[From Hunter's Frontier Times Magazine, February, 1939]

Some time ago the following article appeared in The Eye-Witness, a weekly newspaper published at Richland Springs, Texas. It is a funeral oration delivered more than half a century ago by H. W. Knickerbocker, in the rear of a saloon, over the body of Riley Grannan, a gambler, who died in Rawhide, Nevada. Knickerbocker was a member of a family famous for its ministers, but at the time of delivering the oration he made no other claim than that he was just a prospector. The funeral oration was delivered when rough men in a rough world found they could not put into words their feelings and they asked Knickerbocker to say something appropriate:

"I feel that it is incumbent upon me to state that I now occupy no ministerial position. I am only a prospector. I make no claim to moral merit whatever, or to religious authority, except it be the religion of the brotherhood of man. I wish to be taken only as a man among men, feeling that I can shake hands and style as my brother the most humble of you. If there may come from me a word of oral admonition it springs not from a sense of moral superiority and only from the depths of my experience.

"Riley Grannan was born at Paris, Kentucky, about forty years ago. He cherished all the dreams of boyhood. These dreams found their fruition in phenomenal success financial. I am told that from the position of bellboy he arose to be a celebrity of world fame. Riley Grannan was one of the greatest plungers the continent has produced. He died day before yesterday at Rawhide.

That is a brief statement. We have his birth and the day of his demise. Who can fill the interim? Not I. Who can tell of hopes and fears? Who knows the mystery of his quiet hours ? Not I.

Riley Grannan was born in the sunny southland of Kentucky. He died in Rawhide. That is the beginning; that is the end. Is there in this a picture of what Ingersoll said at the grave of his brother: 'Whether it be near the shore or in mid-ocean, or among breakers, at last a rock must mark the end of one and all?

"Born where brooks and rivers run musically through prolific soil, white stars grown in a firmament of green; where lakes, the greensward and the softest summer breezes dimple the wavelets; where the air is resonant with the melody of a thousand sweet voiced birds and resolent of the perfume of blooming flowers. That was the beginning. Riley Grannan died in Rawhide, where in winter the tops of the mountains are clothed in the garments of ice, and in summer the blistering rays of the sun beat down upon the skeletons of the desert.

"Is there in this a picture of universal life? Sometimes when I look upon the circumstances of life there comes to my lips a curse. I relate to you only my views. If these run counter to yours, believe that what I say is sincere. When I see the ambitions of man defeated, when I see him struggling with mind and body to accomplish his end, when I see his aim and purpose frustrated only by a fortuitous combination of circumstances over which he can exercise no control, when I see his outstretched hands about to grasp the flag of victory, and seize upon the emblem of defeat, I ask, 'What is life?' Dreams—awakening—death. Life is the pendulum between a smile and a tear. Life, the waste and then the nothing we see out from. Life is a shadow, a poor player that struts, and then is heard no more. Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound, signifying nothing. Life is a child blown bubble that but reflects the shadow of its environment and is gone— a mockery, a sham, a lie, a fool's vision—its happiness but Dead Sea apples, its pain the crunching of a tyrant's heel. Omar says it better when he says: 'We are but a moving row of magic shadow shapes that come and go around with a sunnied lumbined lantern held at midnight for the master of the show; but helpless pieces of the game we play on the checkerboard of day and night; hither and thither, moved or checked or slaved, and one by one back into the closet laid. The ball no questions make of ayes and noes, but here and there strikes, the player goes.' But He that tossed you down into the field, He knows about it all. He knows. He knows, but I don't. That's my mood. Not so with Riley Grannan.

"If I have gauged his character correctly he accepted the circumstances surrounding him as the mystic officials to whom the universe had delegated its whole office concerning him. He took defeat and victory with equal equanimity. He was a man of placid exterior. His meteoric past shows Him invincible in spirit and it is not irreverently that I proclaim him a dead game sport. When I use that phrase I do so feeling it is so full of practical human philosophy as it will hold. Riley Grannan fully exemplified the philosophy of those fugitive verses: `It's easy enough to be happy when life runs along with a song, but the man worth while is the man who can smile when everything goes dead wrong; for the test of the heart is trouble, and it always comes with the years, and the smile that is worth the homage of each is the smile that shines through the tears.'

"There are those who will condemn him. They believe that today he is reaping the reward of a misspent life. They are those who are dominated by medieval creeds. Those I am not addressing. They are ruled by the skeleton hand of the past. They fail to see the moral side of character lived outside their puritanical ideas. Riley Grannan's goodness was not a type that reached its highest manifestations in ceremonious piety. It found its expression in the handclasp of friendship. It found its voice in the word of cheer to a discouraged brother. His were deeds of quiet charity. His were acts of manhood.

"Riley Grannan lived in the world of sport. My words are not minced, because I am telling you what I believe to be true. It was the world of sport, sometimes of hilarity, sometimes worse. It left the impress of his character upon us all, and through the medium of his financial power he was able with his money to brighten the lives of those who knew him. He wasted his money, so the world says. But did it ever occur to you that the men and women of such class upon whom he wasted it are yet men and women? A little happiness brought into their lives means as much to them as happiness carried into the lives of the straight and good. If you can take one ray of sunshine into the night life and thereby create a single hour of happiness you are a benefactor.

"God confined His sunbeams not to the nourishing of potatoes and corn. His scattering of sunshine was prodigal. Contemplate. He flings the auroral beauties around the cold shoulder of the earth. He hangs the quivering picture of the mirage above the palpitating heart of the desert. He scatters the sunbeams like shattered gold upon the bosom of a myriad of lakes that gem the robe of nature. He spangles the canopy of night with star jewels, and silvers the world with the reflected beams from on high. He hangs the gorgeous crimson curtain of the occident across the sleeping room of the sun. God wakes the coy maid of the morning to step timidly from her boudoir of darkness to climb the steep of the orient, to fling wide the gates of morning and to trip over the landscape, kissing the flowers in her flight. She arouses the world to herald with its music the coming of her King, who floods the world with effulgent gold. These are wasted sunbeams. Are they? '

"I say to you that the man or woman who, by the use of money, or power, is able to smooth over one wrinkle from the brow of human care, or to change one sob or moan into song, or to wipe away a tear, and to place in its stead a jewel of joy, is a public benefactor. Such was Riley Grannan.

"The time has come to say goodbye. For the friends and loved ones not here to say a word, let me say, `Goodbye, old man. We will try to exemplify the spirit of your life as we bear the grief of our parting here. Let those flowers, Riley, with their petaled lips and perfumed breath, speak in beauty and fragrance these sentiments too tender for words. Goodbye.'"