A RANCHMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS 



among newspapermen, some of whom have filled, 

 or are filling, high places. I have, however, made 

 it a consistent part of my life never to look up men 

 who have grown great. William Allen White was 

 a cub reporter on The Kansas City Star in my 30's, 

 and I treasure in my scrapbook a generous review 

 by him of some work I did. George Horace Lori- 

 mer, the brilliant editor of The Saturday Evening 

 Post, was with the Chicago Armours while I was with 

 the Kansas City house. We were cordial friends. 

 The following lines by him have probably passed out 

 of his memory, but, after all, greatness is only a 

 discovery, and while I have been told that John Hay 

 was ashamed of his Pike County Ballads, it has never 

 seemed possible that the man who wrote Jim Bludso 

 or Little Breeches could possibly wish to disown them. 

 Mr. Lorimer may not feel the same way about his 

 verse, because while he rose to greatness in his book 

 The Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to His Son, 

 in which he has drawn a wonderful picture of the 

 late Philip D. Armour's sound basic business philos- 

 ophy, he may shy at being credited with doggerel. 

 We were getting out the Christmas edition of our 

 weekly price list. It was elaborately decorated with 

 holly, Christmas bells and steaming plum pudding, 

 with a New Year's poem (doggerel) from my pen. 

 The excuse for reproducing the three stanzas is to 

 permit a comparison of it with Mr. Lorimer's clever 

 parody: 



[78] 



