All that was left to them were a team of horses and a yoke of oxen, and they used these to haul meal and other provisions from Wichita out to the dwellers on the frontier.
In 1880, Hemenway returned to Boonville as poor as he was when he set out three years before. He managed to get a job in a livery stable caring for horses; then he became a shipper in a tobacco factory. He also found time to begin the study of law, and in this he was assisted by Judge George Rhinehard, a jurist of local repute.
While he was still studying law, the Republicans of his district nominated him to the office of public prosecutor. This was not done because they thought Hemenway was specially fitted for the office, but because the district was so overwhelmingly Democratic that there seemed to be no chance of his election. His name was put on just to fill out the ticket.
"You can't get it," the campaign manager told him. "So you needn't go to any bother. Some time, maybe, you'll get the nomination to something within reach."
Hemenway refused to be a dummy, and as long as he was on the ticket he thought it best to put up a fight, and he made such a stiff canvass that he not only won out, but he carried a part of his ticket into office with him. Then when he was in office he acquitted himself so well that he was reelected, and in 1895 he was elected to Congress.
Hemenway made his greatest reputation as head of the Appropriations Committee, and it was due to him that heads of departments were prevented from exceeding their appropriations. They had been in the habit of asking for a certain sum, and, when it was not granted, going ahead as though it had been, exceeding their allowance and then calling on Congress to make up the deficit. The practise had grown to dangerous limits, and Hemenway forcibly put a stop to it.
In 1905 he was elected to the Senate, and he has already begun to make himself felt in that body as a man of ability and forcefulness.
MADE TRAVEL LUXURIOUS.
Discomfort of Old-Time Railroad During
a Night Ride Gave Young Inventor
Idea for Sleeping-Cars.
George Mortimer Pullman, inventor of the Pullman car, was born on a farm in Chautauqua County, New York, in 1831. The family was poor, and when George was fourteen years old his mother became ill, and he was forced to leave school and go to work in a country store. He stayed there three years, and was then apprenticed to his brother in Albion, New York, to learn the cabinet-making business.