"Next in the economic vista is the old Brisbin sod schoolhouse east of Walnut creek where a grange was organized. Here a lyceum was held through several winters in which the debates were strongly tinctured with the rising anti-monopoly sentiment of those hard times. George Michael and Charley Hunter, leaders of the boyish dare-deviltry of those days, were chosen as judges upon the debates in order to insure their good behavior, and they gravely decided for the negative or affirmative many deep discussions of doubtful themes.
"Beaver Crossing in the early days was remarkable for the great number of boys in its surrounding population, and I have observed in these later years when visiting there, that the custom of having boy babies in the family does not appear to have entirely gone out of fashion. That great swarm of restless boy population which gathered, sometimes two hundred strong, Saturday afternoons on the Common! What 'sleights of art and feats of strength' went round! What struggles of natural selection to secure a place upon the 'First Nine' of the baseball team! For years Beaver Crossing had the best baseball club in three or four counties, and some of her players won high laurels on distant diamonds.
"One custom which obtained in those frontier days seems to have been peculiar to the time, for I have not found it since in other frontier communities. It was the custom of 'calling off' the mail upon its arrival at the postoffice. The postmaster, old Tom Tisdale—a genuine facsimile of Petroleum V. Nasby—would dump the sacks of mail, brought overland on a buckboard, into a capacious box upon the counter of his store, then pick up piece by piece, and read the inscriptions thereon in a sonorous voice to the crowd, sometimes consisting of one or two hundred people. Each claimant would cry out 'Here!' when his name was called. Sometimes two-thirds of the mail was distributed in this way, saving a large amount of manual labor in pigeon-holing the same. Nasby had a happy and caustic freedom in commenting upon the mail during the performance, not always contemplated, I believe, by the United States postal regulations. A woman's handwriting upon a letter addressed to a young man was almost certain to receive some public notice from his sharp tongue, to the great enjoyment of the crowd and sometimes the visible annoyance of the young man. At one time he deliberately turned over a postal card written by a well-known young woman of Beaver Crossing who was away at school, and on observing that the message was written both horizontally and across, commented, 'From the holy mother, in Dutch.' If I should ever meet on the mystic other shore, which poets and philosophers have tried to picture for us, old Tom Tisdale, I would expect to see him with his spectacles pushed back from his nose, 'calling off' the mail to the assembled spirits, the while entertaining them with pungent personal epigrams.
"One startling picture arises from the past, framed as Browning writes 'in a sheet of flame'—the picture of the great prairie fire of October, 1871, which swept Seward county from south to north, leaving hardly a quarter section of continuous unburnt sod. A heavy wind, increasing to a hurricane, drove this fire down the West Blue valley. It jumped the Blue river in a dozen places as easily as a jack rabbit jumps a road. It left a great broad trail of cindered haystacks and smoking stables and houses. A neighbor of ours who was burnt out remarked that he had 'been through hell in one night,' and had 'no fear of the devil hereafter.'
"At the other end of the scale of temperature are recollections of the 'Great Storm' of April 13, 14, 15, 1873. There burst from a June atmosphere the worst blizzard in the history of the state. For three days it blew thick, freezing sleet, changing to snow so close and dense and dark that a man in a wagon vainly looked for the horses hitched to it through the storm. Men who were away from home lost their lives over the state. Stock was frozen to death. In sod houses, dugouts, and log cabins settlers huddled close about the hearth, burning enormous baskets of ten-cent corn to keep from freezing.
"In these later years of life, Fate has called me to make minute study of many historical periods and places. Yet my heart always turns to review the early scenes of settlement and civilization in Seward county with a peculiar thrill of personal emotion and special joy in the risen and rising fortunes of those who there built the foundations of a great commonwealth. No land can be dearer than the land of one's childhood and none can ever draw my thoughts further over plain or ocean than the happy valley upon West Blue whose waters spring spontaneously from beneath the soil to water her fortunate acres."
PIONEERING
By Grant Lee Shumway
On September 15, 1885, I crossed the Missouri river at Omaha, and came west through Lincoln. The state fair was in full blast but our party did not stop, as we were bound for Benkleman, Parks, and Haigler, Nebraska.