Wichita Daily Eagle

It's a long time since I've condescended to address my constituents and I wouldn't do it now but for the fact that they need punishment. So rampant of late have become the good people of this town in the speculation and addition racket that some sore affliction is necessary to stop their foolishness. For that purpose this is written.

There is another reason, too, that prompts me to boost this able article into existence, or into type, viz: News was mighty scarce and the editor dug out for the seaboard. Living in a city like this and at a time when a paper is considered sadly lacking in news unless it builds college, two new railroads, three Santa Fe depots and an opera house the night before something must be did. If the paper is unloaded of something of that sort the average reader casts it disdainfully by and says, "there is nothing in it."

Yesterday was sadly lacking in great events and my most vigilant attempts failed to catch onto any sufficiently startling news for a half line editorial. I started out directly after breakfast resolved to cover myself with glory by grabbing great hunks of news at every corner, but my life was all rebuffs and disappointments and what was worse I was threatened with something awful by Jacobs, the dog raiser, if I did not make public statement that would exonerate him from the charges of monkeying with a little girl, for which he was arrested and held in jail for a long time. The authorities decided not to prosecute him and because I published an account of the charges upon which he was arrested, he insisted that now I must say it was all a lie. I refused of course and he promises to make me do it. He gave me until this morning to do it and it still remains undone. That racket may breed an item yet.

Yesterday was one of the days when no one had news. Met Commodore Woodman and the only thing he knew was that the Eagle had made an error in recording a real estate transfer, and because the Eagle is noted for having everything just right, the commodore regards this as an item of news.

I thought over the utterances of dying poets and thought a few of them might be interesting in lieu of a college or railroad scheme, but my left eye caught the following words of a living poet in a Virginia paper, and I decided to dose my readers with it:

When Mr. Lamont went into the president's room the other morning he found the chief executive of the nation in a terrible condition. His head was bent down close to his desk, his tongue was sticking out at one side of his mouth and he was black in the face. Mr. Lamont was about to call for assistance when the president spoke up: "See here. Dan, I've been trying to write a little poetry, and to use a slang phrase I'm 'stuck.' Can't you help me out a little?"

"Well, I don't know," said Dan, a little doubtfully, "but cut loose, and I'll try."

"You see. Dan." said the president, "I get along first rate until I strike the fourth line in each stanza, and there's the sticking point. I'll read you the fragments:"

"My heart to you is firmly knit
By love's electric wire;
No other woman have I found-"

"Now Dan."

"Since the day I shook Mariar."

promptly responded Mr. Lamont.

"Dan, I'm astonished that you should indulge in such levity on so solemn an occasion. Here is the second stanza:

How slowly pass the days away
'Till I can call you mine—
You, in your beauty's bright heyday-"

"Now, Dan, give me a lift."

"While I am forty-nine."

The president slowly walked up toward Dan, holding out his hands as though he desired to shake hands with him. but Dan knew better and bolted through the door. It is understood that Mr. Lamont stands no show for becoming poet laureate.

Regarding the beautiful showers there existed all over town a surprising knowledge I dropped into the county building. where the board, or plank, of county commissioners were at work in their shirt sleeves, and in answer to the question, "Have you any news?" they answered with one accord, "That is a beautiful shower, but we ought to have twenty-four hours of it." I agreed that we ought, but we hadn't. Even Hank Heiserman knew that it was a beautiful shower and that we ought to have more of it. In short, there was a frightful unanimity on these two propositions.

"I'll tell you a big Fourth of July scheme," said Capt. W. A. Richey. "Let us have a big demonstration breaking ground for the federal building and invite Governor Martin. Judge Peters and Senator Ingalls I will turn out my company and we can have Abe Smith's drum corps and the K. P. band and have a big time."

I saw two car loads of goods for the new wholesale grocery house of Steele & Walker. who are located in the Exton building. and I dropped in to see their store. They have already a very fine stock and realize the lack of sufficient store room. They informed me that they had three more cars of sugar on the way and that half of their stock was not here yet.

They have already two floors of the building well filled with goods. They propose to establish a very large house here, and it is a pity Mr. Exton did not build a larger building.

The boys at the Santa Fe office had a picnic yesterday afternoon. A pair of mud turtle doves wandered into the freight depot where they stored themselves all the afternoon, and had a lovely time in the paroxysms of fresh love on the half-shell. He was tall, speckled, and sunburnt and wore a yard of his pantaloon legs inside of his boots; a white hat with a leather belt served as a mansard roof for the main structure, and he looked old enough to know better.

She was sweet sixteen and looked as fresh and green as a Kentucky blue grass pasture. They nestled close together and billed and cooed until the clerk's mouth watered. He would inspect her charms at arm's length, and would decide upon some new article of female harness which he thought would add to her shape. then would go down into his jeans and exhume a well filled buckskin purse from which he would resurrect the needful with which she would emigrate to a neighboring store. tog herself out and return to the dove of the masculine persuasion, then the cooing process would begin afresh.

They kept this important branch of industry up until her sun bonnet, calico dress and copper-toed shoes had vanished before the lustrous hue of a tall complexioned cowboy hat, a worsted suit and a pair of bow-knot slippers. The freight clerks became sea-sick and hung their heads out the windows while their tongues hung out like piece of calf's liver. As I hove in sight and my eye came slap up against the picture I did the faint act in the most approved church fashion and had to be carried into the depot in the very face of the horrible disease. but thanks to my astonishing powers of endurance in the most trying position. I am still alive and the doctors say it won't prove fatal.