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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (July 14, 1900)
s ?& n gtate vi "-SIS r THE GOURIBR. rv m ii n S -" 4 UP SALT .CREEK. KATHARINE M. MELICK. Did you ever 'follow a stream to its courte, threading through willows and rushes, purple spider-worts and tall meadow-rue, turning down through the trough of a plowed field, and coming at last to a Bide hill, deep in weeds aad Tbey have left the cattle, will lead the little woman to talk of rope and stall, while they cnTfeketrirmnd turkeys; of the'charms of her peaches and apricots, of young Karl's latest accomplishments with the clarionet, or of Frede's wedding day. For you will know how all the time she is thinking of the awful night when tbey fled through the storm until flight was no longer possible, and then hud dled in the open plain, a handful of Salt Creek. freed from fled over miles of the clear uplands, with the about of the Sioux ringing here, where the grape arbors stretch to tbe stream. Tbat tiny white-haired, blue eyed Frau. who reads "Feld und Fold" without a squint or a spectacle, as she rocks by the deep, Eqoare windows on a Sunday afternoon, that- littlo .German H Hi S Mil shadow, where little trickling threads Mutter can tell you more of Salt Creek refugees, in the warpath of the Sioux nisiory man any tome that me grey owls guard in'our library on the univer sity campus. Tiny, bent Frau Keetner, it was little she thought of our Salt river half a century ago, in Coblentz by the Rhine. It was much she thought of America, as her small arms ached with the toil of harvest and her heart ached for the fater and mutter and Gcechwister all gone to the new country across the sea. is yours by primal and everlasting right. All, every one but the small Gertrud, The cat-tails and alders nod to you as left behind that her passage money you go back, carrying a few blue-bells might be saved to start -the new home or twine of wild creeper, just as Colum- n the new land. It would not bo long come through the brown sod? May be yours was u Stonehengeof sand, strewed in crumbling blocks about tbe bowl of the spring, with flat liverwort holding up cups of coolness, and thick mosses, like Axminster pile. It matters little whether the side bill, or the spongy mareb, or the shifting sand spring meet you at last. It is no longer undiscov ered country. You stand like Balboa or Marquette, beholding a teplm that You will not wish those blue eyes to see again, by terrifying bursts of lightning, that set the world on Are, that rain driven, pitiless prairie, the circle of open wagons, the towering form of Gusts v Kestner, the guard who rode round and round the little camp the long night through. Yet what are words? There is no way to put aside the living reminder poor, Beared, wild Sophie, who for seven years after that night, without speech or natural notion, rocked herself and turned scared eyes upon everything around her. The days and nights the On June 91, July T, 8, O, lOand 18 and Aue. 0, ticket from pointa west of Missouri Kiver. and east of Colb, Kansas, to Denver, Colorado Springs, Maoiton, Euablo, Salt. Lake city, and Uffden, Utah, and return, will be sold by the GREAT RQ6K ISkAND ROUTE. At rate of ONE REGULAR FARE PLUS S2.00 FOR ROUND TRIP RETURN LIMIT OCT. 3 1 , 1900 bus brought back some of tbe things he where corn grew like grass, and horses little German wife and mother has spent -p-pom T Trri TIA TVEiXTTTEm found on his island. You mark how n free for the catching, and no one by our turbulent river, what days and JtSJiol JjlJNJji J.U DJiiNVJCili was hungry, not long before money nights they have been! Yet even those would come from across the ocean to terrible memories bring back the strong take Gertrud, too. Before two harvests Gustav. tbe master of the stone house a letter cams that told of sixty bright by the river. No burden could still be Take advantage of thMn rh,n .. .,. - - ... - ... . .- .- i, . x. r -r "?-' " :-(, v, n.;h mi. nnniant MM hap nt thalers hoarded bv rnntnrMinn nnrt Rnr. on hnarv. nhpn hie cfrnnrr nhnnlrW was "P!? fUT vacation in Colorado. r".. '."".:: .: " "v"-:" cjjrv- . ... u, ...:' it: : "... .u. "iis;MJjw.'AB''xf l oA.uriuii3. me loriau inionnatlon and tbe beautiful book, Colorado the the little "draw" widens, now, and the clumps of willows begin. IIow far will it be to minnows, and dragon flies, and Iazv lily leaves.-' What kinship we ONLY DIRECT LINE TO COLORADO SPRINGS AND MANITOU. iap rates and ado. Sleep in e the Hills, if only the summer days were not ever hurrying ub to hotter noons. Some people smile at the name of our grey river. Some more people shudder at its white alkali bottom lands, its weedy bayous, when tbe rain pours down, and its salt-crusted basins when the rain is blown away in a tireless three days' wind. It is true that mills and sewers, dumping grounds and fac tory emoke, rag weed and tumble weed, offer few attractions, even to the. discoverer, unless he be a psychologist looking for "specimens" in the flats. But follow Salt Creek away from the sewers and smokestacks; the artificial monstrosities with which men have hardt and Karl. A long letter wherein Karl described the big pflug drawn by white horses, the plowshare with the wheel that was knife keen on its edge, and cut down through a thick matted soil "like many thicknesses of carpet" loLg strips further than all tbe farmB of Coblentz, laid end to end. This was the good machine that had earned much of Gertrud's passage money. But the money did not come. It was very safe in tho little bice mug by the Bible on Mutter Kestner's shelf. Who could tell whether it would ever reach Gertrud if trusted to the long journey by land and sea? Already Gertrud must have earned half enough to pay put to it. Men who came to the forge by the stone house tell yet how he was the tallest man in the county, and how no one knew a horse's foot so well. You cannot but think of those broad shoul ders as you look at the narrow, sloping ones of the Muetterchen. Narrower and more bent they are, for the fall from a high mow tbat crushed one of them, in the days when field work for the peas ant maedchen had some times other re wards than the twenty thalers per year. As the air grows cool, and Karl puts away his banjo and Freda stands in the deep doorway to say good-bye, you look at the stone house on its knoll in the river bend and think how many AiaenUloent,-seiit free. E. W. THOMPSON. A. G. P Topeka, Kan. JOHN SEBASTIAN. G. P. A, fihicgo,IlI. Summer Excursions. .VIA... tricked it, from the polar bears chained "tiUw ltaKunted boxeldars "to thewoulbrbrlngtier ralfthe way. Would it beach where strange Bails are manipu- not be better to earn the rest by another lated by stranger seamen, or a canal harvest, and have tbe bright thalers drags the sullen salt waves through safe against the wedding day? "straightened" courses. Follow the Gertrud toiled through three bar stream before it has been lariated and- vests at twenty thalers the year, and thrown here, among the "civilized," who guarded the bright pieces so well that treat it as they treat the sachem when they put his tomahawk in a glass case and give him a paper collar and a Trilby tie to wear with his harmless feathers. Only as far up the stream as the cool of a morning will take you, past the guard towers of the penitentiary, and, the single fare for which the company hands htve been lifted Jo;stay its stones In the old quarry whence Gustav bore them here to echo the roar of the rain- 5C. i EaM Ml Hi iF9k B i EBBB1 nr m ,i" d" the caves of -apocryphal horse thieves, and shipwreck, when the great mast was blown into the bea, and the ship drifted, drifted; "way -round by the nort'." "1 was bo glad to Be the land," the little lady says stopping her rocker by the window. If one could only write Frau Kest ner's accent and tone, which are clear and Bweet as the bells that ring in Cob lentz, and 8B uriwriteable as the straight .glr.nceof her blue eyes. Touch swolleu waters, and the clang of the anvil by tha door. The German recruit ing officer, whom the mighty young smith fled; the armies marching north and south from Mississippi to the coast, there were five of them the earnings of threatening another Germany, and driv- three months to lend to a fellow etui-, ing him into territories not yet enrolled on June 2i. July 7 to 10. inclusive) v. .Tnlv grant, whom the dreadful eights and, under the troubled flag; the rough hand. 18 and August 2d, Summer Excusion- sounds and Bmeils of steerage passage on of .the laborer, pushing small 'Gertrud a Company ship sickened almost to from the heaped hay; the rougher death. , hands of black browed emigrants in the But there were lone weeks of storm, hold of the wrecked ship, and most ter- PICTOW Ihe Union Pacific will place in effect j.juiy v toiu.in August 2d. Sumi rates of 1 FARE FOR ROUND TRIP. the river stretches its shade of cotton woods and walnuts and' oaks, through cornfield and level pasture. Here it ambles at will, rough and ungainly per haps, as it wrenches loose the fence poets strung over its banks, and heaps together meadow lands acd plowed fields at every black look of the sky. But it it keeps the lunge of the buffalo, in its course through "eighty" aad rible of all, those of the wild chiefs down the stream. They are all crum bled into dust, those cruel fingers, and Frau Kestner's may lie gently, on a Sun day afternoon, on the pages of "Feld und Fold." When the hurrying days move more sedately for us, we who have-grown up by the Bait stream may flud time to ex plore the undiscovered sources of rivers that water our corn fields with the plus 82.00, from points Kansas and Nebraska .TO. DENVER, COLORADO SPRINGS. PUEBLO, OGDEN and SALT LAKE. Tickets Good for Return Until October 3Jst For-time tables call on and full information 'quarter section," let us not be too the toae ledge and. be sure that you are beet tide of another world. When that 1 .J !. J. i I i i -J." S .Ll- l- -! . ---. J II I 2 E.S SIoon, Agent. downhearted, wo who doBot have to-aet'dr aiming, whea she tells you how rebuild the fences. For there is some thing hereof primeval prairie which harrow and harvester, grinding over the land, can never tame. In a great bend of the stream, where the Company, who had lost aauch mon by the storm, put the little maedchen, with the other tempest tossed wanderers, on board cattle cars where they huddled together, shaken quieter time comas, and, in ,ths glow.ot discovery, we pluckour handfu lot reeds or flowers from the spring bank, per haps we shall find other growths there than rag-weed and dusty sun flowers, if we care to see. JIT I PATENT In. Mitt mar be aee-mri lw our aid. Address, THE PATENT RECORD, fiahUau. HA Subscriptions to Tfee Patent E-cord tLOOper unom. nTmre UiMlil giant walnuts tower over tangles of wild, and afraid, over miles of a new land. grape and ivy, is a gray stone house by the river, the oldest stone house in the county, it is said. Whether or no, it is certain that the-dwellers here have bailded their fences for the river to tear down, these more than thirty years, all the years of Nebraska, indeed, and some before' that, when the caravans from north aad from south of Dixie line stranger some times than the sea. Look out on the bright verbenas and poppies where the humming moth flutters in the afternoon sun, as she tells you bow' dlin so sick? Rumrrutwn. Mrs. Aekins What makes Mr. Mod- the Sioux came down on the year of the great massacre of the North. If you know even a little of her story, you will ask, now, to Bee the grape arbor or the Mrs. Moddlin Oh, he was night drinking somebody's Town Topics. out last health. nt I i He asked Gotrox for his daughter's broods of growing ducks that gobble Poured over the muddy border aad el- their meal for seven minutes without a hatred each other savagely over scarce pause, and then run, all agasp with tbe hand. troddea trails. TbeyV have watched greedy supper, straight to their water What did Gotrox sayT throagh these sqaare deep windows the trough, where they bury their bills That he did not intend to dispose of deer feed at morning with tbe cattle by deep, with, smothered quacks. You her in sections. Town Topics. H. W. BROWN Druggist and Bookseller. wmtlng'e Fine Stationery and Calling Cards 127 So.Bleventh Street. PHONE 68 i y i . 'I V A A y