His Railway.
The writer remembers, as if it were but yesterday,
when he edited the Hang Tree Herald. For six
months he devoted his best talent to advocating
the construction of a railway between that place
and Jayhawk, thirty miles distant. The route
presented every inducement. There would be no
grading required, and not a single curve would be
necessary. As it lay through an uninhabited
alkali flat, the right of way could be easily obtained.
As neither terminus had other than pack-mule
communication with civilization, the rolling stock
and other material must necessarily be constructed
at Hang Tree, because the people at the other end
didn't know enough to do it, and hadn't any blacksmith.
The benefit to our place was indisputable;
it constituted the most seductive charm of the
scheme. After six months of conscientious lying,
the company was incorporated, and the first shovelful
of alkali turned up and preserved in a museum,
when suddenly the devil put it into the head of one
of the Directors to inquire publicly what the road
was designed to carry. It is needless to say the
question was never satisfactorily answered, and the
most daring enterprise of the age was knocked perfectly
cold. That very night a deputation of stockholders
waited upon the editor of the
Herald and
prescribed a change of climate. They afterward
said the change did them good.
