A Long Ago Kansas Christmas. 



My finances were so limited in early life that, when I com- 

 pleted my professional studies and located in the little town of 

 C , in northeastern Iowa, I was badly in debt and with- 

 out money. It took hard work and close application to meet 

 these conditions, and my third year in practice found me begin- 

 ning a hard winter with a severe cold and a fair prospect of 

 becoming an all-winter member of the "Shut-in Club." Call- 

 ing my physician for advice, he delivered himself thus : "Lay 

 down your instruments, close up the office, pack up your hunt- 

 ing togs and gun, and hustle yourself off to a milder climate 

 where there is a brighter altitude and more sunshine. Take 

 plenty of time to make the journey, and when you reach your 

 destination, tramp and hunt anything to saturate yourself 

 with sunshine and keep your lungs inflated with pure air. Fol- 

 low my advice and you will derive more benefit from it than 

 from all the medicine I could give you." 



No one realized better than I what it cost him to make this 

 concluding admission ; besides, if I followed his advice, it would 

 considerably reduce the denomination of his semi-annual bill 

 for services rendered, which had never yet failed to put in an 

 appearance. 



I had already begun to waver when the first hard storm of 

 the season drove down from the north and clutched everything 

 in its icy embrace. That settled it ! I would go, though really 

 I could not afford to; but then, neither could I afford not to. 

 Already, in imagination, I could hear the report of my gun, see 

 the rigid point of the setter, and feel the free winds of heaven 

 sweeping across the broad prairie. After exchanging letters 

 with friends in one of the western counties of Kansas, my plans 

 were arranged, and two weeks later I waved farewell to my 

 friends and was off on my first outing beyond the Mis- 

 souri. The next morning when I changed cars at Atchison there 

 were a few feathery flakes of snow in the air, but none of that 

 wintry blast which I had left behind me the day before in Iowa. 

 For several hours our train followed the winding of the stream 



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