Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1886 — Wanted to be Independent [ARTICLE]

Wanted to be Independent

“Every man should have an incentive to.spnr him onward," said Gosport to M ill ik<n, at they walked down .stat<■ street together the other morning. “He should set up a target toward which every arrow of effort is aimed. Every act of his life should be a means toward an end. ‘Plant your stake somewhere ahead, young man, and try with your utmost energy to get there,’ said Daniel Webster; ‘and if you don’t stop somewhere on the way, you will be sure to reach it.’ That’s the talk for me; it has the ring of pure gold about it, and if I had a dozen boys I would have that printed in letters a foot long and pasted on the walls of every room in the house. I tell you, Milliken, everything depends on getting a boy started right. Look at me. Parents both died before I was big enough to butter my own biscuit, and I was left to drift about without a rudder, and grow* up with no more ambition tlxan an organgrinder.. I had to do a heap oT wild shooting before I found qnt everything depended on blazing away in the same direction all the time, but for ten years back I’ve had my stake planted, and if I’m spared I’m bound to get there as sure as guns, ” and Gosport brought down his hand with a slap so sudden that an ol’d lady just ahead gave a jump, screamed “Mercy on us!” and dropped a pound of butter on the sidewalk.

“Well, I hope you’ll get there, Gos, upon my word I do, ” replied Millikin. “But if it ain’t an impertinance, may I ask what sort of a sapling your hatchet is aimed at?” “Certainly; there’s no secret about it. I want to be a farmer. ” Millikin braced about and gave him a look that began at his plug hat and went down to his button shoes. “Well, you’d make a nice-looking granger, you would. Whatever put that notion into your head ?” inquired Millikin, with a tone that had considerable pity in it. “I always wanteif to get into a position where I could feel independent. I don’t like the trammels a business man has to submit to. It galls me, and I don’t intend to put up with it any longer than I have to. I want to be free to come and go as I please. Work when I want to, and rest when I feel like it. To have my own ideas on politics and religion without the danger of taking bread out of the mouths of my children by doing so.” , “You want to be independent ?”

“Yes, sir, I do; I want to feel that I can safely have opinions of my own, on every subject under the sun, from evolution to the price of whisky, without having to pay a tax, in the" shape of lost patronage. The farmer is the most independent man in the world——” “When his wife is away from home.” “None of your jokes. I am serious, lam determined to be a farmer. I want to be the owner of some land and my own soul. If I know a man to be a villian or a hypocrite, I don’t -want to be compelled to associate with him or have anything to do with him. ” “And you want to be independent?” “To be sure I do, and I will be if I’m spared a few years longer.- For years my objective point has been to find myself the owner of a good farm; where I could earn my bread by the sweat of >a hired man’s brow; smell the clover blossoms; drink in the beauties of nature, and eat sausage whenever I feel so disposed, without fear of losing social standing. ” “It’s independence you’re after?” “Don’t I tell you so?” “Then, in heaven’s name, why don’t you buy a railroad restaurant, and get into a position where you can make the biggest farmer in the State feel like a small boy every time he comes along ? If it’s independence you want, you canget so much of it for so little money in any other walk of life. Farming, fudge ! Let me sell the sandwiches and I don’t care a pretzel who buys the nation.”—Chicago ■Ledger,