AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
RALPH JOHN WESLEY HOWARD

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race, long haired variety; (she who so well distracted the professor and saved our heads.

On the fifth of April 1897, I rigged up a prairie schooner of my own and headed west for Liberal, Kansas. I had already signed a Quitclaim to my interest in Agriculture, and deprived the college of my society, a loss they apparently did not mind. Liberal, Kansas was my postal address and trading point for some time. It was close to the south line of the State. Beaver County, Oklahoma, called "No Man’s Land" lay to the south of the Kansas State line, and extended from Indian Territory property to the Kansas and Colorado line on the west. It takes twelve days to make the trip from Manhattan to Bull Creek with a work team. It supplies the person taking it with an excellent opportunity to do some serious meditating. My thoughts would invariably revert to the class room scene and the lady with the up raised hand, and the blackboard inscription. How is, or can these isolated items are co-ordinated to serve a usual purpose? The inscription on the board is a chemical equation by this skeleton H₂O and CO equals H₂ and 2 CO. The science of chemistry is built on the atomic theory. It teaches that an Atom is the smallest particle of an element that can have a separate existence. It also teaches that chemical combination takes place between atoms only under precious conditions and in precise numbers. It also states that a variation in a chemical compound is not known. The science of chemistry is divided into two branches; organic and inorganic, a glance at the above equation shows that there are only three elements involved; hydrogen, oxygen and carbon and that they are in molecular form, and such a re-fractures. A further study reveals that hydrogen and carbon and oxygen as molecules as well as factors taken separately then by different grouping form each and every compound in the book of organic chemistry. Further study reveals also that only organic substance burn. Coal, petroleum and their derivatives are the main source of our fuel. Plants and animals supply the rest of our fuel or combustible material.

My older brothers, Frank and Bert had arrived at Liberal, three years earlier than I. They worked the first year on the Dudley Ranch, located at the headwaters of the Beaver River. Then Bert filed on a homestead located on Bull Creek. On this homestead there was a spring of excellent water. It flowed in a crystal stream from a sandstone ledge exposed on a cut bank. This water was limited, but was the very best the country supplied until there was some drilling of deep water wells which proved that a good supply of water was to be had at 125 to 400 feet, depending on the topography of the surface.