I think "Roughing It" was written about 1851.
If you knew Senator Huskey as I do, you would agree with me that the Senator is indeed Huskey by name and "husky" by nature. A more complete parcel of huskiness you never did see, nor a jollier, more cordial and better hearted could you ever wish to meet, for he has never allowed the musty parchment to dry up the finer faculties of his sentiments, and he can appreciate a beautiful sunset, a fine verse, and in fact all Nature's beauties, and yet be the big man and the great lawyer he is.
Then too, the Senator is an enthusiastic sportsman and plays a splendid game of hand-ball. I have known him, for hours on end, to pound at the ball at the Y.M.C.A. as if his very life depended upon whether he had hit it a hundred or a thousand times in an afternoon; as if he would be shot at sunrise if he fell below the mark. But in college days, his strength ran to his feet. He was known as a powerful kicker, and woe betide the man who would try and act as a buffer between his feet and the ball.
And now let me tell you about the Senator's early life. He started his career on the farm, for his father was a school teacher, and you will agree that—a family of fourteen is a rather expensive kind of brood to rear. And so, some of those fourteen chicks had to hustle and fence for themselves as soon as they could. Among the little Huskeys was Walter. It is thus he graphically describes some of his reminiscences:
"I was a cracker jack at cutting corn. Father and brothers could beat me at husking, but somehow or other I was good at cutting. And some days I could cut as high as twenty-six shock in a half day. Finally I had accumulated a little fund and decided to brace myself for a talk with the college professor in charge. I was the greenest thing you ever saw, and they called me 'Lengthy,' for at that time I weighed only one hundred and thirty pounds."
The title of "Senator" has since done its historical duty, for the once "bony laddie" now turns the scales at 250 pounds…..
After that, the college professor paid young Huskey's parents a surprise visit, as a result of which we find the boy at work at a preparatory course in the Wesleyan University, Kansas. Within two years, through assiduous perseverance and keen enthusiasm for his work, he was able to teach in the country districts. For a decade he taught the younger generations how to shoot, and thus eked out a fairly moderate living, for the pay was not staggering by any means, nor was it like Huskey to forget the folks at home.
In La Porte, Texas, whither by this time he had wandered, they offered him the principalship of the High School. "They gave me," I heard him say one day, "one hundred dollars a month, and I thought it was the biggest salary in the world."
[Illustration: Senator H. Walter Huskey]
Then he realized that it was almost impossible to convert a mint of knowledge into a mint of money, even as a principal, so he struck out vigorously for law, took a special course at Stanford University and received second highest honors. Shortly after he landed in the "big little city" of Reno and entered into partnership with Charles R. Lewers, who had strangely enough been His professor at Stanford University and who evidently held his erstwhile pupil in very high esteem, in thus throwing in his lot with him.