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IMd you ever hear of anything so funny that It
would arouse the rlsabllities of a canine? —In other
words, make a dog laugh?
If you want to see such funny things every day
and Sunday, too, you ought to read The Florida
Times-Union these days, as it begins to warm up
to its heroic defense of the threatened “liberties”
of its best friend, the Rt. Hon (?) John Barley
corn.
The Times-Union and Liquorized “Liberty.”
A whiskey convention met in Jacksonville last
week —met for one great, supreme purpose of keep
ing saloons in Florida. There could have been no
other purpose (except the “political pull” growing
out of it) —for that is the ONE question to be set
tled in the campaign for which they planned; and
yet The Times-Union contained pictures of several
dozen of the leaders with the following blazing head
lines across the several pages required for the
glittering “menagerie”:
W CATILLOS IN STONE VALLEE
A Story Illustrating, Holv a Good Deed Wrings Its Relvard.
ETTY came running into the little kitch
en where her mother was preparing sup
per, her eyes shining with excitement.
There’s a wagon full of home-seekers
camped down at the foot of the hill and
they begged father to let them have a
bucket of water out of our well.”
Mrs. Croly’s face clouded, water was
by far the most precious thing in that
lEx
new, streamless, springless land in which they had
lately settled. The water was low in the well, which
had been dug deeply at great expense.
“Os course he let them have the bucket of water,”
she said, looking half reproachfully at her husband,
who had just entered. “I sometimes think it is a
pity we didn’t have the well fenced in with a gate
that locked. We always have some tramp camping
there and Hetty is bewitched over that sort of peo
ple.”
“When I fence in water it will be when water is
more plentiful in this valley than it is now,” said Mr.
Croly. “I know what it is to travel miles after dark
looking for camp. No, Mother; I dug the well, but I
didn’t put the water in it; and I don’t ask a man for
his character before I give him a drink.”
“Os course, I know, dear,” the wife admitted; “but
you don’t know how crazy Hetty is after people—
any kind; it doesn’t matter to her. She will want to
hang around that wagon all day long. And there is
no telling the talk she will pick up, —to say nothing
of diseases they may have with them.”
“Nonsense, Rachel!” said Mr. Croly. “A good meal
of victuals will cure all the diseases they’ve got. If
they had any, they’d have died of ’em, long ago, I be
lieve. What is the use of worrying? They may be
gone by morning.”
In about an hour a lad from the camp came up the
hill, to borrow an ax “to cut a little bresh to fry a
little meat for supper.”
Mr. Croly quizzed him a little at first, asking how
he came to be teaming it through the sage-brush with
out an ax. The boy said their ax had “slipped out of
one of the packs, somehow,” and Mr. Croly inquired
how long ago that was—last summer, perhaps? The
lad smiled family and shifted his eyes, making no
effort to keep up his end of the pleasantry.
Next morning, before sunrise, he and his mother
were drawing water for the animals at the well. Af
terward the woman made a little fire on the ground
behind the wagon, and they ate breakfast, standing;
and the boy drove the stock away to pick up what
pasture they could find during the day.
“They have come to stay,” said Mrs. Croly. “She
has been up to borrow a cupful of yeast to set a little
bread.”
Mrs. Croly had looked into the woman s tireu
brown eyes and seen what she thought was sorrow
there, and her first repellent feeling was gone. Nev
ertheless it was a trial to have all her forebodings
so promptly fulfilled
ELORIDIAN TOLLE • Sy WILLIAM D. UPSHA W
The Solden Age for September 29, 1910.
Representative Floridians Who Lead the Movement
For Local Self Government.
And one of the strangest things on earth is the
fact that some people who really do not wish to
keep saloons in Florida and other States where sim
ilar battles are being fought, are caught by such
appeals—such empty, political phraseology—and are
led to the pitiful sight and plight of fighting the
liquor men’s battles for them.
They “Slighted” the Saloon Men.
We ask in all fairness and honesty—Why didn’t
The Times-Union put the saloon-keeper’s pictures in
the paper? They are the real heroes. They are the
only men whose business is at stake! The only ques
tion to be voted on November Bth is Saloons or No
Saloons in Florida. And yet the saloon-keepers
were kept “hid out.” They were “down in the licens
ed saloon” making money out of debauched man-
Hetty came flying in about noon, with a red face,
all excitement and joy.
“He’s got an accordion!” she shrieked; “and he
says he’ll play on it if I can come down after supper.
And he says if Martha can’t walk he’ll carry her.”
“Who in the world is ‘he’?” asked Mrs. Croly, in
the unsympathetic way of mothers when they are ta
ken by surprise.
“The boy, the boy! He is such a nice boy, Mother.
Guess what his name is, —Gess!”
“How should I guess it —and what is his name to
us? Don’t be foolish, Hetty.”
“But I have just told you his name,” cried Hester,
gleefully. “His name is Gess —Natty Gess. Do
laugh, Mother.” And Hetty ran away to make Mar
tha laugh at the joke about Natty’s name.
Both little girls came running, presently, to make
sure of Mother’s consent to their going below that
evening to hear Natty play the accordion. It ended
in Mr. Croly’s going with them and sitting through
the doleful performance. They sat all together in a
circle on the ground in the rear of the wagon. The
woman, always in her sunbonnet, tended a low fire,
or “smudge,” which kept away the mosquitoes. The
wind flapped the dingy wagon-sheet, the coyotes howl
ed in the darkness, the family horses stamped in the
stable, and the stranger’s lean cattle hung wistfully
about the corral, smelling the good hay which was
not for them.
“Can’t they have some, Father? —just one good
meal?” Hetty whispered. She had watched the for
lorn brutes, and knew what their hungry restless
movements meant.
“Dear little girl,” said her father, “if we should
try to fill all the empty stomachs that come our way,
we should soon have nothing to put in our own.”
Little Martha fell asleep listening to the “Suwanee
River,” urged forh in the whining, low notes of the
accordion. Next morning she begged for the boy and
his music. He came and played to her again, and
again the music sent her to sleep. His yellow face
and big brown eyes and faded hair, his slow smiles
and shifting glances, seemed to have a charm for
both children. Hetty was always at the well when
the strangers’ stock were being watered, discussing
their merits and afflictions with the boy. Her great
est ambition in the future of their stay, which seem
ed to be indefinite, was that she might be allowed to
ride behind Natty to drive his cattle to pasture —so
called —or to round them up at night.
As for little Martha, her thin, wistful face took on
a rested look the moment her eyes fell upon Natty.
He played before her, at her sovereign pleasure, as
David played before moody Saul; and the spell of
his queer music, and of his slow, quaint talk, seemed
to bring peace to her ailment, which the doctor had
said was chiefly of the nerves.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Gess continued to borrow, and
to lament the distance to town, and Natty’s lack of
time for making such a journey. Her husband, as
hood, wrecked youth and broken-hearted mothers
and wives—money dripping with human blood, out
of which to pay the expenses of the horrible campaign
—that is THAT PART that is not paid by Anheuser-
Busch-Whacker & Co., and the other brewers and
liquor dealers of America beyond the borders of
Florida.
The Times-Union knew what these liquorized lead
ers knew: that if the pictures of several prominent
saloon-keepers of Jacksonville, Tampa, St. Augustine
and Key West, had adorned those pages their battle
would be lost in Florida. Let the saloon men start
out in the open to fight for “their rights” In any
State where a campaign for State-wide prohibition is
on and prohibition will win hands down.
God save people everywhere who claim to be de
cent from the fatal folly of fighting the battles of that
devilish business that can only prosper on the down
fall-of our citizenship, the destruction of our homes
and the debauchery of our government.
Mr. Croly had surmised, had gone with his able
teams to “do a little freighting” before winter set in.
He had not been paid for his work on the ditch, but
trusted to get the money after a while. They seem
ed absolutely without resources, the mother and the
boy, yet without anxiety or fear for the future. “We
shall certainly have to take care of them this winter/*
said Mrs. Croly,—“that is, if we stay ourselves.”
One Sunday morning Martha woke early, and begg
ed and fretted to be dressed “right away”. To make
her happy, Hetty began telling her a story. The
door between the childrens’ room and their mother’s
stood ajar, and Mrs. Croly heard parts of the story
while she was dressing.
“Where did you read that story, Hetty?” she ask
ea, standing in the doorway and looking in with a
smile.
“I didn’t read it, Mother.”
“Where did you hear it, then?”
“I never heard it —that is, all of it. But Natty told
me about the cave, and I made up the rest.”
“Does he know of such a place?”
“Not with water in it, really; but he knows a hole
in the rocks where there is a sound like water com
ing from a far way off, and rushing down.”
Hetty’s story was about a poor settler who was
“holding down” a desert claim, like her father’s, only
he had no well, and the dry pasture was giving out
all around him. His horses had grown so thin it
seemed, when he saddled one, the cinch would cut it
in two, and when he rode one bareback it seemed the
creature’s spine would cut him in two: so Hetty told
it, with much feeling for the man and his starving
horses.
Every morning he rode them to the river to water;
but the river was miles away, and as they grew
weaker with hunger, it was as much as the poor
things could do to stagger through the sage-brush to
get their morning and evening drink.
One morning they were gone. He searched all
day and found no trace of them; but when, at night,
he returned to his cabin, footsore and weary, the
horses were there before him, waiting at the rails of
the corral. He drove them to the river, as usual, and
they trotted lightly along, but they would not drink.
Next morning again they were missing, and again he
walked the sage-brush all day without finding them,
and again they were at home before him.
They were as fresh, when he rode them to water,
(Continued on Page 8.)
Payne Afternoon, observed by an Atlanta Literary
Society this week, was a fitting honor to our brilliant
story-writer, Mrs. Odessa Strickland Payne. Read
her masterpieces—“ESTHEß FERRALL’S EXPERI
MENT” and “THE MISSION GIRL.” Each sl.lO post
paid.
THE GOLDEN AGE,
814 Austell pidg., Atlanta, Ga, > j
a.„ T 4 ‘ j W
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