Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1888 — JOHN PARLIN. [ARTICLE]

JOHN PARLIN.

The Agreement He Made With the Railroad Still in Force. Chicago Times. Away out on what is known as the south branch of the Union Paeifiq Railway/in Gunnison county, Col., is a station called Pari in. There is nothing of the place except a depot and a postoffice, and every train must stop there, five minutes, whether it is a passenger or a freight train. Not many feet distant is the house of John Parlin. The house is made of logs and is on the side of a hill which stretches back and hitches itself to a mountain that raises itself up until its snowy summit touches the blue sky. The waters come down the mountain side in a silvery laughter, and all day long make music within a stone’s throw of John Parlin. The acres of foliage, the pastures green for miles about belong to John Parlin. The herds of blooded cattle on the hillsides and in the valleys are John Parlin’s. Near the station and in the middle of as limpid a stream of water as ever charmed a fairy is a dairy in which are crocks and crocks and crocks of milk from John Parlin’s Holstein herd. Here in this secluded spot, remote from the contentions of this busy world, came the railroad engineer running his line. - John-Par iin took him in and gave him of his cheer in a hospitable manner that would inspire an American Walter Scott. Then the engineer went away, and later on came other railroad linen —some of them magnates—and John Parlin furnished them food and plenty of milk. Then they told him 1 they wanted 1,500 acres of his land, and asked dtim to name his price. The old man, in the generosity of his heart, in his nature which partook of the freedom of his home and its picturesque surroundings, said to them: “You can have 1,500 acres if you will put a depot over there near the dairy and make all your trains stop there five minutes.” This road was built. The agreement was kept, and is till this day. And John Parlin sits in the his log house and sees the trains come in and stop. And the passengers and the engineers and the firemen and the conductors and the brakemen leave their trains and go over to the dairy and partake of John Parlin’s Holstein cow’s milk, fre«h and cooled by the mountain stream, m?e of charge. Then they return to the train and it speeds away,and JohirParlin stands in his doorway and waves his hand and his children shout in nature’s grasses at the departing scene. .

One of the largest shoe contracts made is that of a firm in Bangor, Me., who have engaged to make 100,000 pairs of slippers within a year,for which they are to receive $74,900.