Demoraiic i alcuon Bellefonte, Pa., March 24, 1899. YOU SHALL DREAM AGAIN. Some little touch of sorrow— Some little thorn of pain; Goodnight, dear, and goodmorrow, And you shall dream again. And you shall dream again Sweet, rosy dreams and vain: Goodnight, dear, and goodmorrow, For you shall dream again. Dear, when the darkness closes The stars may burn your brain; The red thorns o’er Love’s roses May show the roses slain. But roses bloom again; For sunlight and for rain; Goodnight, dear, and goodmorrow, Till roses bloom again. From dear, past years we borrow The relics that remain; But life’s too sweet for sorrow And peace too dear for pain. Sweet, you shall dream again Dreams that are sweetly vain; Goodnight, dear, and goodmorrow, Till you shall dream again! —Atlanta Constitution. THE ACCOLADE. Dick Dana, a strong, well groomed young fellow, stood staring down at the coals in the grate, taking his punishment, if the truth be told, in rather sullen fash- ion. ‘‘Of course,” Rosalie Thornby was say- ing in her sweet, high voice, letting her wide-apart eyes rest on him calmly in the half-obscurity of the room, ‘‘of course, I don’t pretend that there is anything excep- tional in myself that justifies me in de- manding a hero in the man I marry, but I think all women, now-a-days, ask too lit- tle—except fetching and carrying—of the men. There was a time when a man won his spurs before he expected to win a woman.’’ Dick shifted his weight. “I know,’ she said, leaning forward and frowning into the fire, ‘‘you would like to remind me that you are lieutenant in the swellest company of the swellest regiment in New York. I have not forgotten that, nor the cotillions that you lead so delight- fully.” “Now look here, Miss Rosalie,”’ broke in the victim, ‘‘it’s hardly fair to spring all these ideas on a fellow without giving him a chance. I never knew you expected so much more of a man than other girls; and now you put me through a civil ser- vice examination without a chance to cram. You seemed to like to dance ard all the rest of it, and I've never noticed that youn demanded knight-errantry and that medi- eval business of the other men.” “You are quite right,’ she replied with spirit. “I do not demand things of men who demand nothing of me. You said you wanted to know my idea of a man, and I have told you. To be the captain of toy soldiers or even to lead a cotillion through two seasons does not, somehow, strike my imagination. Nothing could show hetter how far apart we are than that the expres- sion of my ideals should remind you of a civil service examination. You men of the North are so desperately utilitarian.” The challenge dropped unanswered, and she went on more gently: “I have an old coat of my father’s. He was what you would call a rebel, you know. Itis the dirtiest, most faded old thing. There is a bullet-hole in the sleeve, and our Southern moths have tried to help the story by mak- ing a lot of other holes. It has seen real service, and somehow its dinginess takes the dazzle out of the gold lace you young fellows wear so jauntily.”’ Into the man’s mind came the memory of a night spent in the Brooklyn streets: militiamen surrounded by a mob of strik- ers, an icy night sky from which the driz- zle fell ceaselessly on a group of men squat- ting about a feeble bonfire; there were others, without blankets, who huddled in one of the deserted street cars, unable to sleep for the cold. Now and then came a quick closing in of the mob, and a brick- bat or paving stone crashed in a car-win- dow or scattered the group about the fire. He remembered the rage of spirit under the cowardly attacks of the mob, the rasping inaction, the effort of holding men steady when their anger is your own. It came and went through the man’s mind, and left a slight smile on his lip. The girl went on: ‘I don’t mean to be hard, Mr. Dana,’ she said with a caressing accent that meant little from her, whose voice was full of pretty inflections, ‘‘but this is not a sud- den caprice, as you seem to think. I was fourteen when my father died, and I will show you a silly thing I wrote then, and that I have scarcely looked at since.’’ As she moved across in the firelight to a clumsy old secretary and drew out the rods to support the leaf of the desk, Dana's gloomy eyes followed her instinctively. ‘Shall I make a light ?”’ he asked "with constraint. ‘No; I know how the paper feels.” She came back presently, and seating herself on the low corner seat, held a sin- gle limp sheet toward the fire. The light struck through the old-fashioned cross- barred French paper in a checker work of half-luminous lines, and on the girl’s broad forehead and parted hair. The envelope lying on her lap was labeled ‘May 4th, 1888.” She glanced down the sheet. then gravely handed it to Dana. He found a number of short sentences, written with ‘a fine-tipped pen in an un- formed hand. Each clause was numbered, and the heading ran: ‘The Not Impossi- ble.”? He must not be less than twenty-six years He must not wear jewelry. He must not be facetious. He must not ever blow. He must be sincere. He must be brave. He must have nice teeth. He must not be fat or very handsome. 9. Above all he must be a man to be prond of. The young man read through the child’s list of requirements, twice over and re- turned the paper stiffly. ‘‘I feel honored to have been allowed to see the plans and specifications for your fu- J ture husband, Miss Thornby. I hope he will come up to your expectations, but I think you would have saved yourself troub- le in drawing up that paper if the first clause had simply called for a gentleman.’ Presently, standing very straight, with his toes turned out, Dana was bowing him- self manfally from the field of defeat. And so the solemn young things parted, too concerned with the business of living to taste the humor of life. A few months later, in the early sum- mer, Dana's widowed sister and her little boy, Jamie Talcott, were staying, not en- tirely by chance, in the same house where Rosalie Thornby was spending the sum- mer, down-at South Hampton. The Tal- cotts had only been down a few days, and Dana was to spend the week’s end with his 2 Forspas wm sister. On a sunny, breezy morning, the two women stood together at the end of the long porch absorbed in earnest talk. From time to time they glanced below to where Jamie, in the shadow of the house, threw up long lines of earthworks. As they talked, the girl gradually moved nearer to the mother; then at some turn in the conversation impulsively clasped her hand over the older woman’s, as it lay on the rail. The breeze playing upon them caught the folds of the girl’s muslin dress, and for a moment wrapped the two figures together. Beyond the smooth dark head and the bright one lay the blue sea and the surf pounding in on the white sand. An arbor of leafy boughs, built for some festi- val, had turned brown and dry, making a rich blot of color on the sand, and beneath it lay a yet darker pool of shadow. ‘And so I have waited to have it done again until Dick comes down,’’ the mother was saying quietly. ‘‘He gets hold of Jamie better than I can, and has helped me before. I think the child bears it well for such a little fellow, but he is not much more than a baby.”’ The boy, feeling their study gaze upon him, looked up from the line of tin soldiers he was planting behind his redoubt, and scrambling to his feet, he called out: ‘You better take care or you’ll get your heads blown off.”’ He was still in petticoats, and it was not instantly that one realized that under the blue smock frock, fashioned like an artist’s blouse, the boy’s back was queer. He had a gallant little face, with steady, softly black eyes—like big black-heart cherries— and full bright lips. ‘“When the doctor comes, couldn’t you let me help. I should love to sing for him —or—or anything,”’ the girl urged. ‘You might stay in the next room, and if we needed anyone else, we could call up- on you. He has to be undressed, and the standing seems very long to him. No one need know you are there unless you choose.” The door was partly open between two of the upper bedrooms when the doctor came. A table with a folded blanket and sheet stood near the centre of the room. Jamie sat half on and half off his mother's lap, screwing about uncomfortably while she tried to feel him from a cup in which bread crumbs and red beef juice made an unpleasant looking mess. The .spoon moved more and more slowly as the boy reluctantly mouthed, and more reluctantly swallowed the food. The doctor was ar- ranging a sort of hanging harness from the ceiling, and the boy’s eyes followed his movements as he adjusted the pulley by which the harness is raised or lowered. Presently Jamie pushed the spoon aside petulantly. " “You must eat a big dinner this time, Jamie,’’ Mrs. Talcott remonstrated. *‘Dr. Pangry is going to put a new jacket on you, and we want this one big enough to hold plenty of dinner.” The boy turned from these trivialities and said imperiously, “I want Uncle Dick.”” As he spoke came the sound of a brisk step and the clatter of a sword. Da- na came in, in fall-dress uniform, looking very slim and fit in the close gray, with white crossed shoulder-belts, epaulets, and white gloves. ‘‘Corporal,’’ he said sharply to the child, ‘‘salute !”’ The boy slid from his mother’s lap, stepped out in his bare feet from the en- tanglement of the shawl that had covered them, and raising his hand, palm out, to the fur-like blackness of his soft, straight hair, saluted his officer. Motioning sternly to the half-empty cup, Dana said, ‘‘Corporal, rations !”’ Jamie hesitated a second, then seizing the spoon, gulped hasty spoonfuls. When he had eaten all, he lifted his hand again, and said deferentially, ‘‘Were the sentries on duty at the door, sir, when you came in ?”? Dana stepped back with measured tread, and opening the door, saw two tiny tin soldiers standing guard, one at each side of the entrance, while two others were lying covered over in a cigar box half-filled with straw. He came back in a moment, say- ing: ‘I have given them orders to let no one pass the lines without the countersign.’’ The doctor rolled the table under the suspended harness, examined the white rolled bandages on a small table at his right, felt the temperature of the water in the basin standing beside the bandages, glanced at his watch, and said cheerily: ‘All ready, Mrs. Talcott !’’ ‘Right about face I’ was Dana’s order. Then falling in line, fitting his stride to the boy’s step, the leader of ecotillions marched his man up to the table. A small housemaid’s ladder stood. ‘‘Mount !”” came the order. The corporal scrambled up, steadied him- self with an effort, and stepped out upon the table, his eyes wide and earnest. The blue smock was unfastened and stripped down, leaving the child naked but for the plaster jacket covering his body—a body strangely thick through for the slender brown legs to support. The doctor laid the boy on his back, and with a few quick slashes cut down the front of the plaster cast, and took the child out from the mold that had encased his body for three months as one might take a little brown almond out of its shell. The mother laid the use- less husk gently aside, took from the doc- tor the undervest he had drawn off over the boy's head, and rolling up the sleeve of her summer dress, plunged one of the rolled bandages into the basin, squeezing and working it to allow the water to pene- trate the whole wad. A fresh seamless vest was passed over the boy’s head, and drawn snugly down over the narrow hips. ‘‘Attention !"’ called.Dana. ‘‘Chest out! Stomach in! Eyes striking the ground at fifteen paces!’’ The boy stood erect. The collar of the harness was next fitted about the child’s neck, the leather straps drawn close under chin and nape, and buckled. Then the doctor pulling on the hoisting tackle, drew the tiny figure up until it was stretched out full length and almost lifted from its feet. The boy’s eyes widened as he felt himself lifted by the head; but he had been by this way be- fore, and he only set his soft lips until the fullness was pressed away. ‘‘Now, my man, put up your hands and. hold on to the tackle,”’ the doctor coaxed. Jamie turned his eyes to Dana, who nod- ded sharply. So up went two small dark hands, deeply veined with blue, and the little figure—heavy at the chest and light at the loins—was lifted yet higher, sg that the babyish feet barely rested on the table. Folded slips of white gauze were padded about the bony prominences, and the crooked spine was filled out to offer an even surface, so that the child would not he chafed; then the doctor called for the first plaster bandage. Mrs. Talcott handed him the saturated roll of narrow white crinoline through which plaster of Paris had been sifted. The doctor laid an end upon the boy’s side, well down over the abdomen, and gradually unrolling with Concluded on page 8. - me, but finally T persuaded them to tell me what the animals were THE MOUNTAINS AND PLAINS OF COLORADO. A Day Mid the Great Farms of the Arkansas Valley—Lamar, the Centre of What is Destined to be a Great Agricultural Country—Its Development Scarcely Begun—Irrigation Reservoirs and Canals the Size of Lakes and Rivers—Shooting Prairie Dogs and Jack Rabbits on the Plains.— Home- ward Bound. Through wondrous scenes our pleasant path has wound From fair Denver to that enchanted ground The snow crowned Rockies, we've paused to hail The many marvels of mountain and vale. And as they slumber neath the setting sun, We sigh to think our wondrous journey’s done. The ‘last call for breakfast’’ were the reassuring words that brought us back to scenes of activity on the morning of September 17th. It was just 7 o’clock and we had reached La Junta, where we were to take breakfast before hurrying on to Lamar tospend the day as guests of the gracious people of Prowers country. I was tired. Any one would have been, for we had traveled 2,957 miles night riding and would have worn a pedometer clear out if any attempt had been made to keep a record of the distance we covered in our rambles by day. I had been looking forward with so much pleasant anticipation to the time when I would have an opportunity of personally inspecting the great irrigating systems by which the barren land of Colorado is being reclaimed that no time was lost in rolling out of my berth and getting ready for the day’s sight seeing. La Juuta is fifty-three miles east of Lamar, our destination, and is a town of considerable importance. It is the county seat of Otero county and the terminus of three principal divisions of the Santa Fe, the payroll from this source alone amounting to between $46,0000 and $50,- 000 per month. Like most of the other places in the Arkansas valley its business is largely agricultural. There are large flouring mills there, canneries and apiaries. After breakfast at another of those appetizing Harvey eating houses that can be found all along the Sante Fe route we resumed the run to Lamar. That town was reached at 9 o'clock aud the first thing that met my eyes, as I stepped from the ‘Tunis,’ was a gay profusion of bunting and a line of carriages and wagons that for length and variety would pale the funeral cortege of the most popular county squire in Centre county. The station platform looked like the main building at an agricultural fair and the people of Lamar were running hither and thither, lavish with their considerate attention, and thinking only of our pleasure that day. We had scarcely arrived ere we had had personal experience of that gen- erous hospitality that had reached its welcoming arms clear out to La Junta to receive us, by providing breakfast at that place for the entire party. It had rained hard the night before and the water was lying in pools in the streets, " already cut in deep furrows by the stream of vehicles that had come rallying into town early that morning, bearing big hearted folks who wanted to join efforts with the townspeople in making our stay a memorable one. I felt in as bewildering a maze as the one eligible man at a seaside resort finds himself and for some unaccountable reason got temporarily lost in the shuffle. But wandering away from the crowd senses returned and I had an opportunity of looking over the town. It has a popula- tion of about twelve hundred, is a well built, though new town and from all appear- ances has a growing prospect. Lamar was staked off in May, 1886, when the first lots were sold there. Its early growth was of the mushroom order, for only two years later it had a population of nearly seventeen hundred. Like so many other of those western air plants, that have sprung up in a day to find nothing to sustain them, it collapsed and before two more years had passed the population dwindled until there were only five hundred and eighty-six people there. They , remained solely because all that they possessed was anchored there and just as the last spark of hope was flick- ering and the destiny of the place seemed to be that it should remain the later day counter part of Goldsmith's ‘‘Deserted Village’’ a new life was wafted in from the East; the Great Plains Water Storage company began ramifying the country with its life giving water canals, the tide changed and a stead ¥, healthful prosperous develop- ment began. The flappy, shrunken sides of the mended balloon are constantly push- ing out, this time with a substantial filling, and no one can tell what the future great- ness of Lamar will be, for it is certainly the centre of what must eventually become one of the greatest agricultural regions of the West. After roaming about the streets for an hour, during which time I saw quite a. number of cosy homes—none more than a story and a half high—a Methodist, a Presbyterian and a Christian church, a lot of substantial looking business’ houses, a 500 bbl. flour mill, a fine public school building and a creamery plant, I returned to the station to find that most of the crowd had disappeared. Whither the editorial birds had flown I couldn’t tell, and I must have been looking as if I had lost wy last friend for just then some dear lady came down out of a building nearby and told me that the men had all gone off to see the irrigation reservoirs, but the ladies of the party were being entertained there in town and if I wanted to be one she would be glad to take me up stairs to their club rooms. Well, there it was, a plain question of “to be, or not to be,”” but Hamlet’s soliloquizing mood wasn’t a circumstance to mine. Finally I wakened up to the situation, thanked the lady who had so generously offered to transform me into one of her own kind and headed for a bunch of men who were standing in front of a hardware store a few paces off. Like everyone else in town that day they were talking about their visitors and upon approaching them I heard one gentleman remark that he had driven in from his ranch, a distance of eight miles, to tender his wagon to the committee, but there had been no one to ride in it. There wasa ring of genuine disappointment in his voice, so I stepped up and told him that I would be delighted to go anywhere he cared to take me. There was room for four in the wagon and it was a matter of but a few moments until he had invited the editor of a local paper and a young attachee of the Lamar Milling and Elevator company to make up the party. Having heard that we would pass through some good jack-rabbit country I suggested taking a gun. It was found after considerable scouting around, for others had thought of the same sport, and we were off in the wake of the great caravan that had started across the once desert plain that is now fast becoming a perfect oasis by the irrigating system. The roads were muddy, something unusual my companions said, but we rolled along at a six mile gait and were soon beyond the holiday dress of the town. Ina little clump of cotton woods, just in the outskirts, there was a large camp of farmers living in tents, who had traveled over the prairies in wagons and squatted there; to remain, nobody knew how long. Mr. A.L Beavers, the gentleman with whom~I was riding, explained that such wandering nomads were very numerous in the West. They flit from place to place, taking up a section of land, but few remaining long enough to establish a permanent home. When we crossed the Arkansas river I observed that it had almost the appearance of the sand rivers of New Mexico and Arizona, there was so little water in it, then one of the gentlemen explained that most of the water was be- ing drawn off to fill the great impounding reservoirs we were to visit. : About five miles out we ran into a prairie dog town and as we approached the curious little animals scampered in all directions. Reaching their holes, they sat up on their haunches for a moment, as if taking a last look at us, - then dodged into the ground. A prairie dog town looks like goose-fleshed earth. It is a group of small mounds at the hase of each being the burrow of the dog. One of the little fellows, more curious than the rest, sat too long to see us for I had thrown two shells into the gun and fired at it. Everybody laughed when I shot, for they said it was a hard thing to kill a prairie dog and even when done they usually fall into their holes and can not be secured. This particular animal didn’t do it, however. It was killed so dead that it never moved and I thought it was about the cutest corpse I had ever seen, un- til I discovered that its mother evidently hadn’t used a fine toothed comb or insect powder on it, then things were different. At the next town we came to the peculiar looking little objects perched on the tops of many of the mounds attracted my atten- tion and I was told that they were owls, and that the prairie dogs, owls and rattle- snakes all live in the same hole, heing called, “The Happy Family.” I tried another shot there, but before I had had time to see the effect of it some five or six specimens of quadrupeds seemed to spring out of the earth and dart away like the wind. I hadn’t the remotest idea what they were or where they had been and the idea of shooting at them was furthest from my startled mind. My consternation atsuch a sight must have been ridiculous for the men all laughed long and heartily at and then felt like kicking myself clear back to Bellefonte, for not having tried a shot. ‘‘Never mind,’ said Mr. Beavers, ‘‘we’ll come back hy the other road and you can have all the sport you want shooting Jacks.’ I was still at a loss to know where they had been hiding, for not a trace of anything could be seen on the smooth plain before the shot, the Buffalo grass curled tight to the earth as a carpet and there wasn’t a particle of brush anywhere. Subsequently I learned that the back of a Jack looks just like the brown grass and when they squat only a trained eye can discover them. i The land over which we were riding was slightly rolling. Every here and there was a ranch, fenced off, and in an jatipoved or developing condition, according to the 1 of time it had been under cultivation. Along the horizon at either side of us be seen the great water canals that carry the water from the reservoirs out over the country. Prowers county, of which Lamar is the county seat, is at the widest - the sight by this time and had presence of mind enough to throw my gun to, part of the V shaped valley of the Arkansas. It contains 1080 sections of land, many of which are as yet untaken. All the sections that are under cultivation are fenced, but the remainder are the virgin prairie. We had traveled about twelve miles and reached the top of a slightly ascending grade, when a sight greeted my eyes the like of which I never expect to see again. Try as I might no words of mine could describe the glorious landscape that spread before us. The God of nature could not have col- ored a more impressive canvas. It was noon in the brilliant sunshine of a perfect September day, behind us was the plain sloping away to the river. The smoke from the mill at Lamar could be seen curling heavenward. As far as the eye would carry to left and right there was an apparently endless stretch of prairie and lying in a great natural depression ahead of us was the first of the reservoirs. In places it was smooth, looking like a blue glass mirror, at others were large moving splotches of darker hue, which proved to be flocks of curlew, pelican, mallard, red-head and num- berless other varieties of water fowl. Beyond its furthest shore the soft brown sloped away ’til the blue canopy of the heavens draped down and blended it into nothing- ness. At one place the land looked darker, as if its dark rich soil had been turned up by recent plowing, but when we had driven nearer it was discovered to be a bunch of range cattle, containing about eight thousand head. Nearby was a sheep herder’s camp, where a party of herders lived while the flocks they were tending clipped off the nutritious brown grass. Mr. Beavers told me that the local ranchmen were always opposite to the cattle and sheep herders because the latter drove their stock over the plains, pasturivg it bare, and stopping long enough nowhere to pay taxes. Between the cattle and sheep- men, too, there is a continual clash, because sheep are so much harder on pasture than cattle. Having been told that I might get a shot at a coyote I naturally wondered how the flocks were protected at night from the ravages of this prairie wolf. It was explained when they told me that the herders kept constantly circling about the flocks at night or some of them carry great corrals of wire into which the sheep are driven for the night. Hurrying on we caught up with the rest of the party at the breast of a new resor- voir that was just being put in. There the Great Plains Water Storage company had constructed a temporary pavilion for our reception and a caterer had heen brought from Kansas City, Mo., with his corps of helpers to serve a banquet to us on the plains, eighteen miles from the nearest town. You can imagine for yourself what an under- taking it must have been, when you are told that there was everything from the soups clear through an elaborate menu to the ices, fruits, wines and cigars. But such a thing was but a trifle in comparison to the gigantic work that that company is doing out there now. The reservoirs are great natural depressions in the prairie, dammed at the lower ends. Into them the water is conducted by canals from the river and stored for use in dry weather. They vary in size and there are fivegof them located from twelve to twenty miles north of Lamar. They cover 14,000 acres of land, have a depth of 90 ft. and a capacity of 7,955,419,428 cubic feet of water;] to secure which they have the drainage of 12,200 square miles of territory. From these great artificial lakes the irri- gating canals radiate. The Ft. Lyon is the largest, being 117 miles, the Amity, 110, is next and there are numerous shorter ones. The; canals vary from 35 ft. to 50 ft. wide on the bottom and from 7 ft. to 10 ft. in depth. Imagine, if you can, the mag- nitude of such an enterprise, and picture for yourself made waterways capable of carrying 2,000 cubic feet of water per second and you will know at what cost of brains and money the work has been done to make 300,000 acres of barren land in Prowers county as fertile as any in the world. The farmer out there can’t depend on rains, for they have been known to have had 340 sun shiny days in one year. He needs water, bowever, and he gets it from the canals, whenever he wants it. Those using the Amity canal pay sixteen cents per acre per year. All they have to do is to tack a notice on the flood gate at their open- ing into the canal and the company ‘‘ditch riders’”’ who drive along the canal banks, like a track walker on the railroad, to see that everything is in good shape, opens the sluice and gives him the flood for whatever length of time is stated in the notice. Where a farmer lives several sections away from the canal he has a right to connect with the ditch of his neighbor and so on to the main source. Each one has his own openings into these smaller canals and when the ‘‘ditch rider’’ has turned the water into them all that remains to be done is for the one wanting it to flood the land. Ir- rigation is all done by flooding. It varies for different crops. Alfalfa, the Colorado hay, grows three and sometimes four cropsin,a season. For it the land is flooded after “each crop is cut, then once in the winter or spring. Fall wheat is irrigated just before or after sowing, again in the spring and the last time just when it is beginning to head out in June. Spring wheat is flooded a little oftener, so is oats, while corn land gets its water just before the planting and twice during the development of the crop. Fruit trees, once in the spring, twice in the summer and again after the leaves fall. This process of flooding has another effect than that of merely supplying water. The Arkansas river water is nearly always muddy, carrying a freight of silt and fer- tilizing ingredients from the mountains. This deposit has a tendency to smooth up uneven ground and fertilize it as well. In fact, no fertilizer, whatever, is used and as the soil is thirty feet deep it will be some time before they have any *‘thin’”’ farm land in Prowers county. The depth of the soil I can vouch for myself, for I saw some of the excavations eighty feet deep for one of the new canals that will run through a ris- ing piece of ground and there wasn’t a decent sized pebble to be seen anywhere. It was all sand. ‘ Most of the land in that country is under control of the irrigating companies, but it can be bought very cheap. In fact the only way the companies can have hope of getting back the immense sums of money they have spent is by selling the land to farmers who will, in turn, need the water. There is no danger of the water price being raised, either, after the land is all sold, for the contract is such that a maximum is fixed by law. It is wonderful, indeed, the work that has been done there and now they never think of the paltry 15 inch annual rain-fall, The water for domestic use is secured from cisterns or artesian wells, preferably the former, for the well water has a distinct alkaline taste. The ranches or farms are all comparatively small, very much like our own. There are none of those great places like they have up in the Red River wheat belts. In truth the growing of grain is only in its infancy in south-eastern Colorado. Alfalfa is the principal crop and it yields from 1 to 1} tons per acre at a cutting. It is marketed baled at from $5 to $8 per ton or can be sold in the stack at from $2.50 to $4, according to the season. Some of the farmers cut one crop for hay then another for seed, the latter yielding about 5 bushels per acre and selling at from $3 to $5. Alfalfa is what is known as Spanish clover and will grow year after year without a sign of diminution. When turned under by the plow it makes an excellent fertilizer for any succeeding crop, whether it be corn or wheat. The altitude at Lamar is only 3,592 ft., the lowest in Colorado, consequently it is an excellent fruit growing section. The sandy southern slopes, warmed by almost continual sunshine and watered when dry, are unsurpassed for orchards and the fruit is enough to make any Centre county farmer lose faith in my integrity were I to tell about its size and lusciousness, so I won’t do it. An Alfalfa country isa great bee raising country, consequently Prowers county has enough honey makers to keep most of the West sweet. Sugar beets grow prolifical- ly on the soil, as high as fifty-six tons to the acre having been grown. I am not trying to deceive you in any way about the country about Lamar, nor am I telling this story from rail-road or real estate booming literature. It has been a matter of personal observation with me. Having been interested in irrigation be- fore I reached Colorado I naturally looked into the results and practicability of it as carefully as possible in the short time there was at my disposal and it certainly seems to me that with three hundred and forty sunshiny days in a year, a soil 30 feet deep that requires no fertilizer, and water ever at hand so long as the Askansas river flows that there can be no more favorable conditions for agriculture anywhere, than right in Prowers county. Of course there are untoward features, but what section does not have them. One of the noticeable things is that the farms are all small. There are none of those great ranches so large that the children have to start in the morning on ponies, taking their dinner with them, to get the cows home for the evening milking. Very few of the farms ran more than 160 acres and most of them are smaller. The ground is so productive that a farmer finds all he can do in farming a few acres well. The conse- quence is that the homes in the country district are close together, there is social inter- course among them and they have the advantage of good churches and schools. Par- ticularly did the latter impress me everywhere in Colorado. The public school build- ings in the little towns of Loveland, Lamar and many others we visited have school buildings far superior in style and equipment to those to be found in most of our east- ern cities. When I saw such evidences of an educational inclination among the peo- ple I was forced to put more faith in the article I had seen in the Cosmopolitan some months before showing that the average of illiteracy is far lower in the new States of the West and North than it is in the New England and Middle Atlantic States. A word as to the homes before starting back. Most of the country places are primitive, because the country is only beginning its development. Though some of the homes appeared just as cheery and comfortable as any of our Penns or Nittany val- ley places. They nestled in the midst of fruit burdened orchards and were surround- ed by all the comforts that could be desired. They use from three to six horses have little stock, unless making a specialty of it, and pay nothing to blacksmiths for shag. ing, because none of the horses are shod. , I ig i By this time I guess Mr. Beavers thought I had gorged myself with informa k at for he announced that we had better start back. It was an eighteen ,;° the drive and we were scheduled to leave Lamar at 6 o’clock, besides we wanted a i that rabbit hunting. I forgot to tell you that on the drive out we had passed Mr. Beg; /spa- ranch and there procured his three stag hounds. Shaggy coated, undersizedy, hounds. As fleet as deer and ready on the instant to give chase to a Jack. ue and them bounding along at our sides we rattled out over the cow paths to the mai, r sup- The country along the road by which we returned was just about the same ai; they over which we had traveled out to the reservoirs, except that there was not so dle to of the land taken up or fenced in. This gave us an opportunity of cutting in on: '®'® plains and we had gone only a few miles when the gentlemen told me to get the h Im ready for game. The suggestion was scarcely acted upon when out from undeydition very wheels of our wagon shot a great Jack rabbit. I was a little more accustom gay shoulder. Fortunately the Jack circled to my side of the wagon and was going i° Yo the wind when I fired. And—he didn’t drop. Of course I swore by everything he, he that it must have been the gun’s fault, since I had bad a dead line on him and i companions were just on the point of believing that the gun was no good—out 4% : courtesy to me—when the rabbit tumbled over and gave up the ghost. The next rabbit we started they told me not to shoot at so that: I could see the fine chase the dogs would give it. Surely it was magnificent. The Jack started straight across the plains, one of the dogs fell directly behind it, while the “other two started on a wide detour at either side. With animal cunning they were trying to run it into a pocket. They went so fast that they looked like four black specks out.on the prairie. There was not a thing but the low cactus plants to ob- struct the view of the exciting chase and just when the dogs began to close in on their quarry it shot into a corn section and the chase was ended, because stag hounds run on sight, not scent. 1 I shot several other Jacks after that, killed an ordinary cotton tail, an eagle and came very near blazing away at a coyote, that turned out to be some nearby: ranch- ~man’s dog. We arrived at Lamar barely in time to catch the train, but to tell the truth I would not have been one whit disappointed had we been too late and I would have been compelled to spend the night and another day with those delightful people. As it was the train —_— out on time and there was not a passenger on it who did not. bid a reluctant farewell to Lamar. At La Junta we had supper, again the guests of the Lamar people, then settled ourselves on our cars for the 180 mile run back to Denver, there to say good-by to our companions of the grand junket and start on the 1621 mile homeward journey. GEo. R. MEEK. < .
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