en years ago, about the time of Cleveland's second
election, expecting to get a job in Arizona and grow up with the
country. His wife was mighty happy, and she told our folks and the rest
of the women that when Horace got away from his old associates in this
town she knew that he would be all right. Poor Myrtle Kenwick, the
prettiest girl you ever saw along in the sixties--and she was through
here not long ago and stayed with my wife and the girls--a broken old
woman, going back to her kinfolk in Iowa after she left him. Poor
Myrtle! I wonder where she is. I see this Arizona paper doesn't say
anything about her."

Colonel Morrison read over the item again, and smiled as he proceeded:

"But it does say that he occupied many places of honour and trust in
his former home in Kansas, which seems to indicate that whisky made old
Samp a liar as well as a loafer at last. My, my!" sighed the Colonel as
he rose and put the paper on the desk. "My, my! What a treacherous
serpent it is! It gave him a good time--literally a hell of a good time.
And he was a good fellow--literally a damned good fellow--'damned from
here to eternity,' as your man Kipling says. God gave him every talent.
He might have been a respected, useful citizen; no honour was beyond
him; but he put aside fame and worth and happiness to play with whisky.
My Lord, just think of it!" exclaimed the Colonel as he reached for his
hat and put up his glasses. "And this is how whisky served him: brought
him to shame, wrecked his home, made his name a by-word, and lured him
on and on to utter ruin by holding before him the phantom of a good
time. What a pitiful, heart-breaking mocker it is!" He sighed a long
sigh as he stood in the door looking up at the sky with his hands
clasped behind him, and said half audibly as he went down the steps:
"And whoso is deceived thereby is not wise--not wise. 'He's good at
anything--and yet a fool'!"

That was what Colonel Morrison gave the stenographer. What we made for
the paper is entirely uninteresting and need not be printed here.

XVI

A Kansas "Childe Roland"

One of the wisest things ever said about the newspaper business was said
by the late J. Sterling Morton, of Nebraska. He declared that a
newspaper's enemies were its assets, and the newspaper's liabilities its
friends. This is particularly true of a country newspaper. For instance,
witness the ten-years' struggle of our own little paper to get rid of
the word "H