"Let me see. Samp was born, as he says, December 6, 1840, in Wisconsin, and came out to Kansas right after the war closed. He was going to college up there, and at the second call for troops he led the whole senior class into forming a company, and enlisted before graduation and fought from that time on till the close of the war. He was a captain, I think, but you never heard him called that. When he came here he'd been admitted to the bar and was a good lawyer—a mighty good lawyer for that time—and had more business 'n a bird pup with a gum-shoe. He was just a boy then, and, like all boys, he enjoyed a good time. He drank more or less in the army—they all did 's far as that goes—but he kept it up in a desultory way after he came here, as a sort of accessory to his main business of life, which was being a good fellow.
"And he was a good fellow—an awful good fellow. We were all young then; there wasn't an old man on the town-site as I remember it. We use to load up the whole bunch and go hunting—closing up the stores and taking the girls along—and did not show up till midnight. Samp would always have a little something to take under his buggy-seat, and we would wet up and sing coming home, with the beds of the spring-wagons so full of prairie chickens and quail that they jolted out at every rut. Samp would always lead the singing—being just a mite more lubricated than the rest of us, and the girls thought he was all hunkey dorey—as they used to say.
"He made a lot of money and blew it in"
"He made a lot of money and blew it in at Jim Thomas's saloon, buying drinks, playing stud poker, betting on quarter horses, and lending it out to fellows who helped him forget they'd borrowed it. And—say in two or three years, after the chicken-hunting set had married off, and begun in a way to settle down—Samp took up with the next set coming on; he married and got the prettiest girl in town. We always thought that he married only because he wanted to be a good fellow and did not wish to be impolite to the girl he'd paired off with in the first crowd. Still he didn't stay home nights, and once or twice a year—say, election or Fourth of July—he and a lot of other young fellows would go out and tip over all the board sidewalks in town, and paint funny signs on the store buildings and stack beer bottles on the preacher's front porch, and raise Ned generally. And the fellows of his age, who owned the stores and were in nights, would say to Samp when they saw him coming down about noon the next day:
"'Go it when you're young Samp, for when you're old you can't.' And he would wink at 'em, give 'em ten dollars apiece for their damages and jolly his way down the street to his office.
"Now, you mustn't get the idea that Samp was the town drunkard, for he never was. He was just a good fellow. When the second set of young fellows outgrew him and settled down, he picked up with the third, and his wife's brown alpaca began to be noticed more or less among the women. But Samp's practice didn't seem to fall off—it only changed. He didn't have so much real estate lawing and got more criminal practice. Gradually he became a criminal lawyer, and his fame for wit and eloquence extended over all the State. When a cowpuncher got in trouble his folks in the East always gave Samp a big fee to get the boy out, and he did it. When he went to any other county-seat besides our own to try a case, the fellows—and you know who the fellows are in a town—the fellows knew that while Samp was in town there would be something going on with 'fireworks in the evening.' For he was a great fellow for a good time, and the dining-room girls at the hotel used to giggle in the kitchen for a week after he was gone at the awful things he would say to 'em. He knew more girls by their first names than a drummer."