The Argosy, August 1905 — page 117: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE MURDER OF EBEN CANNIFF. “BY W. BERT FOSTER. The champion of_the Doelger Crowd and what his espousal of his father’s cause did toward putting a rope around his neck. HEN Eben Canniff was elected to the office of district attorney there was no flutter in the political echicken-roost of Denborough. Canniff was known as a ‘good lawyer, a supposedly good party man, and he gave a certain tone to the rest of the ticket that the most enthusiastic mem- ber of the “gang” had to admit was sadly needed. Canniff was a silent, taciturn individ- ual, who showed his whole mind or heart to no man; he could not be frank, but that was no reason for the party managers to believe that he was not honest. And within three months the man- agers, or the “ Doelger Crowd ” as they were called, awoke to the terrifying fact that in the new district attorney they had an uncertain quantity. He took his oath of office seriously, and in those first ninety days he dis- eovered just how rank was the crowd who had misgoverned affairs for some years in Denborough. And then, instead of winking at this matter or of making a gallery play by indicting some small boodler, he went at the fountain-head of it all, and laid evidence before the grand jury which, if true and proven in the courts, would send Mr. Graham Doelger himself “over the road.” When the local newspapers breathed these tidings with awe, and the more distant newsmongers blazoned the story broadeast with no fear of the Doelger Crowd before their eyes, Burke Doelger saw it. Burke was at Harvard. How he man- aged to scrape through the examina- tions to get there may be better under- stood when I say that he was six feet three inches high, broad in proportion, and the greatest center rush the college had ever had on its eleven. ae eae SEO 4 ed giant, who never took his college course seriously, but who considered athletics worth while. As he was a wealthy man’s son, the college had been unable to offer him any pecuniary inducement; indeed, the board never really knew how it came to secure the prize. Burke might have told them. There was just one person in the world whom Burke Doelger worshiped—and it wasn’t a girl! Old Graham Doelger, in his son’s eyes, was the greatest man who eyer lived. The boy never tired of hearing his father tell of his first struggles when he, Doelger senior, arrived from the old country. When it came time for Burke to de- cide what he would do in life, Graham Doelger had heard, or read, that a col- lege educated man had an advantage over other men, and that a diploma was an open sesame to that society which had refused to weleome the great cheese manufacturer himself. Doelger had gone into polities and ruled the city (or thought he did, for he was too simple to see that he was used by more unscrupulous men to their own ends), but he was not satisfied. He wanted Burke, his only child, to be something better and greater. Burke had brains enough to know that he did not come of a family that took easily to book learning; he hated books, but he said: <All right, dad! What track do you think I’d better be trained over?” “They all say that there’s a place near Boston that’s chock full of book learnin’ and such,” replied the old man wistfully. “It’s a long ways off vf “We'll fix that,” declared Burke. “Tl take your private ear and run back and forth frequently. I know about Harvard. I guess theyll have me there.” For he had already been approached tae tii i a a a om comicbooks.com