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Show Ikt O Uhjnhd about Heroes of the Southwest. GALLUP, N. M. Through the dust of vanished yesterdays yes-terdays we've just traveled the high ranges of the earlier pis-toleers pis-toleers Pat Garrett of the itchy trigger finger; and John Wesley Hardin, the Texas preacher's boy turned scorpion; and Doc Hoiliuuy, the coughing dentist with his nervous ' :&T' :: &i it Onim .wtYvM: .... mannerism of shooting people; and that babyish king of all the kill-e kill-e r s, little sawed-oft sawed-oft Billy the Kid, who smiled his diffident dif-fident buck-toothed smile even as he blasted out a life for every one of the twenty - one Irvin S. Cobb years of his lite, "not counting," as he himself would say, "Mexicans and Injuns." We viewed the historic bullet pocks and their personal burying grounds, and we discovered just one survivor of those ancient two-gun two-gun clans a rancid octogenarian, wearing the look about him of a venerable, shamefaced sheep where he sat with a gingham apron draping drap-ing the withered flanks which once had supported his artillery, and he shelling peas by the kitchen door of his present wife's boarding house. Destructive Pests. AS THOUGH It weren't bad enough already with a Presidential Presi-dential campaign on this year, grasshoppers grass-hoppers have threatened growing things in the Midwest. True to their advance notices, the 17-year locusts are popping out along the eastern seaboard. In Ontario On-tario a plague of caterpillars covered cov-ered the railroad tracks so thickly trains could not run on schedule. There is no word yet from our little southern friend, the boll weevil, wee-vil, but news Is expected. Maybe he's waiting for the cotton crops that we used to plant for the export ex-port trade when we had an export ex-port cotton trade. The 'pine borer Is reported on the job in the north woods. To date, out here, we have only the regular resident pests, Including the white termite, the red ant and the mother who can prove her child is another Shirley Temple, If somebody some-body would only listen. Of the last-named, last-named, we already have upwards of 30,000 and more arriving every day. Still, we cannot hope to escape. Presently the party who goes around taking straw votes on the election will start multiplying rapidly, rap-idly, and then professional California Cali-fornia spellbinders will be binding. What Makes News. SOME gentleman who must work at the post office because, seemingly, seem-ingly, stamps don't mean a thing in the world to him, keeps taking issue with- me for saying the reason rea-son why successful newspapers feature fea-ture so-called sensations above news of art and science and literature litera-ture is not through any desire to pander morbid or vulgar tastes, but because the average publisher, being be-ing a smart merchandiser, puts such wares in his shop window, which is his front page, as are calculated cal-culated to catch the eye and win the trade of the general public. My correspondent demands an answer. All right, let's make it a parable : Suppose, mister, that tomorrow, through the town where you live, passes a train bearing a distinguished distin-guished savant who has made some great discovery say, the cause and cure of botts and on another train there is a taffy-haired lady who, after a spectacular murder trial, has just been triumphantly acquitted acquit-ted on the ground of self-defense for shooting a gentleman friend eight or nine times in the back. Which one of these two travelers will draw the biggest crowd down to the station? And, brother, which train will you meet? Favorite Son Keynoter. BACK home the folks are all puffed up with pride. Our own Albin W. Barkley keynoted for the Democratic convention uutil the rafters warped. Besides being a grand person and a hard-working senator, he's one of the last of the real southern silver-tongued the kind that can make a song of a syllable and turn any reasonably long word into an anthem. And does he come from the place where the true faith prevails? The majority stabilized just as soon as we got a lot of old-timers to quit voting for Jeff Davis. We weaned them on W. J. Bryan. Ours is probably prob-ably the only congressional district dis-trict In the Union that never has gone Republican, although, when Al Smith ran, it had a comparative close call from going Baptist. IRVIN S. COBB. -WSD Servlc. |