“I received the copy of the Wetmore Spectator, which you so kindly sent me. Thank you for it. I was interested in the story from Yugoslavia; and flattered to be even remotely connected with the incident by my friend John Bristow, who professes to think that if I wasn’t in St. Louis, I might be running a newspaper in Yugoslavia. . . . Just as in the political wars he mentioned, I was sometimes more friendly with the men I opposed than with the ones I favored. But the people liked it and it was then the accepted slogan to give the people the kind of news they wanted. . . . John was a good newspaper man and a good squirrel hunter, so we thought a little expert shooting might lend realism to the picture. But I wasn’t a good shot. I couldn’t even hit the imposing stone when it stood on the side against the wall. But I remember John could hit a penny when it laid on the floor at the leg of the imposing stone. So we depended upon John’s ability as a shooter to keep the enemy away. . . . Show this to John. A good many things happened in the Spectator office even after I quit, similar to the way they happen in Yugoslavia. He may remember some more.”
Well, yes—I do remember one more. Always one more. But first I want to say that Theodore verifies the point I made in the preceding article—that he could not even hit the leg of the imposing stone, in his gun-practice. To those who are not familiar with the mechanics of the print-shop, the imposing stone is a heavy slab of marble mounted on a stand about waist-high, on which the forms of the newspaper are made up.
When the Spectator was in its first year, I helped Theodore Wolfley carry out one of his “bright” ideas which gave him some sleepless nights. His sister Mary, still too young to carry on a flirtation with a grown man, had embarked on a whirlwind romance with a Central Branch railroad engineer. The heavy grade at the John Wolfley farmstead five miles west of Wetmore, made it possible for the engineer and the girl to exchange notes. And when they might desire a few moments time together, it was said, he would drop off at the crossing near her home, and then grab onto the caboose—and the fireman would take the long freight train into Goff.
Theodore told me that, as her older and wiser brother, he intended to break it up. He said it had got to a point when a talking to would do no good—and the girl was too big to spank. We printed a ten-line item in the Spectator, branding Mary’s Romeo as an all round bad character, even had him arrested and jailed for drunkenness—and credited the item to one of Atchison’s daily newspapers. After printing one copy for the Wolfley family perusal, I lifted the spurious item before running the regular edition.
Theodore commuted on horseback between farm and town at that time. He took the “doctored” paper home with him. He watched Mary read the item. He said she wrinkled up her nose, shook her head as if she meant to get even with someone. When he came back to the office the next day, he said, “I guess that will hold her.” But it didn’t.
On the following day Theodore discovered the item had been cut out of the Spectator—and he rightly suspicioned it had been turned over to Mr. Romeo. He came to the office in agitated confusion. He asked me, “What paper did we credit that darned item to?” He had maligned an Atchison man and credited the item to one of the three Atchison daily papers—the Champion, the Patriot, or the Globe—which made him liable to attack from two angles. But luck was with Wolfley. John Reynolds, the engineer, came back promptly with his daily exchange saying the item referred to another John Reynolds living in Atchison—and the romance went merrily on.
Theodore would have felt a lot easier had he known there actually was another John Reynolds living in Atchison. And though the second Mr. Reynolds had a shady record, he was never guilty of the things the item charged the engineer with. I have penned a line on this John N. Reynolds in another article. John A. Reynolds, the engineer, was really an honorable man, with high standing in Atchison. I came to know him well in later years.
I shall carry on from here — after this paragraph — without Mr. Wolfley. But I’m not forgetting the Romeo engineer. And I should say here that Mary’s romance terminated without hitting the rocks, and that Theodore never had any complaints from Atchison. And I might say further, as a last tribute to my old friend, that Theodore Wolfley went from here to Phoenix, Arizona, and became editor of the Daily Republican, owned by ex-Governor Wolfley, of Arizona, (no relation), where he played up Republican politics to his heart’s content. From there he went to the St. Joseph (Mo.) Daily Gazette, where I imagine he would have been a loyal Democrat. And from St. Joe he went to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat as Financial editor. While in St. Joe Theodore wrote me that he was holding open for me a place on the Gazette paying four and one-half times the ten dollar weekly salary I was getting here. That was considered “big money” then. But I had promised Curt and Polly Shuemaker that I would remain on the job here when they bought the Spectator from John Stowell. Curt Shuemaker was blind—lost his eyesight from close bookwork in the Morris store and as the first cashier of the Wetmore State Bank. I could not quit them cold—but I was trying to find them a reliable printer when Curt sickened and died suddenly, leaving The Spectator in need of an editor as well. The quickest way to help out Polly was for me to buy The Spectator—at my own price. Not an unfair price, however. When Theodore was back home a short time before he died, having just read my manuscript of the Green Campbell story, he proposed that we buy The Spectator from the Turrentines—just to show the people what we could do. From past experience, I knew he could have shown them plenty—and I was afraid he might insist on doing it.
Some years after Mary’s romance, I was walking past the depot in Wetmore with the girl who afterwards became my wife. Her home was on the south side of the tracks, near the watertank. The noon passenger train was at the tank. As we came abreast the engine the engineer hopped down from the cab, pulled off a leather gauntlet glove, and met the girl with a hearty handshake—and some hurried palaver. She introduced him as Mr. Reynolds.
But you know, passenger trains must move on time — and when alone with the girl, I said, “Let me see your hand.” She said, “Oh, you’d never get a speck of dirt from shaking hands with Johnny Reynolds; he’s really quite particular about keeping himself clean of engine grime.” I learned later that she had told the truth in this particular—but how the devil did it come she knew so much about him? I said, “I think I know something about him that you do not know.” Then I told her about his exchange of notes with the Wolfley girl.