A RANCHMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS 



afternoon we left the office to drive to Meadow Park 

 Farm. Mr. Armour stopped in front of the old Mid- 

 land Hotel, and told me to hold the team while he 

 went up to a meeting. When he came down he told 

 me the nature of the meeting, and added, "They 

 offered me a million dollars in stock for the use of 

 my name, but I told them that I did not want to 

 make a million dollars that way." 



I never knew Mr. Armour to be severe but once. 

 I shall not go into the details. Briefly, a man sitting 

 in the executive office, in charge of a department, 

 stole $45,000, and never handled a dollar. It was 

 of course a case of clever outside connivance, and 

 one of the things that led up to departmental book- 

 keeping. We all knew that the man was living 

 beyond his means, but that was accounted for 

 cleverly. It was during the days of open gambling; 

 there were faro lay-outs everywhere. Often after he 

 had got his "divvy" he would show, to enough people 

 to get the word about, a wad of big bills, and say, 

 "I hit them hard again." An accident led to our 

 identifying the thief, but instead of prosecuting him 

 Mr. Armour made him handle his desk for six 

 months, isolated, despised, a Benedict Arnold, an 

 outcast. Once he said to a former intimate friend, 

 "I would much rather have gone to the pen for ten 

 years." 



Mr. Armour loved horses and the country. A 

 byroad in the wood always brought from him, "Let's 



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