t to supply its soldiers with a newly invented
soup. He intends to visit Europe soon to make contracts with
Western range cattle companies who have their headquarters
there, for the slaughtering of their cattle.

The soup scheme evidently died stillborn, for history records nothing
further of it, and less than three months after the National
Consumers' Company was founded with blare of trumpets, it had
collapsed. It was characteristic of von Hoffman, whose fortune was
behind the undertaking, that he paid back every subscriber to the
stock in full. If any one was to lose, he intimated, it was von
Hoffman. But, having settled with the creditors of his expensive
son-in-law, he explained to that gentleman, in words which could not
be misunderstood, that he would have no more of his schemes. Von
Hoffman thereupon betook himself to Europe, and the Marquis to Medora.

His optimism remained indomitable to the last. To reporters he denied
vigorously that he had any intentions "of removing his business
interests from Dakota."

"I like Dakota and have come to stay," he remarked. Thereupon he
launched one more grandiose scheme, announcing that he had discovered
a gold mine in Montana and was planning to begin working it for all it
was worth as soon as his prospectors had completed their labors; and
sailed for India with his intrepid Marquise to hunt tigers.

Dakota knew him no more, and under the heading, "An Ex-Dakota
Dreamer," the Sioux Falls _Press_ pronounced his epitaph:

The Marquis is a most accomplished dreamer, and so long as
his fortune lasted, or his father-in-law, Baron von Hoffman,
would put up the money, he could afford to dream. He once
remarked confidentially to a friend, "I veel make ze
millions and millions by ze great enterprizes in America,
and zen I veel go home to France, and veel capture my
comrades in ze French armee, an veel plot and plan, and
directly zey veel put me in command, and zen I veel swoop
down on ze government, and first zing you know I veel mount
the zrone." One time his agent at Medora, his ranch on the
Northern Pacific, wrote him at New York about the loss of
three thousand head of sheep, the letter going into all the
details of the affair. The Marquis turned the sheet over and
wrote, "Please don't trouble me with trifles like these." He
is a very pleasant gentleman to meet, but unfortunately his