Buffalo Land: Authentic Account of the Discoveries, Adventures, and Mishaps of a Scientific and Sporting Party in the Wild WestWebb, W. E. (William Edward)
History
Buffalo Land: Authentic Account of the Discoveries, Adventures, and Mishaps of a Scientific and Sporting Party in the Wild West
Webb, W. E. (William Edward)
Hunting -- West (U.S.); Paleontology -- Kansas; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
Another of our party rejoiced in the appellation of "Colon." He obtained
this title because his eccentric specialities of character several times
came very near putting if not a full stop, at least the next thing to
it, upon the particular page of history which our party was making.
Longitudinally, Mr. Colon was all of five feet eleven; in circumference,
perhaps a score or so of inches. He possessed a fair share of oddities,
and what is better an equally fair one of dollars. The hemispheres of
his philanthropic brain seemed equally pre-empted by philosophy and
bugs. Engaging in some immense work for the amelioration of mankind, he
would pursue it with ardor, dwell upon it with unction, and then
suddenly leave it, half finished, to capture a rare spider. Philosophy
and Entomology had constant combat for Colon, and victory tarried with
neither long enough for the seat of war to be cultivated and blossom
with any luxuriance. At the time he joined our party one of his grandest
charitable projects had lately died in a very early period of infancy,
entirely supplanted in his affections for the time being by the prospect
of a chase after Brazilian insects. During our journey it was no
uncommon thing for us to see his thin form all covered with bugs and
reptiles, which had crawled out of the collecting boxes carried in his
pockets. If this meets our friend's eye, let him bear no malice, but
reflect, in the language of his own invariable answer to our
remonstrances, "It can't be helped." Should the public parade of his
faults be disagreeable, he can suffer no more from them now than we did
in the past, and may perhaps call them into closer quarters for the
future.
Mr. Colon's son, of two years less than a score, we dubbed Semi-colon,
as being a smaller edition, or to be exact, precisely one-half of what
the senior Colon was. So perfect was the concord of the two that the
junior had fallen into a chronic and to us amusing habit of answering
"Ditto" to the senior's expressions of opinion. Divide the father's
conversation by two, add an assent to every thing, and the result,
socially considered, would be the son. It may readily be seen,
therefore, why the professor for short should call him, as he nearly
always did, "Semi."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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