Feb. 21, I903.1i 
FOREST AND STREAM 
147 
to make America a world power? Does he realize how 
many thousands of men have profitable employment and 
maintain happy homes because of the millionaires? 
The men who became millionaires did not attain that 
dreadful state by idly railing at those who possessed a 
greater quantity of this world's goods than themselves. 
"We Americans" said to them and all others, "You 
are in a land of liberty. You are free to become million- 
aires if you have the talent, the industry^ and the good 
fortune to attain that state of prosperity." 
Your millionairehood is a product of Americanism. 
The true Americans do not say : "We will accept all the 
vast benefits which you must necessarily confer on us in 
your long struggle to become millionaires ; but after you 
reach that stage we will revile you as im- American, and 
despoil you if we safely can." 
Is not the following regrettable, coming as it does from 
a writer so well known, so esteemed and almost always 
so just? 
" 'The public be d d' is evidently their motto, and 
they seem to delight in depriving others of everything in 
the way of recreation. The people of North Hempstead 
prove that they have too much self respect and common 
sense to place themselves in the position of serfs for the 
paltry sum of $So,ooo, knowing that if the New York 
man could get control of the lake no man would dare to 
catch a fish, or sail a boat, or even take a bath in its 
waters. They are wise in holding it, for as the million- 
aires improve their suburban property their own will be 
increased in value greatly." 
How does he know that $50,000 is a paltry sum for the 
property in question? In what way would the people be 
in the position of serfs if the little lake was sold ? Hold- 
ing property that it may increase in value by the labors of 
others was what the late Henry George denounced as a 
gross injustice, and he termed such gain "the unearned 
increment." 
But suppose the said suburban property should increase 
in value till all the different owners became millionaires, 
what would Didymus do with the monster product of his 
own advice? Millionaires have been made in that very 
manner. Is a millionaire a public enemy? 
I do not think that "the public be d d" is the mil- 
lionaire's motto, and furthermore, I question the right 
and the justice of Didymus in assuming to force that 
motto upon them. He assumes to speak for "we Ameri- 
cans" and also for the millionaires who have inferentially 
.become un-American; it is, in most issues, considered 
unfair to be judge, jury, plaintiff and defendant. Is it not 
so? 
Now, referring to the sale of the lake in question, the 
people of North Hempstead were not coy frorn any mo- 
tive of self-respect or common sense; they simply had 
something to sell and wanted more money for it than was 
offered. It was, in its essentials, a matter of buying and 
selling. It was not a matter of Americanism at all. 
Those who objected to the sale of it on the ground that 
if it became private property they could not fish in it 
or sail a boat on it, or bathe in it free of cost, are the 
people who are to be found everywhere; the people who 
^complain loudly because they cannot get something for 
nothing. . 
There are some of "we Americans" who think they have 
a right to camp in Didymus's front yard, to sleep in his 
guests' chamber uninvited, to dig his potatoes and to reap 
his corn, all for their own behoof; but I dare say that, 
if one of -we-Americans were to approach Didymus, even 
in the name of "we Americans," and tell him that, by 
owning any land at all he, Didymus, was in a way coun- 
tenancing and abetting a "lordly landed aristocracy," and 
that he, Didymus, should immediately strip himself of his 
belongings and be a socialist, or otherwise to be in con- 
tempt of "we Americans," there would be something hap- 
pening. He, first of all, would ask how one American 
was "we Americans." 
I emphatically deny that the motto of the millionaires 
is even apparently as set forth by Didymus. Many of 
them have conferred great public benefits. Many are 
public spirited. Many are good men. They give occupa- 
tion to thousands of other men. They do not rail at their 
neighbors. 
Many men who are not millionaires confer no public 
benefit whatever, even to the value of tlieir mite. 
It is true that the millionaires have bought up vast 
areas for preserves ; it is equally true that much of those 
vast areas were of the rugged, barren wilderness, utterly 
worthless and unproductive, of no value to their owners 
if that direful millionaire had not happened along, fancied 
them, and, becoming their owner, paid the prices of good 
land for them. Are the millionaires under obligations to 
outsiders for it? 
That every Tom, Dick and Harry cannot then fish and 
shoot on preserved private lands gratis is no more per- 
tinent to the question than that the home now owned or 
occupied by Didymus does not afford free domicile to 
every Tom, Dick and Harry who drifts aimlessly in; and 
yet the land was free to all once when it was the property 
of the lordly Indian aristocrat. The Indian was selfish. 
I suppose that Didymus owns some guns and fishing 
tackle which he uses for pleasure. If some idler came 
along and rebuked him for investing in property solely 
for purposes of pleasure, he would sharply*tell the idler 
the whole matter was none of his business, or some 
similar phrase. The millionaire has equal rights. 
I think Didymus will concede that his view is a danger- 
ous doctrine to advance, namely, that the fellow who has 
more land and money than we have is a bad citizen, un- 
American, a lordly landed aristocrat, or what you please 
— for then the other fellow, who has less than we have, 
may oust us from our belongings on precisely the same 
plea and justify himself therefor from our own teachings. 
Touchin' on and appertainin' to the matter of a deer 
park, inclosed by an eastern man, he says "He has to be 
always on his guard, but some of his enemies say they are 
bound to 'git him' some day." Anarchy, bad anarchy 1 
Do "we Americans" approve of that? There is an im- 
plied threat of murder in the foregoing. And Didymus 
does no't raise his voice in denunciation against the malice 
or the murderous threat. 
I, as one of "we Americans," know very well what I 
would do with some of the eastern man's enemies who 
succeeded "to 'git him' '_' if I was on their j ury. I thank 
this great American nation that the Americans have good 
laws governing such cases, and know what to do with 
men who commit cowardly murder or wanton mischief- 
Isolated instances of malice or crime may succeed be- 
times, but only betimes, for the great progress in com- 
mon sense, law and order and general goodness is con- 
stant, and life and property are more secure with the 
passing of the months and the years. 
The great American nation was not built up by the 
anarchist, the murmurers, the obstructionists, the idle, 
the ones who seek to reap the fruits of others' labors or to 
destroy what others build; those who denounce because, 
forsooth, the world's institutions in fact do not chime with 
their ideas in vacuo. 
As to millionaires pretending to be Christians, I main- 
tain that the matter in this connection is irrelevant. There 
are some poor men who are religious, and yet I wouldn't 
care to take their notes of hand without some million- 
aire's indorsement. Didymus might take a similar pre- 
caution under similar circumstances. It is not nice to 
pose in a holier-than-thou attitude concerning million- 
aires. The needle and camel matter is one on which 
many excellent people take long chances. And the Golden 
Rule was not for millionaires alone. 
In conclusion I will say I am not a millionaire. I would 
feel rich if I possessed a few hundred dollars in cash. My 
views therefore are miprejudiced. But I recognize that 
the road is as free and clear for me to become a million- 
aire as it is and has been for others, and if I have not the 
talent, self-denial and industry necessary to become one, 
I should at least have the good grace to be passive if I 
envy those who have succeeded. 
The matter of what constitutes wealth is relative, not 
absolute. Everj'- cross roads, village, town and city has 
its wealthy class and poor class, its wealthie^it man and 
poorest man. The wealthy Indian had more horses than 
his horseless neighbor. It is relative everywhere. 
If Didymus and 1 were living among the Bushmen of 
Australia, we, relatively, would be offensively wealthy. 
We would be paraded as haughty upstarts, purse-proud, 
and a menace to Bushmen society. On the other hand, 
Didjmius and I would complacentlj' view the Bushmen 
from our pedestal of wealth and charitably excuse them 
because of their excess of human nature, unless some one 
of them should address us as "we Bushmen" who used to 
pity us downtrodden Americans unasked. Chas. Day. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST* 
The Dog and the Nickel. 
S.\^f Antonio, Tex., Jan. 29. — This morning as a 
friend and I were walking down one of the main streets 
of, the city, we noticed a dog, a large, Doric, massive 
sort of dog, which might have been called a pointer 
had it not seemed to be so much something else, walk- 
ing gravely and sedately down the center of the side- 
walk. My friend accosted the old fellow, who serious- 
ly stopped and allowed himself to be patted on the 
head, retaining meanwhile all his gravity of counte- 
nance. The dog then moved on, stopping to pass the 
time of day with others along the street who seemed 
to know him. "He's going after his breakfast," said 
my friend. "He has a nickel in his mouth, and if you 
will watch him you will see him go into that butcher 
shop on the corner and buy five cents' worth of break- 
fast food of his own choosing." We turned to watch 
him, and sure enough, he turned into the shop, where, 
I presume, he got his breakfast according to schedule. 
They tell me this is one of the features on that part 
of the street every morning. 
There seems something about Texas soil which tends 
toward the production of large pointer dogs. At least 
the largest pointers I ever saw w^ere in this vicinity. 
For instance, there was Col. Guessaz's pointer Gess, 
which we used to hunt with down here five years ago. I 
think Gess weighed fully as much as a yearling steer, 
and his foot dented the earth like the tread of a mam- 
moth. His owner once sent Gess to retrieve a jack- 
snipe, which apparently was done at least in regard to 
the initial stages of the operation, though when the 
dog came in there was no visible token of any exist- 
ing jacksnipe. "He's swallowed the bird," said one of 
the party, which statement was indignantly denied by 
Guessaz. "Here's j^our jacksnipe," said the latter, and 
sure enough, as he opened Gess' mouth, there lay the 
bird within, entirely unharmed, although not even the 
tip of a wing or leg had been visible. I think our 
friendly dog this morning could almost have dupli- 
cated this feat, and surely he could have rivalled the 
street car conductor and handed out two dollars in 
change, if he had been given the chance. 
So Different. 
It is very pleasant here in old Santone, so pleasant 
and so different that one does not feel like hustling 
back to the dirt and cold and confusion of the North. 
These long, low, quiet curves of the valley of the San 
Antonio River, the high, sun-reached ridges which 
slope away from it, the gentle eminences, barely in- 
dented with wide curves, which mark the distant line 
of the horizon, are all so soft and eas}-- and mild, so 
much in keeping with the mellow, golden light and the 
brooding warmth 01 the kindly air. It seems a coun- 
try of peace and quiet, as indeed it is to-day. Yet once 
it was the fiercest and most turbulent of lands, from the 
time the Spaniards first set the "Tndios reducidos" -^to 
work at building these endless serpentine ditches which 
wind for miles along the countryside, lined ijow with 
pecan trees thicker than a man's bodv. After the 
Spaniards had come the Indians fought them, from the 
Arkansas to the Sierra Madres ; and then . came the 
Americanos and fought both Indians and Spaniards, 
and made the land still redder with human blood. 
Never was a more warlike land than this which looks 
so sleepy now, never a soil that drank braver blood. 
The battered walls of the Alamo, defaced with scores 
of vandal's names, misused, unappreciated, sacred but 
so long defamed, what a hero story is theirs, here in 
this lazy sunlight! And after the heroes and the day 
of restless, individual man, came the time of "law and 
order," and the day of the "bad man," lapping well 
on to the present time. I saw a well-dressed and 
pleasant gentleman here the other day on the street 
talking with a smaller comrade. "Those two men 
killed Ben Thorapson," said my companion. They 
did so because Ben Thompson, celebrated bad man, 
had served notice by telegraph that he was coming 
down to do a little personal killing on his own ac- 
count. ■ The story of how he and his friend King 
Fisher were killed in their little theater party here 
that night, by these certain citizens of sleepy old San- 
tone, is too well known to need repetition. 
You would not guess of violence to look at these 
hazy hills trembling in the warm sunlight, to feel the 
breath of the gentle airs which move so slowly and 
kindly across the face of the world, yet it is a bloody, 
fierce, volcanic little valley, this of the crooked San 
Antonio River. It is full of history, every foot of it, 
full of big associations, and full of big possibilities as 
well. It is the land of America to-day, and the next 
generation will see its final conquest, when the cactus 
is gone and the peach trees line the slopes, instead 
of the tortured mesquite and the gnarled pecan. 
Never was a more anguished tree growth on earth 
than this of lower Texas. The shapes are always those 
of torture. It is the soul of the land crying out, the 
dumb language of the soil begging for the one boon 
of nature, water! All this land seems underlaid with 
water, too, as many artesian wells show more and 
more. Put water on this soil and it no longer cries 
out, its tree growth no longer exclaims in agony. The 
productive quality of this soil, when once _ it has the 
water upon it, is wonderful. A man of this town, at 
the edge of the corporation limits, has sunk one ar- 
tesian well, which flows a vast stream of pure bluish- 
colored water. He has built a couple of big tanks, and 
has changed 250 acres of cactus into 250 acres of gar- 
den. He rents it at $23 per acre, and it cost him 
less than Illinois farm lands which bring $3 an acre. 
More and more men are sinking artesian wells at dif- 
ferent points here and there, and a great many men 
are planting rice under the ditch system in eastern 
Texas. I notice a tremendous change in the landscape 
along the railways of the Southern Pacific system, all 
of which has taken place within the last five years, 
when I last saw this country. The wide, gray plains 
are becoming black ana green under the plow. 
Fortunes are being made quietly by a few of the 
big operators who planted ditch systems like that now 
going near Brownsville, under the scheme of a rice 
syndicate, but so far as northern standards are con- 
cerned, the face of the territory has not yet been more 
than touched. Chance friends along the railroad told 
me that the rice farmers clean up about $90 an acre, 
and they only work a little part of the year. Yester- 
day my friends began to plow their farm lands along 
the San Antonio Valley— in January, while all the 
North is shivering. Next month they will seed the 
ground, while Northern farmers are hauling sled loads 
of wood from the snow-laden forests. When the fields 
are being sown in the North, and the birds just be- 
ginning to sjng in the trees and hedges, my friends 
will be cutting their first crops, and getting ready for 
two, three, four or five more in quick succession. I 
saw a man yesterday who last year raised forty tons 
of stock beets on one acre of irrigated ground. He 
fed all the beets to hogs. This man came from Eng- 
land four years ago. He is comfortable to-day. He 
had a thousand dollars capital, and no experience. 
He has bought his laud, fenced it, put up a big pump- 
ing plant, made his living, bought more land and has 
$6,000 in bank to-day with which to buy some more 
hogs. Truck farmers sometimes take a little matter 
of four or five or six hundred dollars off of one acre 
of ground during a season, here under the sleepy sun 
of old Santone! It sounds like an emigration bureau, 
doesn't it? It is not. It is only comment on this 
wonderful land of American West, which seems ever 
ready with some new and startling sort of story. 
Yesterday we saw, out in the country, a couple of 
Mexican families moving. Their squalor was unbe- 
lievable. Two rickety carts held their belongings, and 
some emaciated burros furnished the transportation. 
The families were afoot, and all had the silent look of 
patient poverty. They were moving across the face 
of a West that was. A bit farther on we saw some 
cowpunchers, or what seemed such, for they sat in 
cow saddles and wore chaparejos. Alas! they also wore 
blue jumpers, sign of a passing type; for one day the 
cowpuncher would have scorned a canvas jumper, even 
as he knew naught of wire. We drove on, and pres- 
ently saw some barefoot children walking by the road- 
side, wearing the gay Mexican blanket about the 
shoulders. One or two of these children seem incon- 
gruously clad in this gaudy gear, since they were light- 
haired and blue-ej'ed, apparently of American breed- 
ing, although their little companions showed the brown 
blood of the Indian intermixture. "Those white ones 
are Castilians," said my friends. "They are poor as 
church mice, the proudest human beings alive." A 
half mile further and we saw a couple of Mexican men 
of the more common type, brown of skin, lean of fig- 
ure, each staggering along under a back load of 
crooked mesquite firewood, and a head load of wide 
brimmed black hat with heavy corded band. It was 
perhaps the hat which made the heavier burden. Such 
a hat would cost its owner about ten dollars. It is 
to be doubted whether all the assets of both, outside 
the -hat, would total so much as ten dollars. 
So much for old associations in the valley of the 
sleepy San Antonio, where the Indios reducidos began 
the holy work of civilization. A half hour's ride 
brought us within sight of the yellow stucco walls of 
the new Carnegie library, sign manual of a swifter 
and yet more tawdry civilization. You have your 
choice, in this sleepy and sunny, mysterious and mag- 
ical land of the sunshine. It is so different. 
Lazy Days. 
In such lazy days one does not care to go out and 
kill certain thousands of the wild creatures of the 
world. It is enough to watch, to ponder and to specu 
late. There are two classes of Northern folk who 
come here for the most part, the first made of persons 
who expect to kill a lot of game, the second of those 
who want to see sometliing, they do not know exactly 
what. The former can, or could, easily be accommo- 
dated, the latter usually go away disappointed. San 
Antonio does not disclose all her charms at first de- 
