Show ERRATIC OLD RIVER HAS FOR DOING QUEER THINGS owners of property along its bank have no eduse for suffer ng from lack of u n po nt there are rivis of all lengths and sizes and all degrees of wetness there are river with all soils of ie and with widely varying claims to tamo li it there Is only one with a habits dis a sense 0 humor and a woman s caprice a river that boea traveling sidewise that interferes in politics rearranges geography geogia phy and in real est ue a river that plays hide an I 1 seak with you today and to mor ow follows you around like a et dos with a dynamite crack er tied to its tall that river ts the missouri sais a writer in the amer lean magazine this thing happened in kansas city not many years ago A barty ol 01 men owned a strip of land along the mis bourl river bank it was not hand some land but it was valuable for fac tory they wre offered portly prices for it but held on one day they noticed that the strip was getting emaciated they held a hurried diagnosis with a surveyor a tape and found that halt of it had been washed away the next year halt of the remainder had gone the men wanted to sell then but the market seemed slug gish the next year the river ate so vigorously that only a tiny strip about as wide as a piece of baby ribbon was left the men were much depressed suddenly the land began to in crease the missouri had chosen the late manufacturing site tor a place to deposit a fine acre farm upon which it had foreclosed up the river inside ot six months that strip of land contained the men were jubilant buc still they would not sell they wanted another acres they said they strolled along the bank each day and urged tre rivet in proprietary tones to build aster then the river its mind once more and not only wiped out the extra acres but the original acres every foot of it the next bear it built up acres in the same spot but they all beloi to the man who owned the ground behind the original plot they leave stayed there ever since that Is up to last reports for high financing and property juggling the missouri makes a crooked lawyer look like a child I 1 hate to think what it would do for a man it it had a per bonal friendship for him f |