In Winter Quarters 



Did you ever read Will Allen White's 

 clever sketch entitled "The Home- 

 coming of Col. Hucks"? I think more 

 of it than of a lot of other stuff the 

 versatile and talented Emporia editor 

 has since erupted. Well, the colonel 

 was a Kansas worthy, a leading citizen 

 who had made good in the west, in 

 worldly ways at least, and finally went 

 back with his wife, as I remember it, 

 to revisit his early Ohio boyhood 

 haunts, only to meet with one blamed 

 disappointment after another in seek- 

 ing out various once familiar scenes. 

 Nothing was half as big as it used to- 

 be! Distances were infinitely less! 

 The whole business had somehow 

 shrunk and shriveled up until what 

 childhood's fancy had painted into 

 something almost sublime had sud- 

 denly become fairly ridiculous; so that 

 the Huckses went back to Kansas 

 more or less disgusted, and of course 

 better satisfied then ever with their 

 western environment. 

 [76] 



