Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

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Having the distinction of being the only enterprise of the kind in this part of the West, that tanyard was made a sort of port-of-call for all comers—local and transient.

“Lord” Perry graced the tannery with his august presence one day. He was of the old English Colony folk and drunk or sober, proclaimed himself a British peer. He was a “remittance” man.

On this occasion, after riding in from his Colony home, Perry had stopped up town and was comfortably full when he reached the tanyard. He slipped the reins over his horse’s head and asked me to hold the animal while he held audience with Jim Cardwell. “Hand if you let ‘er go,” he warned, “Hi’ll cut y’r hears hoff.” I dropped the reins as soon as he was in “spirited” conversation with Jim. The “Lord” soon forgot about me—and the horse also.

“Lord” Perry had the poise and the marks of the gentleman he represented himself to be. Also he loved his drink, and indulged himself freely. When he had taken on about so much, he would invariably mount a chair, or anything handy that he could climb upon, and attempt to make a speech, always prefacing his harangue with “Hi’m a gentleman hand a scholar, by-god-sir, by-gosh!”