The Gentleman from Everywhere

by James Henry Foss

These vast solitudes of forests are very impressive and solemn as the day of judgment; giant fir-trees, pines and spruces, beautifully clothed in perpetual green even to the lower dead limbs which nature has covered with a verdure of moss—like our dead hopes, blasted by the fires of adversity but made radiant by the fore-gleams of immortality. There the bright mistletoe is suspended from dead tree-tops, like beauteous crowns adorning the heads of those who have died rather than surrender to the low and base; there deep canyons, brilliant with the diamonds made by the sun from the scintillating drops from dashing torrents—so from the unseen heights come the dews of heaven to refresh those who walk by faith and not by sight "looking not at the things seen which are temporal, but at the things not seen which are eternal."

Here comes a dense white cloud of snow through the air, covering our train with a pearly shroud, through the rifts of which, far below, we have glimpses of lovely vales and white ranch-houses, smiling up at us, above the clouds.

Dearly beloved—all seems to say it becometh us, not to sorrow for the dead hopes, broken promises, and bitter disappointments of this mortal life, remembering that this is not our home, that we tarry here for a few fleeting days, that our true home is with the good beyond the infinite azure of the heavens, where dear ones are Waiting to welcome us to the endless rest and peace awaiting all who fight the good fight, and who keep themselves unspotted from the world.

At times, while the train was dashing along over the seemingly interminable plains, green and productive during the rainy season, but now parched and arid by the terrible heat, we were almost suffocated by the dense dust clouds, and well-nigh withered by the winds which seem to come from the very jaws of Dante's Inferno; then the shifting young cyclone would suddenly envelop us with chilling snows from Shasta, and so we oscillated like pendulums 'twixt torrid heats and arctic colds.

At last, almost dazed by the unspeakable, lightning-like, climatic transformations, the great iron steeds brought us to Portland, the metropolis of the great state of Oregon. Here, as in many places on the Pacific coast, people should be web-footed during the rainy season to escape the drowning, and iron clad during the dry season to escape the merciless peltings of the clouds of shot-like dust. The dampness in this valley, hemmed in by the now dripping, then brook covered mountains, is far from pleasant, and covers many of the buildings with unsightly mosses. In Washington and Oregon those who survive the climatic trials are a strong, energetic race, rapidly building up powerful empires in the great aggregation of states of our grandest nation the world has ever known.

The broad-minded, generous-hearted people of this great far west, make no distinctions as to sex in apportioning their salaries for school work, and this, coupled with their numerous co-educational universities and normal schools, has given them an army of lady teachers and superintendents unequaled elsewhere in the world.

The county superintendents of schools are elected by the popular vote, and the women take to the stump-speaking and the usual kissing of voters' babies as naturally as ducks take to the water. Result,—the ladies secure the political plums, and the men are rapidly being driven to manual labor, their natural sphere of action, though not without vigorous kicking against the inevitable. These ex-men-superintendents buttonhole you at every turn, reciting the outrages perpetrated upon them by their successful women competitors.

At an election in a California town, one of these men sufferers, mistaking me for a voter, took me by a button of my coat, and poured forth a tale of woe so long that, unable to endure it longer, I cut off the button and fled. He did not notice my departure, and two hours later, there he was holding on to the button, all alone, gesticulating frantically, and beseeching me to vote for him to save his wife and ten children from starvation. For aught I know, he has not missed me to this day; but is still sounding forth his wild appeals.

Should I describe fully all the wonderful scenes beheld by me in this wonderland, I should exhaust time and trench upon eternity. Suffice it to state that I returned to 'Frisco, fought a successful dictionary battle there, formed the acquaintance of many distinguished men, among them the great Irving Scott, who built the famous battleship Oregon. He was president of the city school-board, head of the vast Union Iron Works, and besides performing many herculean labors, was stumping the state nightly in favor of the election of William McKinley to the presidency of the United States.

I was fairly driven from this city by the ferocious fleas, which seemed to render life almost unendurable in hovel and palace. I could get no rest day or night in many parts of the state, on account of the savage attacks of these unspeakable, insatiate biters, more terrible than an army with Gatling guns.