A RANCHMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS 



show in some of the old brick buildings. The Yankee 

 plan had been to fight Price just hard enough to let 

 him advance slowly until he reached a big bend in 

 the Missouri River between Kansas City and my 

 birthplace, Leavenworth, Kans., where a trap had 

 been laid. I recall the panic into which Leaven- 

 worth was thrown. My earliest vivid recollection 

 is of my mother packing up to flee, and putting 

 in some of my little playthings. Our town was 

 entrenched and the home guard stood duty every 

 night. The Wornall road between Westport, the 

 country club and Meadow Park was the scene of the 

 fight, and a Kansas regiment overdid the thing, 

 spoiling the trap by fighting Price so hard that he 

 turned back. The old Wornall homestead, built of 

 brick in the old-fashioned solid way, still stands about 

 a quarter of a mile towards town from Meadow 

 Park. It became the hospital for both sides under a 

 primitive iRed Cross. 



I recall the lines by the late Senator John James 

 Ingalls on grass: "Fields trampled with battle, sat- 

 urated with blood, torn with the ruts of cannon, 

 grow green again with grass, and carnage is 

 forgotten." 



Meadow Park carried scars over which grass, 

 "nature's benediction," had been spread. One night 

 a neighbor came to the farm, inviting us to a chicken 

 fry, given for the benefit of a Confederate Monu- 

 ment Fund. As we chatted he remarked, "This 



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