I had recently been in Texas—and because of that trip to the Lone Star state, I had a message from a relative to a relative to be delivered in Nashville. Here again I should explain. On learning that I planned a trip to Galveston ten days hence, my Aunt Nancy Porter asked me to stop off at Dallas and call on a relative—a Cullom of the Tennessee tribe. I believe his name was Jerry. But if he were not Jerry, he was a close relative. When I called at Mr. Cullom’s real estate office in Dallas, I was told he had gone to Galveston. I went on to Galveston, and dismissed all thought of seeing my relative. I went out to the beach, and while strolling on the sands—on the gulf side of the sea-wall — among hundreds, perhaps thousands of other strollers, fell in with a friendly man. He told me he was from Dallas, and I told him that I was from Wetmore,„Kansas. He said, quickly, “Did you say Wetmore? Reckon you might know my cousin Nan Porter, there.” And I said, “Then, I reckon you know that my Aunt Nancy asked me to stop off at Dallas, and call on you.” He grabbed my hand, saying with real Tennessee accent, “Mr. John Bristow, I’m powerful proud to meet you.” Again, I may be wrong. It could have been the Texas accent. In the course of our conversation I told Cousin Cullom that I would be going to Nashville for the Centennial, and he said likely he would go, too. The message from him was for my Aunt Tennessee Cullom-Clark, mother’s sister, living in North Nashville. I may say I’m “powerful proud” that my meddlesome letter-writing Aunt Nancy took it upon herself to notify our Texas cousin of my intended visit. That rather unusual chance meeting is paralleled by another chance meeting — which opens the way for bringing into this writing my distinguished Kansas cousin. I had an engagement to meet J.L.Bristow at the Eldridge Hotel in Lawrence, when he was Fourth Assistant Postmaster General — later, U. S. senator from Kansas. He was of my father’s branch of the Virginia and Tennessee Bristows, a third cousin to me, and up to this time we had never met. He was billed as principal speaker at a Republican rally in the Bowersock Opera House that night. Upon my arrival in Lawrence about noon, I discovered he was registered at the Eldridge House—but I could not locate him. I went out to the Kansas-Nebraska football game, and got a seat by a man who seemed to be deeply interested in the game. We conversed in an off-hand way when he was not up on his toes rooting for the Kansas team. From the conversation I inferred that he was a newspaper man, like myself. But, unlike myself, he was a college man. Not being a college man, I could not get interested in the game. It was brutal. When we had fetched up at the Eldridge House, this football enthusiast—now surrounded by politicians—said to me. “I am told by the clerk here that you were looking for me, and it seems you failed recognize a relative when you had found him.” He was my man.