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About The frontier. (O'Neill City, Holt County, Neb.) 1880-1965 | View Entire Issue (May 24, 1917)
« ■ •• • « « • j YES! LIFT A CORN OFF WITHOUT PAIN! 1 _ * J Cincinnati man tells how to dry i up a cc n or'callus uc it lifts * c with fingers. You corDpostered men nno women need suffer no looser. Wear the shoes tlmt nearly Uillcf uu-before. says this Cincinnati aiitho. ity. because a few drops of fr ozone applied directly on a tender, acting corn or callus, stops soreness a1 once and soon the corn or hardened callus hsiscns so it can ho lifted off. root mid ail. Tlwut pain. A small hot tie of free * costs very little at any drug store, out will posi tively take off every hard or soft corn or callus. This should he triad. as it Is inexpensive and is said not 'o Irri tate the surrounding skin. If your druggist hasn’t any freezono tell hint to get a small bottle for you from l:is wholesale drug house.—adv. A Seed Waster. *‘Tbt re’s it mint planting potatoes," said Farmer Corntossel, “when ’lie ought to be playin' golf.” “You don't approve of gardening?” "Yes. I do. But If lie'll go ahead an' play golf lie wouldn’t lie spoilili’ good potatoes that somebody could use." GREEN'S AUGUST FLOWER hits been the most successful futility remedy for the last lifty-onc years for biliousness and stomach troubles, to which tlte American people are addict ed, musing sick Headache, nervous In digestion, sour stomach, coining up of food and a general physical depression. 2ii und 7f>c.—Adv. An Unlooked-for Present. Among iltrt* Willie’s numerous birth day presents were a toy loinuhawk. an utrgtni, and a lasso- these being sent by a sport-loving ancle who knew the youth's proclivities. Shortly after breakfast Willie's mother heard a crush In the green house at the foot of the garden, und went to investigate. On tin* way she passed a few hprooted hushes and a flower-bed trampled*out of recognition, and in the greenhouse Itself many las soed flower-pots. Following the trail, site found Willie hilling behind a tree stump. “What are you,doing, Willie?" site Tried lit horrified tones. "Looking for Redskins," replied the ( youngster. With it grim look site took Willie •>y the ear and led him indoors. I “Looking for red skins!" she repeat ed ominously, as she took up a earn*. “Well, I'll give you one." I Back to the Goil. The young k-nut. itnili for general •ervifp, volunteered for work on the 1 land ll« went down to bis father's 1 “place" and began “fanning." A friend passing that way spied him in leggins and Norfolk Jacket striding across a wide stretch of moorland, lie hailed him. “Hallo. Smutty!" lie cried as he cattle up. "What are you dohtg in tills forsaken land?” 'Fanning. I've gone back to the laud.’’ “Any good atlt?" grinned the friend. “I should think so! See tills piece of moorland? Before 1 came it was going to waste—no use at all; hut with a lot of work I've turned It Into a rip phi' golf links."—New York Globe. Be Adaptable. ‘Tkin't he obstinate." "Hull?" “Some men spend their lives trying to make silk purses front sows’ ears." “Well?" • "They might take the same material and get rich manufacturing leather specialties." _ • . ___ Nature of the Place. "The British forces are fighting now in Ghampagne." “Then I don’t wonder they are put ting so much spirit in it.” % "You can’t distinguish saints from sinners by their shiny hats. — —..i... 11 M | m ■ Pi -- . r * \ ---—.. .- — ■ ■■ - .— ■ The Man Who Forgot A NOVEL By JAMES HAY, JK. GARDEN CITY NEW TORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1915 CHAPTER XXV. When Waller reached his office the storm had broken in the news paper world, presaging the hurri cane of sensation, blame, acclama tion, criticism and question that would sweep the country that eve ning and the following day. He tried to start his story, hut could not. Telephone calls came to him one after the other. The news had swept through the newspaper and political part of the city as if by magic. Correspondents were al ready sending their papers bulle tins announcing that they were about to put on the wire the “big story.” Men talked eagerly about it in the hotel lobbies, at the eapi tol, in the office buildings, on the street corners. Waller, sitting in his office, had a mental picture of the excitement, the perturbation among the prohibitionists, the ex ultation of the whisky people, the doubts of some of the Smith,sup porters, the quick rallying to his side of Ids most earnest followers. And lie knew that nearly every person was asking another: “What will people think of it? What will people say?” He thought, a little grimly, that few people have any opinions of their own, that most of them mere ly reflect the thoughts oi others, that nearly :rll are too much like sheep. The great tiling was to give the sensation the right, twist, the proper slant, to make them say, “He's all right," instead of, “He's all wrong." The telephone calls multiplied and piled up. To all of them he answered that at 4 o'clock lie would have his story ready. When tile representatives <of the after noon papers said, they could not wait, he answered that lie was sorry hut that they would have to satisfy themselves with wlmt ev erybody was saying about the in cident. In his own mind, he know that the verdict would come from the morning papers, from the fin ished anil complete stories, not from the sketchy and necessarily fragmentary articles shipped on the wire by men who had not time enough to reread their copy in search of mistakes. Finally, he locked his door, took the receiver off the hook, and sat down at his typewriter to get out the story which, he hoped, would turn the tide in favor of the agitator. At the end of an hour and a half, a few minutes before 4 o’clock, he arose from the ma chine,‘stretched his tired arms and shoulders, and began to put to gether the pages of a story which would cover two columns and a half. He had made six carbon copies of it. It was a good story. He “felt” that. It had in it some of Smith's fire and eloquence- -and a great deal of Smith’s anguish. Afterward, when other members of his profession had time to corii | merit, they said it vaas a great I piece of dramatic writing, j He called an office boy, gave him one of the copies, and in 1 structed him to take it to a public 1 stenographer's office and have 100 . copies run off at once. He kept the 1 other copies he had made and called up the Press club and the I offices of several correspondents. I “Now," he thought, “let them ! come! I'm ready for them!” j They did come. In 15 minutes the room was crowded with little groups of men, their heads bent over the various copies, heads which, as the reading progressed, were shaping; up the opening para graphs and the structur: of the stories they would get out, stories which, in a few hours, would do more than any other one thing to determine whether John Smith was to survive or go down in oblo quy and blame. Cholliewollie hail been right when lie had said to i Smith that he would do much to give the agitator the best of the jjewsdispatehes. At a quarter to 6 the writers ! were still coming in. lie had in structed the office boy to delivei copies 1o every newspaper and cor respondent's office in town. Nov 1 he led the crowd to the ears or their way to Smith's offices. The agitator, stepping from the inner office, confronted the semi circle of eager faces and bowed hii customary: “Good afternoon, gentlemen.’’ 20 There was nothing unusual in his demeanor. Ilis smile was the same. He did not even look tired. Am always before, he impressed them as a man vibrant with en ergy. lie held in his left hand a paper which, some of them ob served, was a map of the city of Washington. Evidently he had just left his desk to meet them. Every man facing him sensed to a nicety how near John Smith stood to tragedy and ruin. They were trained to “get” and esti mate the force of events, the prov able consequences of national af fairs, the results of clashing per sonalities. And all of them, watch ing him intently, thought thfit he must be a brave man. So keen was their appreciation of what the thing meant, so accur ate their prevision of the danger threatening him, that for a few seconds nobody put the question they all wanted to ask. He bowed slightly again and asked pleasantly: “ What is it you want to ask, gentlemen?” “They’ve got all the essential facts, Mr. Smith,” Waller spoke up. “They've seen my story, and that covered everything that hap* pened at Senator Mallon's house.” “Perhaps,” Smith suggested, “it might be easier for all of us, might cover everything more promptly, if I told you in my own words all there is to tell. In fact, what I said this morning in Sena tor Mallon's lionse is all I could say now. It is all that is, it is all 1 know. Naturally, a man with a memoi^v five years old cannot speak, either accurately or by guess, of things said to have hap pened six years ago. That seems quite logical, doesn’t it? 1 realize I he things you would ask, the things you would like to know. Be lieve me, gentlemen, your desire to know them cannot be one-half so great as mine. Here you are, be fore me. > thrusting your heads against (he stone wall of my ig norance of my own past. Well ’ ’— he spread out his hand in a hope less gesture, and sftiiletl—“1 have had my head against that same stone wall for exactly five years. Your concern about the facts this evening may give you some idea of what—how shall I say it—of what I have suffered each day and each night. You see. that is all. I told my story this morning." The sallow faced young man who, by this time, Imd built tip a reputation for his questioning ; powers, put tin* first querry : “It is true that Mallon forbade you his house?" “Yes,” Smith said quietly; “that is true.” < “And are you engaged to be married to Miss Mallon?” the in terrogator went further. “No," the answer came with the same quietness, the same direct ness; “that is not true.” There was a stir among the men facing him, as if, in spite of their realization that a public man un der fire cannot hope to keep'his private life out of the publicity glare, they resented his being wounded unnecessarily. Avery, tail, snappy, on the alert, gave the conversation a new turn. “Perhaps, Mr. Smith,” he sug ested, “you might like to hear the Les — the woman’s story as she told it to me.” “Yes,” he agreed quickly, “I should like to, very much.” Avery produced a copy of his story. “I’ll read you merely what she said, her own words,” he ex plained. While Avery read, every man in the room watched the agitator. Apparently unconscious of their scrutiny, he was listening, not so much with eagerness as with a con centrated, calculating interest, as if he strove to remember, tried to drive his brain to do a work ol which it was incapable. It was plain that he was groping in the dark, beating aimlessly about ir the sea of ideas brought forward by what Mary Leslie had said. Avery read her words* I am his wife. My maiden name wai Mary Leslie. I *jp born and brough up in Des Moinwi, la. His name ii Jack Gardner. I don’t know where hi J was born, but it was somewhere in thi south, in Virginia, l think. We met ii Shanghai. I had gone out there as : l trained nurse. He had some money I and lie married me a week after h< met me. Then he got to hitting th« pipe—opium. He had been hitting ii before he married me. You know, without my telling you what that meant. Things went to pieces. He got me into the habit. We used to go to a place on the Foochow road. I guess it’s still-there. It was j known as t.he House with tfie Red I lacquered Balcony, and it was run by a Portuguese we called Charlie. As I said, things got worse, My hus band's money tlave out. He didn’t | liave much, after ail. Then I waited up ; one morning in Charlie’s place to find j that I had been deserted. 1 never saw | the man again until today when 1 went j to sqe Miss Edith -1-11 Ion. I went to | see her because I vu down and out. I've been down and ut a good many ; limes. When Gardner left me in Shang j bai. 1 had to work as a servant. I got back to the states by coming over as a 1 lady’s maid. I came to Washington to ! try for a position as an army nurse. | Those are the facts. Averv stopped reading and looked at Smith. “That's her story, sir,” the cor respondent said. The agitator addressed himself to Avery: “It recalls nothing, absolutely nothing, to my mind,” lie said. Those who heard him recognized the regret, the sadness, in his voice. There could be no doubt of the fact that he was sorry he could get nothing from the story, ft was evident that his great de sire was, to get. light on the mat ter from somewhere. “Does she explain,” Waller asked Avery, “why she is known as Mary Leslie if she is really Mrs. John Gardner?” “Oh, of course, she explains it,” Avery said carelessly. “It's the obvious explanation: She pre ferred to resume her maiden 'name.” Smith put one brief question : “And the proof of this mar riage ? ’ ’ “She has no documentary evi dence,” Avery replied,, “ but she claims it was in Shanghai. Several news associations have cabled to Shanghai to get all that end of the story.” Waller explained to Smith: “Under favorable conditions, we ought to get something from Shanghai in six or seven hours. It’s 6 o’clock here now. It’s 9 o’clock in the morning there. We ought to hear something tonight.” “That is,’’ Avery modified, “if the men there find anything.” “Look here, Avery,” Waller asked; “how did she strike you? Don’t you know she was lying?” Avery hesitated. “You know.” lie said, “it’s hard to tell when a woman like that is lying—or how much. And it struck me—I’m talking frankly now, Mr. Smith—that she must have some facts to go on. And the way she sticks to her story is im mense. Five of us put her through a regular third degree, and she told always the same thing. She’s linn—and, if she is lying, there’s another Bernhardt thrown away.” Smith bowed, making no com ment. “Is there anything else, gentle men’’’’ he inquired. There was much else they wanted to know, but, realizing his helplessness, they filed out of the room. Each one of them was in a hurry. All of them knew that they were about to write the strangest, most fascinating story that had ever come to light in Washington. They were intent on the story as a story, and did not think much then of the probable effect of what they would write. It was their business to tell the news to the country, and they wanted to tell it in the best j way possible. t names to Waller and to Smith s own personality, the “best way possible,” in their eyes, was to describe the agitator's suffering and to depict the day’s events in a way that would create for him sympathy and support. Waller lingered with him for a few minutes. *11 wish you d tell me exactly how you feel about this thing,” th*e newspaper man asked him. “How do you mean?” “I don’t like to rush off and leave you here with all this work and the great burden of what the day has brought forth. I’d like to know just how you feel.” “I don’t think I feel at all yet,’ Smith answered him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve been making a great effort to dissociate myself, personally, from it, to keep at the work. I can’t trust mysell yet to consider what it may mean to my personal happiness. And I’m afraid—a little afraid of whaf the country will say tomorrow. ’ ’ “Let us attend to that,” Wallet cheered him. “You do the work— and you’ll get by.” “At any rate,” he concluded “I would give almost anything ir the world to walk this minutes in to the house with the red-lac quered balcony on the Foochow road.” He dined alone that evening in t 1 quiet little restaurant, where he ! knew he would not be annoyed bj i the curious. As be left the place ' a man stepped up to him ant mil i, in _ _ m M ii iiiin ii—ii - l touched him on the arm. stopped His thoughts had been i such as to make him Welcome any body he had never seen before. There was in his mind for an in stant the hope that this stranger also might know something about him. A second glance showed ’ that the man had been drinking. “What can I do for you?’’ Smith responded to the touch on his arm and to the close scrutiny. The stranger was about 45 years of age, seedy as to his dress. ! unkempt as to his linen and era i vat. In spite of the onslaughts 'alcohol had made on his appear ance, there was in his face the hint of a bygone decency, the ghost of a real intellect. lie was pudgy and short of stature. “May I walk a little way with | you?” he requested,* his voice a i little thick. “I can tell you some 1 interesting things;” “By all means,” the. agitator I agreed. They fell into step together. It was a crisp, clear evening. Over | head the moon, dimming the street i light, hung in a silver sash of l fleecy clouds. “I know who you are.” the ; stranger began, “the prohibition leader. You can take a look at me and know who 1 am. I ’m the Man ( Who Could Handle It. I belong to ; that noble army of sports who , drink on" a system and have whis ! ky under perfect control.” He spoke in a vein of broad sar casm, in tunc with bitterness. “That is, I used to* be the Man | Who Could Handle It. I now efee ! orate the ranks of those who have | gone down and out. As the Man Who Could Handle It, I was a star performer. My will power was beautiful to behold. My physique ! was impervious to all ills aad j pains. I could work and attend to j business all the time—could do it just a little better with a few drinks under my belt. The alcohol was what my system heeded. The drinks gave me a whole lot of bright ideas, and it made me so ciable and popular.” He stopped a moment, full in the moonlight. “You’ve heard that talk before haven’t you?” he inquired sol emnly. “Many times,” Smith assented,, falling into step again. “I felt a real scorn for the fel lows who got drunk. I studied) some of them quite closely. They were curiosities to me. The stuff was meant to be enjoyed, not abused. I thought the drunkards were swine. That went on for 10' years. For 10 years I was the Man Who Could Handle It. Other men admired me for it. One or two told1 me it would get me some day. 1 i laughed at that. I was a genius. I could see all the others going eith er to the uncomfortable gutter or to the untimely grave, but I could not see how I would ever take either route. I watched the army of wrecks and knew I had some^ thing on them. You se^, I «ouM handle it.” ms sen-contempt grew. “Then one night I got drunk. A year after that I waked up »«<? morning and had to have a drink before I could eat breakfast. Right there occurred the full extinction of the Man Who Could Handle It: and there was born the Man Whom It Handled. That’s a grand metamorphosis, my friend. You see I call you ‘my friend.’ dissi pation makes us familiar. A grand metamorphosis, I say, from the Man Who Could Handle It to the Man Whom It Handled. And you can take it from me that its | handling is rough.” “Always,” Smith emphasized. He was keenly interested in what the man had to say. “I’m a type,” the other eorttin 1 ned. “You can find me in any of the cheap, dirty saloons or in any of the swell eluhs. I belonged to i a swell club once. However, we’ll i let that pass. Yes, you can find 1 me in any of thosle places. There’s ; a big army of irte—an inspiring, i lovely line of ine^ with their effi ciency gone, their divers, hardened, their kidneys raided, their brains foggy, their waistline too big, their reputations too little. They are the boys wh© could handle it. They’re the fellows who despised the drunkards and the spreers.” They had reaohed the entrance to Smith’s office! building, where they paused. >__ (Continued Week.) A Cheaper anjd Better Way. Girard, in the Phi lad jlphia Public Ledger. Assuming that tlg\ res of the allies are correct, 5,000,000 men Ihave died during the war. It has cost $14,*M)0 to kill each man. Properly invested, j the money already spent on' war would! have yielded suffi cient income to ikee\p 6,000,000 hoys and girls of the world in' school and colleges for all time. It would much mdre than support all , the churches of the y orld until kingdom come. ( Instead of perraittifng the royal ambl 1 lions of a few dynastic families to kill . 5.000,000 men at suclil a cost wouldn’t it > he much cheaper for the rest of the fo*«v» | to banish those bal^«y Queen monarohs? The “rule of the rolad” for driven* in • | England is to drive (to the left, whflf 1 j in the United States iit is to the riahu f j - - Ml t FACTS ABOUT RUSSIA, > */ ♦ ♦♦ + f And now the s-leeptr* Biant lia* been awaked. The scale* have fallen Trow bis eyes. Bonds tliat have held a nation abject for centuries have <«v" bnA-'-n. Czar-ridden Russia is freed and Iieiwe forth the people upstanding wid go abcsaK tlu.-ir iintl-s as men free-born and not an slaves ami serfs. <m Tii- Blorv of Russia Is in her future. W The er. ... tasks aie yet to be performed. ’V Hnwei'u. toe most uifticult one, that or a making a loginning, has been success fully achieved. This great empire and ■ its people who have played too inconspicu ous ami too silent a part in the at fairs of the world will, now be seen ana heard. 1 The Russian empire stretches over a -J vast territory in eastern Europe and northern Asia, with an area exceeding \5i 0,000 snuarv miles, one-sixth ot the laint sun ace ot h earth and nearly three times the ar i of the United States, me tr ial bugth of the frontier line by land .s '.s'o miles in Europe and 10,000 miles in Asia, and bv s«a 11,000 miles in Europe and between* 10,000 and 2d,000 in Asia. Within these vast boundaries there Is a population of over 110.000.000, about 7j per cent of which, according to the pedia Britann.ca^ are peasants. The rten soil of Russia is very capable of produc ing tlie-grain supply for the entire world; Eghty-hve per cent of the population a.ro engaged in agriculture, yet the methods employed have been so primitive that only a bare liv .ng ii&s been realised. tne soil is also rich in ores of all kinds, but due to the tardv Ln4irod.uction of macnin rrv and science* these have merely begun to he developed. In European Russia great forests cover 39 per cent of the area, and in Asiatic Russia two-thirds of the area is covered hy« forests. These vast resources, in magnitude and variety equaled by no other, nation, are scarcely touched, nor are they fully conceived or bv the mass of the Russian people. The percentage of- illiteracy, in Russia is very l?rtre, langing above 85 per cent in some prov.nces. In Petrograd, the eapi lal itself, half the population cannot read nr write. The urban population is gen-' .rally better educated. Including the whole empire considerably more than half the people are illiterate, though educa tional movements have made remarkable i headway in Russia during the pant lew ¥ years. ’ u There ire no trustworthy figure** a» to f the numlier of adherents of the different v .•roods. However, according to-tiie* census returns published in 1905 the eight leading creeds are given as follows: Orthodox Greek and1 United church . 87,123,604 Mohammedans . 13,906.972 Roman Catholic . 11.1671,991 Jews . 5,215*805 Lutheran . 3,572,653 Dissidents . 2.204,596 Armenian Gregor ians . E 179,2-41 Jf There are numerous other creeds with * fewer adherents. As this data indicates there are many nationalities in Russia. This diversity of nationalities is due to the amalgamation, or absorption by the Slav- of a variety ot Ural-Altaic stock. In European Russia* the Slavs are in a ratio to. the other races combined of about three to one. However, in the other parts of the empire the Slavsn are often outnumbered. This heterogen eity of the Russian people, coupled with the great amount of illiteracy has been, one of the plausible excuses tor justify ing the heavy-handed rule of the Russian, czars. The Russian people have been c.low, none the less surely, discovering them selves. The increased liberalism of Nich olas H toward the people, the modern, improvement in education, the Russo Japanese war, and Russia's experience in the present war—all these have been reve lations for the Russians; they have felt their strength, which is the first condi- y tion of realizing it. 'V The Almanach de Gotha for 1910 de- ft. scribes the Russian government as “a* 1 constitutional monarchy under an auto cratic czar.” But the Encyclopedia Brit annica, article Russia, says that “this obvious contradiction in terms well illus trates the difficulty of defining in a single* formula the system essentially transition al and meanwhile sui generis, established in Russia since 1905. Before this date, the fundamental laws of Russia described the power of the emperor as ' autocratic and unlimited.” In the fundamental laws, as remodelled between tne imperial man ifesto of October 30 and the opening of the first duma on the 27th of April. 1006, the name and principle of autocracy was Jealously preserved, though the word “un limited” vanished. And now the people have arisen to break the principle of autocracy itself, which from age could not easily bend; Again a government based upon the corn sent of the governed is to rise from the people themselves and for themselves. Not That Kind of War. From the Milwaukee Journal. The ingenuous proposal to establish a. special joint committee of congress on. the conduct of the war is a gem which bears witness to the pork barrel intellect. •This country is going to spend a lot of money. It will be strange if there isn!t something in it for the politicians.” So. runs the reasoning. The citizen's duty is to let his congress man know that he doesn’t want that kindi of war. We don’t want the kina of war that means our boys going to camps that are breeding places of typhoid, because some state governor or other politician was allowed to say wUat site he would, like to have chosen, and have the boy* hurried there to boost, local markets. We don't want the kind of war that feeds our boys on ‘‘emblaiiied” beef be cause aomeon is using a political puli Ltt furnish rotten supplies. We don’t want a war in which untrained hoys are sent, into battle to be sacrificed by untrained officers, to fail while some one makes a grandstand play to- help later on in the game of pohtlcs. We want a war for America, ancL not for congressmen. Offhand; w.e don’t think of any politician for whom we would sac rifice one American life. Yet that was done in 1898, and that will be done again if congress succeeds in overturning the constitutional method of carrying on war through a meddlers’ committee. Congressmen have to be told. A good many of them, as Wisconsin knows, either defy their constituents or are poor guessers. But remember that the man who wants something, whether it’s a po litical war or a service to ‘Germany, is letting his congressman and your con gressman hear. The first battle is ora now. Citizens who believe the president should be suported should lose no time in letting their congressmen know it. Write your congressman today—or better, telegraph him—that you believe in the principle that all should share the burden, that you want him to support the president. Feeding the World. It's up to you, oh, Mr. Farmer, although you pack no sword or armor, to win this crucial fight, for you must feed the allied nations, provide the millions with their ra tions, so hustle, day and night. Now, keep the husky hired men jumping, and see that all your mules are humpin, do things with ordered haste; let every foot of soil be growing some harvest for your f future mowing, let no land go to waste. \ For every time you raise a pumpkin you swat some kultured Prussian bumpkin who lacks enough to eat; you push a har-' poon in the kaiser, and make his nobleta sadder, wiser, whene’er you raise a beet. Our Uncle Samuel indorses the man who leaves a swath of corses behind him aa he scraps, but tye who raises wheat and barley will soak those kaisers. Bill and Charley, and change a lot of maps. Not 1 all of us can seek the battle, for some of us must feed the cattle, and slop the shrieking swine; and it is good to know our labors will help the men who wield the sabres, and form the battle line. So let us not be heavy hearted if younger fel lows have departed for great and thrilling scenes; for we can aid our country’s legions who face the foe in distant re gions, by raising spuds and beans. That Settled It, From Judge. “Just let me tell you this.” he said when his wife had chided him for being out. after 12 o'clock at night. l in no longer a child. I’m old enough to take care of myself, and I’m not going to he tied to anybody's apron strings.” ‘Don't worry about that,” she replied. “If you can afford to pay what h costs to stay out this late I'll quit wearing act apron.”