Resolved to Die in Deserted City.
Living only in the memory of a distant past, isolated from the rest of the world, yet living in a city of a thousand homes, sitting idly hour by hour at the front of a small saloon where twenty years ago prosperity and excitement were on every hand, Sam Bolger, former Topeka bartender, later an adventurer, gambler, and Colorado saloon owner, is residing in the deserted mining town of Gillette, Col.
The life of Sam Bolger reads like a romance, tinged with all the vicissitudes of life, livened by the carefree days when gold was more plentiful in Cripple Creek than to-day, shadowed by more sorrows than falls to the lot of the average man.
Several Topeka pioneers may remember him in the days of yore when he served drinks over the bar of a saloon on lower Kansas Avenue, before the amendment was put into effect which placed Kansas in the fore rank of dry States.
A newspaper man and party visited Gillette. They found the town deserted, except by one man, Sam Bolger. He occupied a dilapidated saloon, but had no customers.
An inquisitive nomad put the following question to the old relic:
"Where are the rest of the voters?"
The faded old man did not answer at first, but then he replied: "They are everywhere but here."
He then relapsed into silence, but another Kansan—or, rather, he was a Kansas Cityan—spied a table and a few suspicious-looking bottles within the place. He called the ancient gentleman and together they entered the poorly kept saloon. (Film here deleted by censor.) When the old man came out, some ten minutes later, he was in a more talkative mood.
"I hear that you fellows are from Kansas," he said, "but you don’t know Kansas as I knew it. The men who were young then are now in their dotage. When I lived in Topeka, it was a wide-open town, and it was my business to furnish beer and whiskies to its progressive citizens."