THE EMMETT INDEX
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REFLECTIONS
A Chautauqua lecturer, speaking of
the evils of the day, asked an old
question, but a searching one, when he
asked "do you care?
bend over grinding tasks—do you
care? Workers waste their lives in
sweat shops—do you care? Boys
, - . • I a - .
ffrow up derelicts for the lack of in
telligent oversight on the part of so
cioty—do you care? Young offenders
, 1 .. ..
are thrown into jails with hardened
criminals and educated in criminality,
all because of a crude and indefensi
Little children
hie penal system—do you care? In
your own community are folks who
are carrying loads that would be light
ened by a lift you could give—do you!
care? How about it—do you really!
care? Or do you go about your ownl
affairs and leave all this "reform"J
business to the other folks' Are you
vitally concerned, of is all this sort of
thing kind of a far-away sort of a
thing to you? Perhaps the question
belongs to a sermon, rather than a
lecture. Hut that's not the question.
The question is—do you care?
We people of the Emmett valley
who enjoy the luxury of eating ripe
peaches just off the trees should be
thankful for the privilege,
peach that is shipped never has the
The
juiciness nor the flavor of the home
product. This was impressed upon]
spect if he planks
What he buys and all business folks
have more respect for the young man
who pays cash Besides all that, it's
a good husines proposition. How can
any young man hope to attain inde
pendence if he keeps mortgaging the
future to supply present wants?
luwn the cash for
Tales of the Town
THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME.
HE hour was sad 1 left the maid,
A Ilng'rlng farewell taking.
Her sighs and tears my steps de
layed,
I thought her heart was break
ing.
In hurried words her name I blessed.
I breathed the vows that bind me
And to my heart In *anguish pressed
The girl 1 left behind
T
Then to the east we bore away
To win a npme
story,
I And there, where dawns the
I There dawned our sun of glory.
! Both blazed in noon on Alma's height.
Where In the post assigned me
I shared the glory of that fight,
Sweet girt 1 left behind me.
ot dar.
Full many a name
Of former deed» of daring.
But they were of the days <*f yore.
In which we had no »haring.
But now, our laurel» freshly won,
With the old ones shall entwined be.
Still worthy of our sires earh son.
Sweet girl 1 left behind me.
r banners bore
Th« hope of final victory.
Within mv bosom burning,
mingling with sweet thought» of thee
And of my fond returning,
B o!„ l ! houl ' 1 , J , n K * ®, r rel V£ n
Still worth thy love thou It And me.
Dishonor'« breath shall never etaln
Th« name 1*11 leave behind me.
—Samuel Lover.
good deal/land
It only bothers
Some men's religion i
like rheumatism,
them just before a Storni.
« « «
Our idea of the height of bad luck
would be to be a blind man at tne
bathing beach at Payette lakes.
* ♦ '*
Every man who goes any place on
an excursion train thinks he could run
a great deal better than the rail
road company.
*
I There was a baseball headline one
Bay last week that you don't see more
lhan once in a life time:
llathewson Off the Rubber.'
♦ * *
I The California man who is bu'lding
In atk for the second flood will, let us
lope, leave out the mosquitoes, the
Han Jose scale and the aphis. Also it
k'ill be just us well to omit the grass
lopper, ground squirrel and the cher
•y slug.
Knocked
* * *
According to the annual statement j
of the department of internal revenue,
14,27(1 million cigarettes and 7,G99
million cigars were consume^ in the
United States last year. It is also
estimated, informally, that the light
ing of them involved the borrowing
of 'A\ .976.082.328 matches.
When the Drought Broke.
The following from William Allen White's "The Story of Aqua Pura"
is particularly appropriate at this time, owing to the severe droughts in
Kansas. Aqua Pura was a boom town in far Western Kansas. Of the six
who staked out the townsite, two—Johnson and Barringer—were Harvard
men; one, Nichols, was from Princeton; and the other three, Bemis, Brad
ley and Hicks, had come from inland state universities. It was given the
latin name of Aqua Pura that the world might know it was not a rowdy
town. The little settlement grew rapidly into a large town. Then came
the drought of 1887 and people began to leave. Barringer, the mayor, be
lieved in the place and refused outside aid. In 1888 more empty buildings
could be seen. In '89 Barringer's failure was announced. In 1890 the hot
winds drove others East. In '91 there were fifteen persons left in the
once prosperous Aqua Pura.
old hotel and made the faded signs
up and down the dreary streets creak,
the old man and his daughter went
over their books, balancing, account
ing interest, figuring on mythical
problems that the world had long
ARRINGER grew thin, un
kempt and gray. Every ev
ening when the wind rattled
in the deserted rooms of the
B
since forgotten.
When the spring of 1893 opened,
Barringer looked ten years older than
he looked the spring before. The
grass on the range was sere and great
cracks were in the earth. The win
ter had been dry. The spring open
ed dry, with high winds blowing
through May. There were but five
people on the townsite that summer,
Barringer, his daughter and the post
master's family. Supplies came over
from Maize. A bloody county
seat war had given the rival town the
prize of 1890. Barringer had plenty
of money to buy food, for the county
commissioners distributed the taxes
which the railroad paid.
It was his habit to sit on the front
porch of the deserted hotel and look
across the prairie to the southwest
and watch the breaking clouds scatter
into the blue twilight. He could see
the empty water tower silhouetted
ings that rose in the boom days
pll been moved away, the line of
horizon was guarded at regular inter
dis by the iron hydrants out on
prairie, that stood like sentinels hem
ming in the past,
The dying wind
one
seethed through the short, brown
Heat lightning winked dev
■fiahly in the distance, and the dissolv
ing clouds that gathered every after
noon laughed in derisive thunder
the hopes of the worn old man sitting
grass.
on the warped boards of the hotel
porch. Night after night he
there, waiting with his daughter
his side. There had been a time
when he was too proud to go to
East, where his name was a byword,
Now he was too poor in purse and
spirit. So he sat and waited, hoping
fondly for the realization of a dream
which he feared could never come
There were days when the postmast
tr's 4-year-old child sat with him.
The old man and the child sat
true.
one
evening when the old man sighed;
"If it would only rain, there would be
half a crop yet! If it would only
rain!" The child heard him and sigh
ed imitatively: "Yes, if it would only
rain—what is rain, Mr. Barringer?"
He looked at the child blankly and
sat for a long time in silence. When
I he arose he did not have even a pre
I tense of hope. He grew despondent
from that hour, and a sort of hypo
chondria seized him. It was his fan
cy to exaggerate the phenomena o 1
the drought.
That fall when the winds piled the
sand in the railroad "cuts" and the
prairie was as hard and barren as the
ground »round a cabin door, Barrin
ger's daughter died of fever. The old
man seemed little moved by
But as he rode back from the bleak
graveyard, through the sard cloud,
in the carriage with the dry, rattling
spoke, he could only mutter to the
sympathizing friends who had come
sorrow.
"And we laid her in the hot and dusty
tomb."
He recalled an old song
which fitted these words, and for days
kept crooning: "Oh we laid her in a
hot and dusty tomb." ,
That winter the postmaster left.
The office discontinued. The county
commissioners tried to get Barringer
to leave. He could not be persuaded
to go. The county commissioners
were not insistent. It gave one of
them an excuse for drawing $4 a day
from the county treasury; he rode
from Maize to Aqua Pura every day
with supplies for Barringer.
The old man cooked, ate and slept
in the office of the hotel. Day after
day he put on his overcoat in the w:n
ter and made the rounds of the va
cant store buildings He walked up
and down in the little paths through
the brown weeds in the deserted
streets, all day long, talking to him
self. At night, when the prairie wind
rattled through the empty buildings,
blowing snow and sand down the
halls, and in little drifts upon the
broken stairs, the old man's lamp was
seen bv straggling travelers burning
far into the night. He told his daily
visitor that he was keeping hooks,
Thus the winter passed. The grass
; came with the light mist of March,
By May it had lost its color. By
June it was brown, and the hot winds
came again in August, curving the
warped boards a little deeper on the
floor of the front porch. Herders
and travelers, straggling back to the
green country, saw him sitting there
at twilight looking toward the south
with a shifting light in his eye.
such as spoke to him he always made
the same speech:
"Yes, it looks likt rain, but it can't
rain. The rain has gone dry out
here. Tney say it rained in Hutchin
son—maybe so, I doubt it.
no God west of Newton,
in '90
To
There is
He dried up
That's
Where's John
Whcre's Nichols'
here!
They talk irrigation
an old story in hell,
son? Not here!
Not
here! Bemis? Not
Bradley? Not here! Hicks?
here! Where's handsome Dick Bar
Hon. Richard Barringer?
Here' Here he is, holding down a
hot brick in a cooling room of hell!
Yes, it does look like rain, doesn't
it'"
Not
ringer,
Then he would go over it all again,
had
the
the
trembling thres
hold of the hotel, slamming the crook
ed, sun steamed door behind him.
There he stayed, summer and winter,
looking out across the burned hori
zon, peering at the long, low, black
fined clouds in the southwest. longing
for the never coming rain.
Cattle roamed the streets in the
I early spring, but the stumbling of the
\ animals upon the broken walks did
at not disturb him, and the winds and
the drought soon drove them
away.
j The messenger with the provisions
sat i cam e every morning. The summer,
by with its awful heat, began to glow,
The lightning and the thunder joked
: insolently in the distance at noon;
and the stars in the deep, dry blue
! looked down and mocked the old
! man's prayers as he sat, at night,
°n his rickety sentry box.
j ed through the deserted stores calling
his roll. Night after night he walk
[ ed to the red clay grade of the
j completed "Air Line" and looked
He totter
un
over
; the dead level stretches of prairie,
[He would have gone away, but
j thing held him to the town. Here he
risked all.
some
Here, perhaps, in his
warped fancy, he hoped to regain all.
He had written so often, "Times will
be better in the
spring, that 'it was
part of his confession of faith—that
and, "One good crop will bring the
country around all right,
written with red clay in the old man's
nervous hand on the side of the hotel,
on the faded signs, on the deserted
inner walls of the stores—in fact,
everywhere—in Aqua Pura.
The wind told on him; it withered
him, sapped his energy, and hobbled
his feet.
This was
One morning he awoke and
strange sound greeted his
There was a gentle tapping in the
building and a roar that was not the
guffaw of the wind. He rushed for
the door He saw the rain, and bare
headed he ran to the middle of the
streets where it was pouring down.
The messenger from Maize with the
day's sunnlies found him
a
ears.
nTsbëawër^nî^Dala^^^^^W^W^ff
his legal papers. In his dead eyes
were a thousand dreams.
Worthy of Your Patronage
If you need a lawyer, are going to build, want to buy or sell
^ have other needs, see those who
real estate, need insurance, or , ,
advertise below. Publicity inspires confidence and deserves it.
The advertisers who appear below are well known in Emmett s
trade territory. They are reliable and will give you the best of
service. They invite your patronage.
The Emmett Restaurant
FRANK NAKA, Prop'r.
Open all night. In the Bank
of Emmett Building. A nice,
cool, clean place.
FIRST CLASS MEALS.
JONATHAN MOULTON
Contractor and Builder
Esti
Dwellings a Specialty,
mates Furnished.
Homeseekers Rooming House
Corner First and Boise Sts.
Nice clean rooms and comfort
able beds. A home for the tran
sient.
D. VV. C. BROWN, Proprietor.
F. G. CARPENTER
Contractor and Builder
ESTIMATES AND PLANS
FURNISHED.
Idaho.
Emmett,
Established 1892. Incorporated
1909.
Canyon County Abstract Co.
CALDWELL, IDAHO
H. W. TITUS
Carpenter & Builder
All Kinds of Job Work.
Shop on Hoise Avenue on
Ditch bank. '
F. J. BLISS
REAL ESTATE AND
FIRE INSURANCE
GEO. W. KNOWLES
CIVIL ENGINEER AND
LICENSED SURVEYOR
Prompt and careful attention
given Surveying, Engineering
and Estimating.
Phone 114-W.
Office at Residence, Emmett.
Emmett, Idaho
REAL ESTATE AND
INSURANCE.
C. P. BILDERBACK
FIRE INSURANCE AGENT
Largest list of Fruit and
Farming Lands in the City.
Dealer in Real Estate. Col
lections promptly attended to.
on us in
formation.
J. P. REED
W. W. WILTON
ATTORNEY
and Counsellor at Law.
Practices in All Courts.
Emmett,
C. D. BUCKNUM
FUNERAL DIRECTOR
LICENSED EMBALMER
Idaho
J. K. McDOWALL
ATTORNEY
and Counsellor at Law.
Office in Bank of Emmett Bldg.
Emmett,
Calls to city or country re
sponded to promptly.
Agent for Monuments of all
kinds.
Day and night phone: 5 black.
Emmett, Idaho.
Idaho
FINLEY MONROE
I
ATTORNEY-AT-LAW
BUY YOUR HARNESS
AND FLY NETS
of the Old Reliable
j. w. BARRETT
Emmett,
Idaho
C. F. CAYFORD
Everything in the Harneses
and Saddlery line. Feed Bags.
Pack Outfits.
Repairing promptly and thor
oughly donee.
Baggage Transferred and
Light Hauling.
Leave Orders at McNish Store.
Blacksmithing and
Horseshoeing
SHOE REPAIRING
Soles sewed or nailed. Rub
ber heels. Whale Amber soft
ens and water proofs.
Call on me for sole leather
and shoe findings.
Have purchased the Jack Si
Careful
die blacksmith shop,
attention given to all kinds of
Blacksmithing, Horseshoeing,
Machine Work and Wagon Re
pairing.
Competent workmen employ
ed. Your patronage solicited.
W. L. BURTON.
Washington St., North of the
Monroe Building.
ANTHONY PETERSON
GOING TO BUILD?
Doors and Window- Frames, Screen
Doors and Windows made to order.
Estimates Furnished.
Plans Drawn,
net and Job Work a specialty
Cabi
Berry & Campbell
Building Contractors
THE RUSSELL HOTEL
The Traveling Public's Headquarters
Special Sunday Dinner from 6 to 8 P M
Price 50 Cents.
To Home Trade, 35 cents single meal, By week $5.50
Only White Help Employed
R. E. C. EMERY, PROPRIETOR
Wedding Invitations at The Index Office