The only recollection I have of the breakfast menu was the two hard boiled eggs and a faint remembrance, as I was leaving the table, of a fruit picture on the wall tipping up and down. That was the first time I ever saw anything inanimate acting so. Mercy, the taste of that oil and the remembrance of it, mixing in a place the size of your fist! Think of that rip-roaring, sizzling tobacco flavored, ingredient, trying to slip one over on that kerosene and knock out those two hard-boiled, well matured, boarding-house eggs. I say in all candor, I don’t blame John D. for watering the oil. Water it more, John, it will be milder to take. I went through the oil belt in Indiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and all the rest, I visited all the stills, illicit, and otherwise of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Colorado; and as soon as brother Pat could get me to my room and my head out of the window I hoisted the hottest fluids and food stuffs ever contained in the stomach of man or beast. I have always felt sorry for those eggs on account of their age.
I must take a short glimpse here of a peculiar incident that transpired under my roof between two men of the cloth. One was a M. E. minister and the other a seven day advent. The advent had been staying in town for several weeks and I became fairly well acquainted with him and his estimable wife, and he asked me if they might have a few meetings at our home in the evenings, and I said certainly and he came. Both he and his wife were scholars, well cultured and refined and we enjoyed listening to their version of the scriptures. How the M. E. minister came to be there one evening is still a mystery to me, but I think some one of his parishioners must have told him that Satan had entered our home and he had better intervene and see if he couldn’t extricate us from the wary gentleman’s clutches.
The evening entertainment was progressing nicely and the advent man was in charge of the machinery, when suddenly the M. E. man took issue with him over his version of one of the scriptural passages and quick wit and repartee was fast and furious. The advent was the superior in scriptural knowledge and the way he got the other fellow in the meshes and so completely tangled him up is an event that can never be erased from my memory. The M. E. man was nonplussed, red of face and angry; and so ungentlemanly as to let all the fireworks in his dignified Sunday nature explode and told the cool, calm advent that teachings of his kind should be in hell. You may lay this excitement to anger, being worsted, or anything you like, but I think the gentleman he came to remove from our home entered him one hundred per cent strong. Why he was on his feet with his Methodist fists clenched, ready to fight, and if it hadn’t been for the soothing, pacifying utterances of his good wife saying, “John,” “John,” I don’t know what would have happened. The other fellow laughed at him and I really think if the worst had occurred he would have given the angry man a fuller meaning of the Bible and turned the other cheek.
I think if an Advent says Saturday is the Lord’s day and should be observed on the Sabbath, the Methodist says Sunday is the day, and some other denomination says Friday is the day, I’m willing to be convinced. It beats having the Fourth of July come on Saturday, and if I had enough money so I needn’t work I’d say let seven different denominations have seven different days, and no matter which home I observed I wouldn’t be left out shivering in an undershirt. Something peculiar about church denominations, all of them headed for the same place, but each one anxious to route you. One tells you they have the old travelled road, founded on the Bible, another a different way, founded on the Bible, and others another different way, also founded on the Bible. I conclude the best and surest way is to be a Christian and read the Bible, live it and let God show the way. Sunday churches or Saturday churches carry no guarantee that you’ll reach Heaven.
Before I invested in “Good-wills” and “Bonuses” and other losing investments, I would occasionally take my family for a little trip on the Los Angeles limited and rub against the aristocracy and the diamonds. Years before when I was a day laborer on the same road over which this elegant train glides, I thought to travel on such a goddess of beauty was a luxury only for wealth and culture, and a pleasure unequaled, but hope beats eternal in the human breast and as I had lived largely on hope for over thirty years, I finally said hope can go to blazes, the opportunity is here and why not embrace it.
Well, it is certainly a big taste of wealth and affluence to settle in cushions a foot deep with all the wrinkles eradicated for once in a lifetime by a well filled stomach of the choicest viands in the culinary art. And oh the lofty thoughts as you settle down in the deep upholstery and listen to the clicking of the rails as you speed away on this overland beauty. There is a peculiar feeling under your vest as you notice the well groomed man, the well groomed woman, the sparkle of the electric lights and the glitter of the diamonds. Elegance everywhere. The very height of ingenuity. Then when you enter the dining car with its rosewood finish, tastily decorated tables, superb linen, and cast your eye over the choice menu and have the black gentry all attention and ready to care for your smallest want, you may feel as I did, pretty classy company for a boy from Lodge Pole. Of course there are snubs here and there, you find them everywhere. They are in a class that is well known for nineteen hundred years. They took the leading part in the crucifixion of the Nazarene. We can’t exist without having them, and if you will notice in any walk of life, there is a pain for nearly every pleasure, with corns and bunions thrown in.
As a hunter I never received any distinction and am forced to admit as such I am an entire nonentity and failure. My father owned a rifle which was the only one of its kind in our community for years and years. Its early history I am unfamiliar with and never learned it. It was in his possession when I was born and I suppose it was the gun he carried on the hand car for protection when the Indians were numerous in the latter sixties. At some time it received a broken stock and ever after its being repaired it was known as old splice. For many years when the old year died and the new year was born, old splice spoke forth at its birth and its missile of death generally lodged in the tail of the railroad wind mill.
Old splice was the type of one hundred years ago, when people weren’t killed as quickly as today, the loading was slow and gave one chance to escape; I remember brother Pat used it to shoot a dog that he had tied up with a rope. He took steady aim, pulled the old fashioned hammer and fired. When the smoke cleared away the dog was running with the fullest capacity of its limbs. The ball had cut the rope.
I never shot old splice but once and I’ll always remember the incident. A chicken hawk had been tormenting the poultry for a long time and I got bold and reckless one day, grabbed old splice (some one had been kind enough to leave it loaded) and sallied forth bent on destruction. The hawk was soaring high in the air but didn’t seem to want to descend any. Old splice was supposed to carry half a mile and as I knew this was not the distance from the gun to the hawk, I concluded to test out old splice and see if the prowess of the old fellow had been exaggerated. I had heard some one say you must get down on one knee, as an attitude of respect, I presume, and hold the stock solidly and lovingly against the shoulder. I did both of these things and fired. I felt my head strike the ground so amazingly quick and hard that it confused and startled me. I knew I was committing no crime and couldn’t account for such harsh treatment. At first I thought the bird might have struck me in the face and, it coming from such a height, would cause a terrible compact when one body met another, but I abandoned this idea, as no hawk was anywhere above or below. Then I thought I might have torn some planet loose, but this was an asylum idea also. Then I thought some one may have overfed old splice and made him bilious. I afterwards learned this was true. The miscreant still lives.