Treading the narrow way

by Robert Emmett Barrett

I desire to say to you gentlemen that during my lifetime I have been intimately acquainted with labor in its most aggressive form. I know what it is to stand between two shining bands of steel under a scorching July sun. I know what it is to stack hay under a sultry and oppressive heat. I know the loneliness and privations that comes to one who has tended stock in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. I fully realize that these different pursuits require grit and determination, they are the hardest kind of labors, but I can say to you in all candor that I have never worked harder in my life than in the past two years endeavoring to serve the citizens of this county in the capacity of clerk.

If I have been competent, if I have been faithful, if I have done my duty, that is not for me to decide. You are the judges of these conditions, if you think I have, then I ask for your support and influence. You are a body of men from all parts of this county; if each one of you will work for the best interests of the party I see no reason why we should not be successful at the polls. The campaign this year is short; I wish to say for myself that I will not be able to get around much. The duties of my office for the past six weeks have been very strenuous and will continue so to be for some time to come. The state board of equalization were late in sending their report and not only being late, but were unkind, and raised the valuation on several of our taxable properties and this makes extra work for the clerk, so I trust you will be like the turkey in the tall tree and keep one eye open for the boy from Lodge Pole.

There has happened in my short career as an American citizen a good many things that I have felt elated over and proud of. I am proud that I am an American citizen, born under the stars and stripes and belong to a nation second to none. I am proud I was born in a state whose brow is bathed by the mighty Missouri and upon whose bosom flourishes the most productive crop of the union. But if there is one thing that I am prouder of more than any other, it is the fact that I belong to a party whose motto is principle and good government, and whose loftiest aim has always been to make America the ideal nation of the world. I thank you.

I will here relate an incident that happened when I first encountered experience in her knee breeches, I have termed it a fighting, explosive nauseating cough remedy. I would prefer calling it an egg nogg; but there is one extra ingredient that disfranchises the egg and in a peculiar way leaves the nogg there in a somewhat embarrassing condition.

When I was a youth, I had some peculiar traits in my makeup. My main instruction was received from that old professor, experience, and day by day I gained some valuable knowledge in the school of hard knocks. Being of a peculiar turn of mind I had implicit truth and confidence in all mankind, and on account of this trait I have often met with misplaced confidence.

For instance, the “Bonuses” and “Good Wills” heretofore related. I had contracted a bad cold of tenacious irritability down near the little hamlet of Paxton, Nebraska, while performing the menial labor of an every day workman on the renowned line of the Union Pacific. The work being accomplished was known as bucking steel. Through climatic conditions of contraction and expansion the rails on one side had gained from nine to twelve feet over the rails in the other side. The side that was ahead was being pulled back to the point opposite the other by a locomotive attached to a large cable. Some said this strategic work swelled the premium of the water soaked stock; but this contention is left to philosophers and those who study economic problems, as to whether or not the corporation was ahead rails at Omaha or short at Ogden.

The days were exceedingly warm, it being in the autumn of the year. I lost more perspiration than was due me and along toward evening, when old sol was getting ready to retire and also largely due to a scant wardrobe, a chilliness would steal over my spare physique. The ride home from the work in the evening, on flat cars, at a hurried speed, caused the night air to condense in the locality of the throat. Nature not doing her part, I tried to assist her in removing the obstruction and, as soon as the speed of the train would allow, I shot from the car in a mad race for the boarding house. Being sure footed and fleet, I was generally first at the wash basin, erasing from my countenance Nebraska’s productive soil and leaving what the water didn’t loosen on the old fashioned long rolling boarding house towel. These repeated conditions day after day commenced to tell and the slight cold became a hacking cough that embraced more forcibly than a Dutch lassie reared on eastern corn.

After the work was completed, the men were returned to the various localities. Upon arriving safely at my destination, I went to the home physician. “Doc” when not incarcerated in the county bastile for dispensing a compound familiarly known as whiskey but better known to home residents as hades corked up in a bottle, prescribed, from his oft water stock. (I pause for a scalding sensation felt on my cheeks.) Poor Old “Doc” is sleeping beneath the sod.

Constant concoctions bringing no relief, I was at last listening to a well meant prescription from my co-laborer Dick. He said his remedy would give unwavering satisfaction to ailments like mine. I don’t think his remedy would stand the pure food law test; but when you get to clutching you’ll clutch anything. So I listened to the unlearned pharmacist and keenly assented and he started to compound two well known ingredients in equal parts. One ingredient was controlled by that magnetic dollar chaser, John D., and the other was controlled by nobody, it did the controling, i. e., oil and whiskey. I’d cover up this last ingredient and give it a better concealed classical standing but ignorance is bliss and there you are. This carefully prepared drink, my friend said, should be taken five minutes before breakfast. So according to directions I hoisted the tin cup and down went the fluids. Just enough oil in it to make it slip quick, and you had it before you really knew it.

It is now twenty-three years since I swallowed that conglomeration and I can’t hardly pass a home one-gallon kerosene can full or empty without a keen desire to kick the bottom out of it, but you have to be careful with other people’s property, whether it’s mortgaged or not. No matter how keen or fertile your imagination may be you can’t realize a dose of this character unless you taste it. Take the minutest equal parts of each, mix them, drink them and be convinced. Was I sick? Of all the great guns of all our wars, Civil or uncivil, I will take my oath before any judge of common jurisdiction, sitting as a court of record and say I WAS.