Show the old settler my dear san Jua ners 41 thais a story you ought to write she pursued now there are so many stories I 1 want to write I 1 dread to find any new one but bul some folks especially if they are intelligent and wholesome with womanly charms and not offensively aggressive are likely to win a hearing even after you have decided decide 1 against them 1 I was caught by the gray in her hair by the record of real experience peri ence on her face and I 1 half consented to hear her story you have to watch this human drama about forty years ay she declared before you begin to get the run of it any shorter period than that is too much like seeing just one scene of a long play its not long enough to get your in tei terest est and make you guess at the I 1 outcome well I 1 began watching t this his drama more than fifty years ago the town was young then and most of the people who had come to settle had come in the hope and expectation that the water wate nature had provided there above those fertile acres was of course intended for the use of the people who came to cultivate and im improve the land but those two thompson brothers by some shrewd scheming beat the settlers to three fifths of the water if they had refused at the first to part with it most of the people would have gone oni on and that would have depreciated the value of that three fifths of the springs so they half promised to part with it and the settlers hung on in hope while the brothers hung on avariciously to the water the settlers became poverty stricken and the brothers grew rich exploiting their poverty the settlers toiled and waded through tribulation some of them lost heart and went penniless away while the children of the two brothers had more money than they had wisdom to handle and they grew up lip pampered and glutted with extravagant notions of their importance and their ability when the younger of the brothers died his share of the business went into the hands of his children and as the health of the older brother failed he yielded to the of his boys and let them handle the works according to their big ideas they purchased cars they bought fancy I 1 stock they took extravagant excursions cur they made spread eagle continued on page 8 the old settler continued irom oage 1 improvements and lived in rol j licking company they had a high I 1 j old tims time that older brother was still I 1 alive when the property went into the hands of a receiver an and 1 was bought by the town ile he saw the tha sturdy second generation of that toiling community a generation gener aion made strong and i lugged by hard work and an 1 hardship divide up tha th water and the land in real c style like they wanted to have done long before and make at last the kind of a prosperous towne town I 1 they had been wanting all thac j years to make dahis his older children vitiated and scattered and bankrupt had neither standing nor place in the enlarged town and the old man himself obscure and unloved 1 seemed to be living just ta see the outcome of the drama in which he had played the part of the villain before lie he died he said over and over why I 1 have had I 1 sense enough to see that it 1 come eventually to this and then I 1 could have been and my children could have been honored and loved in this thriving community 11 ALBERT R LYMAN |