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Show Gamblers Helped the Rev. Endicott Build His Churchyard Fence TomDstone was unique among the frontier towns that have achieved lurid distinction in the history of the American West. It had, according to its legend, its man for breakfast every morning, but it was touched with the refinements of old and ordered or-dered communities. It was isolated in an Arizona .desert, but civilization was just over the horizon. . . A mining town in the heart of a cattle country, it had the picturesqueness of a boom silver camp and the col our of a trail-end. cowboy capital. It was a town of lawlessness and law. saloons and schools, gambling halls and churches, lurid melodrama and business routine, red lights and altar al-tar candles . . The Rev. Endicott Peabody. educated edu-cated at Cheltenham and Cambridge university in England, and now rector rec-tor of the Tombstone Episcopal church, is anxious to have the churchyard fenced and takes up a collection for the purpose. His con gregation gives meagerly. Gamblers Gam-blers playinfi poker in the Crystal Palace learn of the good pastor's disappiuntn lent and. with their compliments, com-pliments, send the Rev. Peabody the ; kitty from the night's play, the kitty I comprising chips taken out for all hands above two pair. The Rev. : Peabody returns a note of polite i thanks and the church fence is built. 1 Walter Noble Burns in "Tombstone: "Tomb-stone: An Iliad of the bouthwest" Doubleday, Page St Co.. Publishers. |