USA > Kansas > Sedgwick County > History of Wichita and Sedgwick County, Kansas, past and present, including an account of the cities, towns and villages of the county, Vol. I > Part 16
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occasions had been adjudged to pay the costs, but failed to respond to any and all demands.
One sultry August day he entered the clerk's office, a room 23x100, on North Main street, with a handful of pleadings, and George, seeing in the dim vista more work and no fees, his natu- rally imperious spirit took fire. He, however, pleasantly enough, said: "Going to commence another suit, Mr. -? " and the sad- eyed transmigrated soul of the cavalier said, "Yes." George bade him be seated, and went and locked the front door, and then surrounded the remnant of better days, with a coal hatchet in his hand, and but for Bill Rouse, he would have "slew" the unhappy litigator.
It will not be necessary to name this general attorney, as the old members of the bar remember well a "law office" that drew the loose driftwood of society to it as a magnet draws iron filings, or a molasses barrel, flies. There was a "oneness" of idea, a commingling of soul's deepest thought, a meeting of a unities, a homology, as it were, an intersocial cognition and relevancy of purpose, design and act, " 'twixt" that office and a debtor who could not pay his costs. No "war hoss" ever snuffed the carnage afar, or sleuth-hound scented him with the celerity, directness and relentless ruth with which that "office" tracked the debtor to his lair and demanded his business for "business' sake," and after- ward posed as the friend of the down-trodden and oppressed.
On another occasion, one balmy day in the early month of May, when green buds were swelling, when all nature seemed in tune, and each flower to vie to surpass its rival in freshness and beauty, and everything was in harmony, the blue overhead and the green underfoot, the tall cottonwoods on the river banks filled with bluejays, and their branches gracefully waving benisons over the town, their leaves whispering "peace on earth"-just such a day as Bret Harte sketched when he said, "It seemed as though the voice of God pervaded the earth and spoke to man as 'in the old days' "; just such a day as brings to mind a Sunday long ago, when we put our earnings into four hours of livery team, and, seated beside a vision of white swiss and blue ribbon, "wi' eyes o' heaven's own blue," and a voice soft and low, sweet and tremulous as a lute, and as thrilling as the dying cadence of a whip-poor-will's notes at midnight on the banks of a dark wooded stream, and we felt a desire to be good, not for our sake or God's sake, but for "white swiss' sake"-'twas on just such a day as
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this, we say, that George, in regal splendor, appeared on Main street with a milky-white team and silver-painted buggy, bring- ing to mind the story of Phœbus careering across the heavens. He was dressed with taste and doting care. Of course he was at once the cynosure of all eyes, the envy and admiration of all beholders, and he was drunk enough to prove that there is a fine art in getting drunk as well as in other habits, combining at once, and artlessly, the suavity of the late Mr. Woodman, the taste of a Beau Brummel and the elegance of Chesterfield with the prodigality of Jim Fiske and the regularity of Coal Oil Johnny.
George wore a soft drab crush hat at an Emerald Isle angle, with pantaloons, gloves and shoes to match, a Marseilles vest with creamy glass buttons, and an immaculate and faultless shirt bosom and cuffs as pure as bleached snow, and he proceeded "to do the town," regaling himself at every saloon, and at last wind- ing up at Al Thomas' grocery, at the Occidental Hotel, where, after some negotiation, he became the owner in fee of a full tub of eggs, which he immediately scrambled with his drab shoes, by dancing a jig in the tub until the egg was spattered all over him- self, the floor and store, egg galore, then a marigold in liquor, a buttercup complete, a jumping daisy from head to foot, he jumped into the buggy and finished his ride, but he "cussed" some of the boys because he asked them to ride and they "egg- scused" themselves.
George's penchant for variation of the common and accepted manner of executing a "drunk" was simply high art, which blun- dering mediocrity should not essay.
Copies do not succeed, and the originality of the Reeves drunk robbed it of half its degradation and disgrace. Failing to be renominated for clerk, he shook us, and we understand he is now a "Missourian."
Lucifer fell from the battlements of heaven to hell, and Reeves left Kansas for Missouri.
Among the attorneys of the time was one Robert Jerome Christy, formerly of Pittsburg, formerly of Peabody, then to Wichita, from here to San Francisco, and from there direct to the bosom of Abraham. (He is dead and the view taken is charitable. It is not pretended that any advices have been received or that any bill of lading was made out with the consignment.)
Robert J. Christy was a dandy in the superlative and galore sense. He was not only an educated lawyer, but a graduated
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spendthrift. If there be anything in the genus of spendthriftism which may be designated the belles lettres of prodigality, bold, imprudent, plausible and without any finish except the natural grain, Robert J. was the personification living embodiment of the ideal creation. He bought everything and paid for nothing, and stood off a monthly ornithorynchus with a charming naivete and careless abandon, a princely insouciance that disarmed suspicion and brought apologies for the seemingly unwarranted intrusion.
There was no asperity in his tete-a-tete with a bill fiend, no hauteur of voice or manner, no "unsettled account to be ad- justed" or "credits not given," no "call tomorrow." The liquid diphthong "call again" seemed to melt as it fell from his ca- denced and well modulated tongue, as the door closed on the retreating and abashed form of the creditor. He boarded his family at the Occidental, occupied the second floor of the Henry Schweiter corner, just torn down, for a suite of rooms, kept a car- riage and buggy and sulky, boarded three horses at livery, smoked twenty-cent cigars, and sported a massive chattel mortgage on his library.
Robert J. did not succeed as a lawyer. Having become matric- ulated in the law in the bankrupt courts of Philadelphia, where the debtor expected nothing but a receipt, creditors hoped for nothing, and officials and attorneys divided the assets, Robert J. was annoyed at the grasping characteristics of litigants who de- sired to know the value of legal services before they contracted for them, thereby placing "brain" on a par with "bull beef, sugar, lard, salt and nails."
His creditors at last descended on him, e'en as the "Assyrian came down like a wolf of the fold," and seized his personal belongings in lieu of silver and gold.
Sluss sold his library for a law book company, and the boys gathered at the feast, thus providentially prepared, like ghouls at a graveyard, vultures over a carcass, and flies at a " 'lasses" barrel, and greatly rejoiced thereat, saying one unto another exceedingly : "Ill bloweth the wind that profits nobody."
Christy had nice discernment in the selection of books, and introduced Pomeroy's Remedial Rights, Daniel's Negotiable In- struments, Freeman on Judgments, and other text work to the Wichita bar.
Christy's proud, imperious spirit was wounded. The iron entered his soul. His nonchalance was pricked. He pronounced
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a curse on the community and left us, aye, forever. He was the natural ancestor of that large school of princely paupers which, like mushrooms, grew to maturity in a night in 1886.
No great recognized business incapacity whose shadow fell on Main street during that epochal milestone in our path called the "boom" approached Robert in gorgeousness of apparel, varied idiosyncrasies of purchases, or entire lack of display of common sense. He was the original of dazzling borrowed splendor, com- pared to which those who came after and battled with each other to wear his fallen mantle were as neophytes, notwithstanding some have high claims to distinction.
In my poverty, I was dazzled by this princely, insouciant, epi- curean, nonpareil pauper-by his utter indifference to all things that bothered me, his carelessness about debt, his disregard of creditors, his seeming sublime trust in Providence, and "suffi- cient unto the day is the evil thereof" way of treating all omi- nous forebodings. Often during the "boom," when diamonds grew on shirt fronts that ne'er before had worn a pearl button, Robert's form before mine eyes seemed from the earth to rise. Yet mine eyes ne'er beheld his equal, but for this we have good reason, for, as was said after Napoleon : "Copies never succeed."
CHAPTER XVI.
BARON JAGS IN WICHITA.
HOW HE PRODUCED "OUR AMERICAN COUSIN" WITH LOCAL TALENT-BY ONE OF THE "TALENT."
By KOS HARRIS.
(Reminiscential o' the days when Wichita was in th' gristle.)
"Gather roses while ye may ; Old Time is still a-flying ; The fairest rosebud of today Tomorrow may be dying."
To recall the pleasurable past is to double our lives.
The preservation of the commonplace affairs of a town may be a waste of time, but time is wasted without effort. This humble preservative town history may be of no use to anyone, except as copy for a printer, yet this may be an amusement, a gratification, to those who follow after the present generation, and in the grandeur of the brick and marble Wichita yet to come, will curi- ously search out and trace its humble beginning, to adorn an ambitious illustration or point a moral. My office is not to instruct, but amuse, the present and those who in years to come will vote bonds on Wichita, hold its offices, give away its fran- chises, squander its revenues, swamp its taxpayers, and attend to business ; those who will assist in keeping up our pro rata in the beneficent public institutions at Leavenworth, Lansing, Hutchin- son, Winfield, Topeka and Osawatomie; those who will succeed the present generation and follow its noble example, its strong "lead" in annually lying about its personal property assessments and settling with its flexible, Goodyear-patent conscience by a plea of "hard times." This manuscript, written some years since,
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hath been dragged to light to help make one "BLAZE," and as years come and go it and its companion pieces may be read with curiosity .
When the grown boys and girls of today, Like weed and flow'r, ha' withered away, As ripened grain, to seed have gone, Unheeded by the coming throng.
In thus preserving "Our American Cousin," I cut this tale a monument, Recalling how the past was spent, When Wichita was young and need, And life was bright as sparkling deed.
History is the record of the acts deemed worthy of preserva- tion by the recorder of the acts. The history of a community by a theologian, statesman, biographer, gambler, washerman, scav- enger or pawnbroker would be seven places or seven views of one place. This idea of history has been impressed on me by the several distinct and contradictory accounts of battles, all written by eye- witnesses; also I have noticed that a description of a dog fight by nine men-all pious men-impress one with the truth of the words of the Psalmist: "That all men and a percentage of women are liars." Hence, if I am not thought absolutely correct, I will forgive anyone reflecting on my character, and try to forget that he, she or it hath me a liar denominated. We are delighted when we pick up Macaulay's England, and read of little, common, ordi- nary acts of those entombed before America was discovered. When we read that King James said, "He was a bold man who ate the first oyster," we know that oyster-eating was a new thing at that date in England; otherwise the remark would not have been made. It is the preserved "tittle-tattle" of royalty that enables us to know that the "Elizabethan ruff" worn in society was adopted to hide a scrofulous royal neck; that the dis- ease "king's evil" was common scrofula ; that the touch of royalty alleviated, if it did not cure it; and that old Sam Johnson sought the king to cure his ailment. To the good miller all grain is grist, and common things of yesterday, today and tomorrow, in the years to come, may give pleasure to the many-headed multi-
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tude who shall walk the streets we have trod, when we shall have put on the robe of immortality and twang our harps in the New Jerusalem.
"Tis a pleasure to me to know that Lincoln, at the little town of Elwood, Kan., made a speech on December 1, 1859. Some day that humble place will be rescued from obscurity by a monument commemorating the first speech of Lincoln in Kansas, even as Stratford-on-Avon is now made historic and amaranthine in the mind of mankind. The Elwood speech of Lincoln was the speech subsequently delivered at Cooper Institute, New York, and was the keystone of the campaign of 1860.
When the preservative generation comes to Kansas, Elwood will be renowned, and a monument will be built on which will be cut in marble :
"Thy name shall live while time endures, And men shall say of thee: 'He saved his country from its foes, And bade the slave be free.' "
When a true life of Phil Sheridan is written, it will not be complete without the record of Sheridan and Bill Greiffenstein's meeting at the Occidental Hotel in Wichita, and the story of Sheridan's proclamation of one thousand dollars for "Dutch Bill's" head.
Wichita as yet has not evolved a man with a destiny-a man marked for earthly immortality. Of course he may be here, incog. as it were. He may flash yet on us as an arc light, and soar from oblivion's cruel, relentless billows; but the knowledge of these things has led me, in an humble way, to record the produc- tion of the "American Cousin" in Wichita, by local talent.
I am aware that nothing herein is instructive, but it is in a measure illustrative of a phase of Western civilization, commend- able in the fact that people from every nation, clustered on "buf- falo grass" and surrounded by "sunflowers," deprived of better things, forget for a day the business of "bread and butter," and, for amusement-
"Strut and fret one hour upon the stage."
One day Charley Stanley came into my office. I think it was
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"in the early month o' May, 1881, when green buds were a-swell- in'." He had for his personal baggage a thin, stoop-shouldered cadaver, blasé in tout ensemble, "short" on hair, "long" on imperial mustache and Napoleonic goatee. He was "a actor," had played at Covent Garden, Old Drury, and Madison Square; was en route to "Frisco"; had stopped off at Wichita to witness the bold stride of the cosmopolite clustered on the left bank of the Arkansas, ere he wended his way to the Pacific sea. To incul- cate in the mind of Wichita a taste for histrionic science, he was willing to put before the public the play of
THE AMERICAN COUSIN.
He to be the main planet, the cynosure and the star around and about whom some of Wichita's humble souls might mildly twinkle. He was going to "star" for cash-we of Wichita, for glory. He was our idea of Lord Dundreary, and at rehearsal Charley always addressed him as "me Lud." He (Dundreary) presumably had parents-for aught we knew, a father and a mother, and also a grandam, too. His real name we knew not, and cared less. He could, at that ambitious day in Wichita, have passed himself off as
BARON JAG, EARL OF JIM JAMS, From Deliriumshire, In the County of Tremens, Hengland.
Of couse the manikin lived, but where, no one inquired. He also drank. This usually took place at the old Turner Hall Opera House, at rehearsal. The evidences of this bibulous habit were found in his dressing-room in the shape of forty empty half-pint bottles of "Old Crow." His clothes were a misfit, as if he had broken into Dr. Jekyll's and Mr. Hyde's wardrobe and tucked himself out with the clothes of both men. He was a living exem- plification of the old saw :
"Through tattered clothes, small vices appear."
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His hat was a sawed-off plug of 1871 and 1872; his coat was a double-breasted Prince Albert, big enough for Fritz von Schnitzler. His pants-pantaloons-breeches-(now I have it) trousers-were in and of themselves a speaking tale of splendor and glory, pawnshops and jags, recalling the pauper's tale of
"FROM THE HEIGHT OF A DIAMOND TO THE DEPTH OF A PAWN TICKET."
Charley and I pitied the poor devil, promised our assistance to him, went in the back room and "rolled over." Charley had an inspiration (he was often inspired, and made the sad old world laugh at his original and genuine witticism), and suggested that we have him recite to us, so we could be sure we were to have the guidance of a true compeer of McCready, Booth and Garrick. He recited; we simply "died."
Charley was to attend to the securing of talent, to assist and arrange the caste of characters and the meeting of the troupe. After some preliminary work, Charley notified me that the great combination was to have its first "sitting" and distribute the parts to the actors and actresses.
We met. The girls viewed the "GRATE ACTOR" with curi- osity, if not disdain, some surprise, and a little disgust. He (the great actor) was loaded to the guards with "tonic," aromatic spices and loud perfume, that, like the historic snore, "filled the room from ceiling to floor." We debated, deliberated and dal- lied, and at last incubated, budded, flowered and fruited the fol- lowing caste of characters, and adjourned :
Lord Dundreary Baron Jag and Earl of Jim Jams Sir Edward Trenchord . Col. H. W. Lewis Harry Vernon. Judge W. P. Campbell Captain De Boots A. F. Stanley John Wickens. . Kos Harris Florence Trenchord Ella Fuller, Mrs. Finlay Ross
Mary.
Rilla Keller, Mrs. Elmer Beach
Georgina.
Libbie Israel, Mrs. Jake Hollinger
The caste of characters is from vague recollection.
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BARON JAGS IN WICHITA
It will be noted that in the above caste Stanley and Harris had to earn their living "by the sweat of their face, and could not always be ou hand at early lamplight for rehearsal. One night "Baron Jag" roasted us for being late, and Charley said unto him, in a comical, Iago-like voice: "Sir, we had to dine after our day's work was o'er. If we had only to drink a half pint of liquor, we had long since been here."
TABLEAUX.
(Note .- In the language of "Little Britches," when Charley and I meet and "loaf around the throne," I expect to laugh o'er Baron Jag and Earl of Jim Jams.")
The rehearsals were had, and the play came on. In one scene the "hevy villun" was to throw the hero down and "they wuz" to apparently fight, even as tho' unto cold, clammy death-worm- banqueting death. The villain and hero, it will be noted, were about the same physical proportions, and the villain agreed with Charley and me to make the hero "win his spurs" on the event- ful night by holding him to the sword. When the moment came which was to witness the struggle 'twixt heroism and villainy, the tragic scene in which virtue was to triumph o'er vice, Charles and I hid in a wing to see the fun, and see how hard virtue would have to struggle ere it overcame vice. The audience, which was made up of complimentary ticket-holders, beheld the struggle, but knew not how near rampant vice was to victory. Charley and I concluded vice triumphant would be "fatal variance" from the usual denouement, but it would be fun. We thought the hero would be in a quandary as how to end the play, when vanquished. We had rehearsed for fun, and wanted to break the record on heroism, but the swelling cords on the hero's neck, and his loud whispers to the villain to "let up," aroused the audience, and at last the villain permitted virtue to rise, amidst cheers, to the dis- gust of Charles and the writer.
"In great beads on the hero's face the sweat did stand."
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Lord Dundreary was so overcome with the size of the audi- ence that he bade us good-night in glee, and when the morn stole upon the night he went to Charley's office to receive his douceur, pourboire, backsheesh, honorarium, and, whilst waiting, suggested a second night's play. The box receipts were not enough to pay expenses. Charley and I had prevented an empty house by issu- ing at least one hundred complimentary tickets. The rage of Baron Jag and Earl of Jim Jams was awful to contemplate, fear- ful to behold. In fact, we feared his consuming rage might his existence dissolve and send him unshrined to a bar where "Old Crow" was not handled. The rage of Alecta and Tisiphone in mythology was as sweet milk to carbolic acid compared with the rabid frothings of "Mi Lud." A she tiger robbed of her whelps could not have roared in greater anger and distress than did Baron Jag on the denouement of his first and last appearance on the "boards." As he left us, Charley asked him about the second night, and-
He turned and blew a bugle-blast, A lion's detonating roar ; His rage was foaming at the crest- -
We feared wi' us he'd mop the floor.
Though we had courage, we also had wisdom, sagacity, pru- dence and common sense, and remembering that "speech is sil- ver and silence is gold," we immediately adopted the gold stand- ard and left him alone in his glory, and went out in the back room and from thence into the card room of Tom Jewell's place, where Jim Steele was playing rounce. At our suggestion, Jim stopped the game long enough to go into the office and order "Baron Jag" to slope, decamp, skedaddle, absquatulate, abjure the realm, flee the bailiwick. When Charles and I returned, the "Baron" was "nit." The place so shortly before redolent with baronial fumes and flavor "knew him no more forever."
The Baron's tout ensemble was in such a wretched state of general as well as particular decadence at our first acquaintance that Charley's guarantee procured him some apparel, which ap- peared as follows:
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May, 1881.
"Baron Jag," per guaranty A. F. S.
In account with
GOLDEN EAGLE CLOTHING STORE.
To 1 shirt
$2.00
1 pair hose .50
1/2 doz. cuffs and collars 1.50
1 tie .75
1/3 doz. handkerchiefs 1.00 $5.75
After the show, the melodrama, Charley prevailed on the opera-house manager to declare a dividend in our favor for the amount of the above bill.
Charley at that date was at work for Jim Steele, in the room under Governor Stanley's present law office, on Douglas avenue.
Thus endeth the history of the production of "Our American Cousin" in Wichita, in the ambitious days 'twixt the grasshopper and the "boom."
The preservation of this memorabilia may be amusing in after years, when some human question box-i. e., some "little tot"- says: "Grandma or grandpa, did you ever play on the stage in Wichita, and was Lord Dundreary drunk?" To those grand- parents who may be asked, and desire to be exactly truthful, "nothing extenuating and naught set down in malice," the writer hereof saith that they are at liberty to say, "Baron Jag" was "fuller" than a "guse, drunker than a biled owl," slept that night on the floor in a real-estate office, and when the moon had paled and the rosy hue of dawn o'erspread the eastern sky, the atmos- phere of that room was simply diabolical, proving to all mankind possessed of noses that 'twas not the smell of posies, aromatic perfumes or roses.
CHAPTER XVII. WICHITA PRESBYTERIANISM AND ITS AMENITIES.
By KOS HARRIS.
Memory is the mind's storehouse; some use a closed vault, others a well-ordered room, and treasure away things valuable. The generality of mankind use an attic in which "things" are pushed in heterogeneously, and, when called for, the valuable and the worthless are so mixed as to be almost inseparable.
Properly speaking, this tale should be entitled "Wichita Presbyterianism, as Seen by a Local Goat in 1874-1875."
Though it was "foreordained" that I should write this piece, it was not made known to me until Thanksgiving Day, 1898. Hav- ing received the information, I now proceed to evolve the facts, unravel the ball of memory. Germane to this piece is the inter- esting fact that Presbyterianism and grasshoppers landed in Kan- sas as twins on July 19, 1820, according to my Kansas history. Presbyterianism stuck; grasshoppers, like "ager," have been intermittent, but are well remembered.
When I first became acquainted with Presbyterianism in Wich- ita, services were held in Old Eagle Hall. The memories of that festooned Eagle Hall are multifarious and intensely cosmopolitan in their nature. As a church, convention hall, reception room, theater, opera, spelling school, board of trade room, court room, council chamber, church festival and fair room, political speaking place, it filled the bill on all occasions. This hall was on the second floor at the left of the stairway over the Boston Store. The room was about fifty by one hundred feet. At the top of the stairway there was a box office three feet square. At the south end there was a stage three feet high and adorned on the front with a dozen dirty, dingy, smoky, murky old coal-oil lamps, that kept the audience in hot water at any evening show for fear that the old drop-curtain would catch on fire or knock over a lamp. This
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