A LIFETIME SOLITUDE

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2339, 8 October 1921, Page 4

A LIFETIME SOLITUDE

SEQUEL TO.AN ELOPEMENT,

A Nebraska ranchman, Tracy Gilhs, 33 years old, lias jiisl seen a woman flu l llie first lime. Other ohjeets of interest, ‘which were also brand new to him when lie journeyed from his lonely prairie home, in company with a load of cattle, to Omaha, were a railway train, a tramear, a daily newspaper, and a fiction magazine. This is how if came about. Gilfis was born in Chicago, where his father married an actress, who, while her son was still a baby, de~. sorted him and his father, eloping with another man. The elder Gillis a disciple of Moody and Sankey, then foreswore the sight of women for himself and his boy. TTe buried himself and Tracy in the solitudes of Western Nebraska, where until his death two years ago he never suffered a strange man — much less a woman —to pass the boundaries of his “quarter section.”

“A devil lurks on every street corner, father taught me,’’Gillis said. “He told me the sad story of my mother and warned me to avoid all sinful men.”

“Kill Gillis is ready to admit that he has changed his views about women. After he saw bis first, he went to a- barber's shop and had his locks shortened and his face shaved. Then he bought a suit of “store clothes,” a safety razor, a tube of tooth paste, and two silk ties. He says his plans for the development of his ranch include a course in agriculture—and a wife.