looked off into space. Finally he sighed:

"And yet a fool--a motley fool! Poor old Samp--kept it up to the end! I
take it from the guarded way the paper refers to his faults, 'as who of
us have not,' that he died of the tremens or something like that." The
Colonel paused and smiled just perceptibly, and went on: "Yet I see that
he was a good fellow to the end. I notice that the Shriners and the Elks
and the Eagles and the Hoo-hoos buried him. Nary an insurance order in
his! Poor old Samp; he certainly went all the gaits!"

We suggested that Colonel Morrison write something about the deceased
for the paper, but though the Colonel admitted that he knew Sampson
"like a book," there was no persuading Morrison to write the obituary.

"After some urging and by way of compromise," he said, "I'm perfectly
willing to give you fellows the facts and let you fix up what you
please."

Because the reporters were both busy we called the stenographer, and had
the Colonel's story taken down as he told it--to be rewritten into an
obituary later. And it is what he said and not what we printed about
Sampson that is worth putting down here. The Colonel took the big
leather chair, locked his hands behind his head, and began:

"Let me see. Samp was born, as he says, December 6, 1840, in Wisconsin,
and came out to Kansas right after the war closed. He was going to
college up there, and at the second call for troops he led the whole
senior class into forming a company, and enlisted before graduation and
fought from that time on till the close of the war. He was a captain, I
think, but you never heard him called that. When he came here he'd been
admitted to the bar and was a good lawyer--a mighty good lawyer for that
time--and had more business 'n a bird pup with a gum-shoe. He was just a
boy then, and, like all boys, he enjoyed a good time. He drank more or
less in the army--they all did 's far as that goes--but he kept it up in
a desultory way after he came here, as a sort of accessory to his main
business of life, which was being a good fellow.

"And he was a good fellow--an awful good fellow. We were all young then;
there wasn't an old man on the town-site as I remember it. We use to
load up the whole bunch and go hunting--closing up the stores and taking
the girls along--and did not show up till midnight. Samp would always
have a little something to take under his buggy-seat, and we would wet
up and sing coming home, with the beds of