| Show = = JtURDETTE IN KANSAS ujUissouraH A KaiisuN Tree Tlic Sturl Settler mid His < July Ox Extracts from the captains log book and the diary ofa reformed lecturer This is the Kansas City Fort Scott Gulf railroad There is only one road out here that Call call the turn on it for initials That is the Kansas City St Joseph Council Bluffs Then yoti see those initials on a freight car you feel as though yon were in the presence of The Chirr Tough Cuss and High Mnckey Muck of the Sword Swallowers of Jericho I and Daughters of Jezebel We rosS the State line near Arcadia Mo I think remarked the precise lady with her own hair and teeth of art that we are now in Missonrah 71 And von would have been happy for a week to see how satisfied she was with the cueral average she had made Ever the prairies Billowy unrippled sweeping away in graceful undulations strctchinp to the horizon in sweep as level as a lake far reaching vast limitless limit-less free as the winds that sweep over lluin I no mountains can be grander than lime t prairies The forests of Kansas do not impress the beholder as do these magnificent plains There is nothing vast nothing awvinspiriiig about a Kansas tree It does its best but it runs so much to warps and knots and corns and cramps and bunions and warts and excrescences and crooks and twists and hunches that it cant get very high It wastes its energies ener-gies in crookedness But maybe it catches that from the Indian agents Anyhow a danger board ought to be put up near a Kansas forest lest some careless man might step on it in the dark omes down the long sweep of the prairie the sturdy settler There is no snow but he drives a sleigh The sleigh weighs somewhat less than a ton and is drawn by an only ox and he an orphan I judge that he is an orphan from the tender reproachful expression that films in his dim and glazing eye every time the sturdy settler fetches him a whack with the piece of rail he uses as a gad If till rail l doesnt break and the ox doesnt diV the sturdy settler will get there In fact I think he is nearly there now This is a big country It makes you tired to try to see the nearest edge of it The longer you look the further away it H > ems and the further into this country yon go the wider it grows Bless your soul theres room out here for a man vlio wants the earth He could come 111t here and have it and then there v i I1H hp plenty left for the rest of us j1 I i11inBiooklipt Eagle |
