Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/17

 trouble with Bill. He knew too much about things of no use to any man. When you sifted him down, he was nothing but an educated fool. There were some who didn't even grace the designation with that qualifying word, using another, less charitable, more expressive of their indignation and contempt. For a man in his walk of life Bill Dunham was stuffed with too damn much trash.

This was a reputation undeserved by Bill, as the fame of community celebrities commonly is magnified either in derision or pride. Bill had the name of being a profoundly read man, although he owned but three books exclusive of those he had used in his preparation for a commercial career: a volume of Shakespeare's plays, which he had bought from the horse doctor for seventy-five cents, that worthy having acquired it on a debt; a copy of Tennyson's poems, won in a spelling match; a queer, fat, chunky little leather-bound Bible, left after her when his grandmother completed her earthly business and started out on the supreme adventure that lies at the end of every Kansan's career.

Now, this is the place where you grunt, and say: "Oh, hell! another one of those Shakespeare-Bible fellows. They belong in the class with the Alger boys; they simply were not there." But if you had lived back in those lean days of books in Kansas you would know better than to sniff at the Shakespeare-Bible boys. They were there; their name was legion. The reading of those two books by that generation resulted in a race of spellbinders, and orators, word-slingers