He printed the first edition of the _Tribune_ in his tent under an
elm tree in a vast, unfenced meadow that rose from the fringe of timber
that shaded the Wahoo. Volume one, number one, told a waiting world of
the formation of the town company of Harvey with Daniel Sands as
president. It was one of thousands of towns founded after the Civil
War--towns that were bursting like mushrooms through the prairie soil.
After that war in which millions of men gave their youth and myriads
gave their lives for an ideal, came a reaction. And in the decades that
followed the war, men gave themselves to an orgy of materialism. Harvey
was a part of that orgy. And the Ohio crowd, the group that came from
Elyria--the Sandses, the Adamses, Joseph Calvin, Ahab Wright, Kyle
Perry, the Kollanders[1] and all the rest except the Nesbits--were so
considerable a part of Harvey in the beginning, that probably they were
as guilty as the rest of the country in the crass riot of greed that
followed the war. They brought Amos Adams to Harvey because he was a
printer and in those halcyon days all printers were supposed to be able
to write; and he brought Mary--but did he bring Mary? He was never sure
whether he brought her or she brought him. For Mary Sands--dear, dear
Mary Sands--she had a way with her. She was not Irish for nothing, God
bless her.
Amos always tried to be fair with Daniel Sands because he was Mary's
brother; even though there was a time after he came home a young soldier
from the war and found that Daniel Sands who hired a substitute and
stayed at home, had won Esther Haley, who was pledged to Amos,--a time
when Amos would have killed Daniel Sands. That passed, Mary, Daniel's
sister, came; and for years Amos Adams bore Daniel Sands no grudge. What
has all his money done for Daniel. It has ground the joy out of him--for
one thing. And as for Esther, somewhere about Elyria, Ohio, the grass is
growing over her grave and for forty years only Mortimer, her son, with
her eyes and mouth and hair, was left in the world to remind Amos of the
days when he was stark mad; and Mary, dear, dear, Irish Mary Sands,
caught his heart upon the bounce and made him happy.
So let us say that Mary brought Amos to Harvey with the Ohio crowd, as
Daniel Sands and his followers were known, The other early settlers came
to grow up with the country and to make their independent fortunes; but
Mary and Amos came to see the sunrise. For they were sure that men and
women starting in a new world having found equality of opportunity,
would not make this new world sordid, unfair and cruel as the older
world was around them in those days.
Amos and Mary took up their homestead just south of the town on the
Wahoo, and started the Tribune, and Mary hoped the high hopes of the
Irish while Amos wrote his part of the news, set his share of the type,
ran the errands for the advertising and bragged of the town in their
editorial columns with all the faith of an Irishman by marriage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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