrigation. could 'not find anything to eat that Wheres old hell. an in Thats story agreed with me. Finally I became Johnson? Not here! Wheres Nickols? very nervous and could get but very Not here! Bemis? Not here! Bradlittle sleep or rest. here! Not Hicks? here! Not ley? It seetns that I took nearly everyWheres handsome Dick Barringer, to get myself right, hut Hon. Kichard Barringer? Here! Here thing trying I ran across me he is, holding down a hot brick in a nothing helpednerves until so much better are Tanlac. My does hell Yes, it cooling room of now that my sleep is sound and relook like rain, doesn't It? I enioy my meals and have Cattle roamed the streets In the freshing. also weight. I can say from gained early spring, but the stumbling of the that Tanlac is a splendid experience animals upon the broken walks, did and tonic, for tt has built not disturb him, and the winds and medicine me up wonderfully. the drouth soon drove them away. Tnnlne Is sold 'y all good druggists. The messenger with provisions came Advertisement. with The its summer, every morning. awful heat, began to glow. The lightReligious Exercise. ning and the thunder joked Insolently Two shipwrecked sailors were on a in the distance at nocn ; and the stars in the deep, dry blue looked down and desert island. They were utterly mismocked the old mans prayers as he erable, pinched with hunger and cold. sat, at night, on his rickety sentry box. The one more wretched than the He tottered through the deserted other said to his companion, Can jou stores calling his roll. Night after pray. Bill? No. Rev. B. M. Bridges Gives Facts irl His Case 1 Can you sing a hymn? "No. said the first, "Well, lets have something religious; lets have a Boston Transcript. lection. col- sun-warp- 87-8- fontentt 15iuiAPraclr Ir - -- For Infants and Children. Mothers Know That if Genuine Castoria teiM i TEBCENT. ALGOHOL-- 3 lent M limMheStomadisaim uuwisa M, Always Bears the M in of Mineral Not Narcotic It iMk Signature aeeffutaessandRestW neither Opiam,Mphtoe Mi - JbcklkSM ' In sis Use GonflipaSonandpiantoe3. till For Over wurttm6thereftora-- i Signatory0 Ihc-Siaul-e NEW Thirty Years y01. CASTORIA Exact Copy of Wrapper. THE CENTAUR COMMRV, NEW YORK CITY. eNWPATHK Take a good dose of Carters Little Liver Pills i then take 2 nQ for a few after.They BARTERS cleanse your system of all nights waste matter ana 1ITTLE Regulate Your Bowels. Mild as easy to . I take aS sugar. Genuine bear signature Small Pill. Small Dose. Small Price. VER Talking, Not Entertaining. Mothers Voice Are you entertain in? Harold? Daughter No, were just talking. PILLS Gives Charming Mew Shade to Old Lingerie PUTNAM FADELESS DYES PEP IN SCHOOL PLAYGROUND y Bar-irlng- Wot V- Authority Makes Plea for Games That Are Characterized by Energy and Vim. Jellyfish gymnastics, or stupid, silly games, played half heartedly, have little place In the proper physical devel- opment of the growing child, declaies Dr. E. Blanche Sterling, acting assistant surgeon, United States public health service, in commenting on the health of school children. In planning The Old Man's Lamp Was Seen by Straggling Travelers Burning Far Into the Night. that fell until winter. A carload of aid from central Kansas saved a .hundred lives in Fountain county (hat t year. When the spring of 1893 opened, Barringer looked ten years older than he looked the spring before. It was his habit to sit on the front porch of the deserted hotel and look across the prairies to the southwest and watch the breaking clouds scatter Into the blue of the twilight. He could see the empty water tower silhouetted against sky. The frame .buildings that rose In the boom days had all ben moved away. He eat and waited, ho-in- g fondly for the realization of a dream which he feared could never come true. There were days when the postmachild sat with him. sters The old man and the child sat .thus one evening when the old man sighed : "If It would only rain, there would be half a crop yet If it would only rain 1 The child heard him and sighed : Yes, if it would only rain He what is rain, Mr. Barringer? looked at the child blankly and sat for a long time in silence. When he Arose he did not even have a pretense of hope. He grew despondent from that hour, and a sort of hypochondria seized him. That fall when the winds piled the sand in the railroad "cuts and the prairie was as hard and barren as the ground around a cabin door, Barringers daughter died of fever. The old man seemed little moved by sorrow. That, winter the postmaster left The office was discontinued. The county commissioners tried to get Barringer to leave. He would not be persuaded to go. The county commissioners were not insistent. It gave one of them an excuse for drawing four dollars a day from the county treasury; he rode from Maize to Aqua Pura every day with supplies for Barringer. The old man cooked, ate, and slept in the office of the hotel. Day after day he put on his overcoat in the winter and made the rounds of the vacant four-year-o- 1 , night he walked to the red clay grade of the uncompleted Air Line and looked over the dead level stretches of prairie. He would have gone away, but something held him to the town. There he had risked all. Here, in his warped fancy, he hoped to regain all. He had written so often, Times will be better In the spring, that it was part of his confession of faith that and One good crop will bring the country around all right This was written with red clay in the old mans nervous hafid on the side of the hotel, on the faded signs, on the deserted inner walls of the stores in fact, everywhere in Aqua Pura. The wind told on him; it withered him and sapped his energy. One morning he awoke and a strange sound greeted his ears. There was a gentle tapping in the building and a roar that was not the guffaw of the wind. He rushed for the door. He saw the rain, and bareheaded he ran to the middle of the streets where It was pouring down. The messenger from Maize with the days supplies found him standing there, vacantly, almost thoughtfully, looking up, the rain' dripping from his grizzled head, and rivulets of water trickling about his shoes. fiello, Uncl$ Dick, said the mesthe prospeett senger. Enjoying Rivers rlslu; better come back with per-'hap- s, me. But the old man only answered, Johnson? Not here! Nickols? Not here! Bemls? Not here! Bradley t Not here I Hicks? Not herel And Barringer? Herel And now- - Gods moved the rain ()elt west. Moved so far west that theres hope for Lazarus to get irrigation from Abraham. And with this the old man wenl into the house. There, when the five days rain had ceased, and when the great river that flooded the barren plain had shrunk, the rescuing party, coming from Beside his bed Maize, found him. were his balanced books and his legal papers. In his dead eyes were a sand dreams. exercise with a view to the promotion of good posture, she suggests they should be simple and vigorous and play full of energy and vim. The posture of school children cannot, however, be said to depend chiefly on any one condition, she holds. Defective vision, adenoids and bad tonsils tend to have e bad effect on the childs posture. Where hygienic conditions in a school are not the best there Is an Increase of poor posture. Good nutrition is a contributing factor to good posture, but by no means an condition. Condition of the teeth, she claims, has no effect. Doctor Sterlings findings are based on a study of three elementary schools at Rare Find in English Church. After three centuries of concealment behind plaster and rubbish, the remains of a Fourteenth century d stained-glas- s window have been at Chelsea (England) Old church. The old glass, which is of immense value, was found between layers of soft plaster behind a mass of old bricks. In one window only a fragment of a border was found, but In the other a panel two feet by two was brought to light. The panel Is nearly complete, the head of the figure apparently that of St. Lawrence or St. Stephen is missing. The glass seems to be of a date not later than the middle of the Fourteenth century. With the exception of Westminster abbey, there is no London church with its own glass of so early a date. dyes or tints as you wish PROBABLY Would-B- e but DIDNT GET LOAN Borrower Freed His Mind, Remark" Poured No Oil on Troubled Waters. The story is told of a banker the loss of one eye rnd had' a glass substitute made. The glass-ejwas wonderfully fashioned, so much so that its wearer was satisfied no one could tell it from a real organ. A day or so after he began wearing it, a customer of the bank sought a loan, but the banker was not quite satisfied with the collateral. After much persuasion from borrower, the banker said: I will make you a sporting proposition. If you can tell which of my eyes Is glass, I will make you Ike whir-suffere-d e -- loan. Bobby's Wish. "Thats easy, replied the other. O dear! grumbled Bobby when oryour left eye." Its dered to get busy with the soup. I How do you know? asked ite just wish I was a clock. banker. Why do you wish that? his mother "It is he more sympathetic of the asked. two, responded the borrower. Wall Cause I wouldnt have to wash my Street Journal. face and hands then, explained the -- youngster. Boston script. Tran Camels Peculiarity. The camel cannot swim. The moment it loses its footing in running water Bedford, Ind. Pump Returns Gasoline. it turns on its side and makes no effort A tank for draining gasoline from to save itself from drowning. A grindstones color is gray; and an automobile when repairs are to be man a has his nose to the grind- made has been equipped with a pump when You cant be too particular in and hose for returning the fuel. stone, life looks gray. your particular friends. Evening Are you among these thousands? f I 'HOUSANDS of people keep on the food that enriches the blood, and trying, year after year, to build builds sound, healthy bodies. health from food that has been robbed of certain elements required for perfect nutrition. If your food doesnt contain the mineral properties that go to build up nerve, tooth and bone structure, there is no other means by which you can get these vital elements. This is one reason why so many people eat Grape-Nut- s well-inform- ed Grape-Nut- s is made from whole wheat flour and malted barley baked for 20 hours, which develops the natural richness of the grains and makes for ready digestibility. And is perfectly deliserved with milk or creamr or made into an appetizing pudding for dinner. Grape-Nut- s cious Get a package of Grape-Nut- s from your grocer today, and give the family a help to health. Grape-Nut- s the Body Builder |
