CHESTNUT-BURR XVI-PATRICK OLESON.
The Banks of the Pulgarlic River—Patrick Fireman on 259—The Goal Was Reached—The Story only Partially True.
Many years ago, on the banks of the Pulgarlic river, lived a poor boy named Patrick Oleson. When Patrick was only a year old, his father and mother got into a little difficulty, in which the mother was killed. The father, as soon as he regained his composure, saw that he had gone too far, and when the sheriff came and marched him off to jail, he frankly confessed that he had been perhaps too hasty.
Still, public opinion seemed turned against him; and in the following spring Patrick's father was unanimously chosen by a convention of six property-holders of the county to jump from a new pine platform into the sweet subsequently.
The affair was a success, and Patrick was left an orphan at the tender age of one and one-half years to wrestle for himself. His first impulse was to write humorous letters to the press, and thus become affluent; but the papers that were solvent returned his letters, and the papers that accepted them busted the subsequent autumn. So Patrick decided that as soon as he could complete a college course that would fit him for the position, he would either enter the ministry or become a railroad man.
While at college he read the story of an engineer who had saved the life of a little child by grabbing it from the cow-catcher while the train was going at lightning speed, and, as a result, was promoted to general passenger agent of the road.
So Patrick decided to be a railroad man and save some children from being squashed by the train, so that he could be promoted and get a big salary. He therefore studied to fit himself for the position to which he aspired, and after five years' hard study he graduated with high honors and a torpid liver.
He then sought out a good paying road that he thought he would eventually like to be president of, and applied for a position on it.
By waiting till the following spring he got a job braking extra, averaging $13 per month, till one day he screwed up a brake too tight and wore out a wheel on the caboose. After that he was called into the office of the superintendent, as Patrick supposed, to take the superintendent's place, perhaps; but the superintendent swore at him, and called him Flatwheel Oleson, and told him he had better hoe corn and smash potato-bugs for a livelihood.