Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 May 1881 — Thirty Thousand Forgotten. [ARTICLE]

Thirty Thousand Forgotten.

On last Saturday morning, Judge Tankri-sley, of Leadville and Denver, started for New York on an errand which entails a story of perhaps the most remarkable absent-mindedness on record. In the early days of the camp the judge was one of those who struck it rich, and his fortune could not have amounted to less than $150,000. In those days the judge had extensive business relations in the east, and for convenience of storing papers and cash, rented safe deposit boxes in New York, Chicago and St. Louis, and later on at Denver. During the last year, when ‘the tide of fortune haa turned somewhat against him, the Judge, in endeavoring to balance his rands, was utterly unable to account for a large sum of money. The more he figured the more intricate the problem became,- and he finally gave up in despair, crediting $20,000 vaguely to profit and loss. Last fall, happening into the office of him at a dinner-party, informed the Euests prior to Mr. Field’s arrival that e had himself written some poetry and intended to submit it to Mr. Fields as Southey’s and inquire in which of his poems the lines occurred. At the proper moment, therefore, after the guests were seated, he began. “Friend Fields, I h-ive been a good deal exercised of late trying to find in Southey’s poems his well known lines running thus—-can you tell us what time he wrote them?” **l 'do not remember to have met with them before,” replied Mr. Fields, “and there were only two Kriods in Southey’s tifei whep such ies could possibly have been written by him.” “When were those?” asked the witty questioner. “Somewhere,” said Mr. Fields, “about that early period of his existence when he was having the measles and cutting his first teeth; or near the close of his life, when his brain had softened and he had fallen into idiocy. The versification belongs to the measles period, but the expression evidently betrays the idiotic one.”