Ellis Parker Butler

“ One August I struck a town in Kansas—Kildare, I think it was—that was situated in the middle of a stretch of prairie that was as flat as a table. You could ride fifty miles in any direction without coming upon a dip or a rise as prominent as a wrinkle in a table-cloth. I made my deal with the editor and owner of the newspaper to print and bind the Kildare Beautiful book and then, jokingly, I said to him:
"I'll bet this is one town that hasn't a Lover's Leap."
"Oh yes, it has!" he said. "Every decent town has one. If there isn't one, the City Council votes one." ”

“ Lover's Leap was a good card, always. There was always an Indian legend, and always the same one. If there was no legend we wrote one, and it was again always the same one. It was our only way of getting romance into the "Beautifuls," and it made a hit with the ladies. It helped the sale. American towns are utilitarian, and for that reason admire anything romantic that can be hooked up with the local history. It was always safe to ask where Lover's Leap was when we struck a town, because there always was one if there was a side hill ten feet high. ”

“ We tried tossin' victuals into the air-current, but it wa'n't what you'd call successful. They went up all right but, bein' lighter than this Joe feller, they went right on beyond him. In no time at all we had a sort of bouquet of victuals bouncin' and jiggin' ten or twelve feet above his head, but it didn't do him no good. So it looked like the best we could do would be to get a gun and shoot him. There wa'n't no use lettin' him die of starvation.
"It was whilst Orley Morvis was goin' for his rifle that this Sally person come to where he was. ”