196 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN 



Hard times overtook us all. He saw the Kan- 

 sas farmers suffering, despite their most strenuous 

 labors. The rewards of husbandry were hazardous 

 and inadequate. The usurer was abroad in the 

 land. Those who recognized the Colonel as a 

 worthy champion of the cause of all who toiled 

 early and late to create the harvest, went to him 

 as children to a kindly father. He was invited to 

 meet with and talk to them. He could not refuse; 

 and here was the beginning of the end of Linwood 

 Farm and all its bovine wonders. 



In the summer of 1892 we went together to 

 Great Britain, landing at Liverpool. Our very first 

 day in rural England drew from him after a consid- 

 erable silence the simple comment, "This makes 

 me sick!" I knew what he had worked out. The 

 settled, all-pervading air of comfort, the matchless 

 greenery of the well-kept fields, the fine old homes, 

 the ivy -covered walls, the beautiful roads, the 

 hawthorn hedges: the inheritances of the centuries 

 everything that appealed strongest to his senses 

 and temperament here unfolded in an apparently 

 endless panorama, and these people occupying this 

 Garden of Eden had been born into it all! Here 

 was a land where somebody else had done something. 

 The best years of his own life had been spent in 

 helping subdue a virgin wilderness. 



