Jump to Navigation

Bypaths of Kansas History - Summer 1976

(Vol. 42, No. 2), page 217
Transcribed by Tod Roberts; digitized with permission of
the Kansas Historical Society.

Kansas Historical Quarterly, Summer 1976

A Traffic Stopper in Wichita

From The Daily Beacon, Wichita, November 7, 1872.
A full bull train of twenty six wagons, outriders and all the extras and adjuncts passed from the depot up Douglas avenue, and over the long bridge for the Cheyenne agency this afternoon. It looked like old times, and made the avenue impassable for an hour.

History Repeats -- Notice the Date

From The Nationalist, Manhattan, January 9,1874.

It is stated that another attempt will soon be made to bring the metric system of measurement into general use in this country. If the real advantage of this system could but be fully appreciated by the business community, the proposed change would be earnestly advocated, and it is most desirable that the classes most interested should do all in their power to forward the undertaking.

A Deacon and His Wayward Calf

From the Leavenworth Daily Times, May 26, 1875.

Last Sunday, just as one of our straightest deacons was getting ready to shake the lines over his horses' backs and say, "ge dap," his wife happened to remember that the calf hadn't been fed. The deacon looked at his Sunday clothes and observed that he did not deem it incumbent upon him to suffer for the negligence of others; to which the deaconess replied that such language in the presence of the children, on a Sunday morning, and from a pillar of the church, was enough to shake one's belief in the professions that had been made by some one man she could name.

The deacon handed the lines to his oldest boy, and climbed over the wheel without saying a word. He went around to the front door and took the front door key from under the mat, came around to the door, and as he was trying to put the key in the hole the key slipped from his hand and fell down into the mud. Finally he got into the kitchen and started for the barnyard with his milk. He set the pail down on the ground and called to the calf, but the beast whisked his tail in the air and bellowed at him. Then he captured the animal and pulled it along by the ears and jammed its head into the pail, but the calf gave a spring, sending the milk in a cloud of spray over the deacon's shirt front. In trying to recapture the beast, the deacon dropped his hymnbook out of his pocket, and before he could rescue it the calf stepped both feet on it and tore the cover off. The deacon got mad. He took a hoop pole and belabored that calf. One end of the pole struck the shed and, bounding up, knocked the deacon's plug hat off. It rolled directly under the calf who set his foot through the tile, and then went tearing around the yard with his tail in the air and that hat fastened just above the knuckle joint. The deacon went into the house, and as he unbuckled his shirt-collar, he called out, "Maria, you go on to church, and if anybody asks after me tell them I stayed home to feed the calf!"