From The Pittsburgh Press, February 14, 1899:


IT BEAT THE RECORD
From the Nebraska State Journal

An old Nebraska pioneer lay dying on the Platte.
There was a lack of woman's nursing, but he didn't care for that;
But a cowboy bent beside him in the north wind's icy breath,
And whispered words of comfort while he slowly froze to death.
The dying man was thankful as a dying man could be,
And he said: "My old sod palace is a home no more for me.
Take a message and a token to the friends out there I know,
And tell them that the mercury was twenty-four below.

"I've lived here thirty years or more," the man went on to say,
"And I never saw such weather as this weather is to-day.
I have been caught in blizzards, I should think a half a score,
But I always got home safely, and I never froze before.
Tell my wife, if you can find her, for she left ten years agone,
She can have the valley section and the blooded stock thereon.
She is welcome to the homestead just this side of Broken Bow,
And tell her that the mercury was twenty-four below.

"Please bury me beneath the ice, if you have strength to spare,
For I always took to water, and I want to thaw out there.
You can place a shaft of marble where I met this cruel fate,
A warning unto others (charge the same to my estate)."
The dying man stopped speaking and he breathed but once or twice,
Till his breath was gone forever—he lay dead upon the ice—
Then the pale moon rose up slowly and the harsh winds ceased to blow,
And the weather man reported it was twenty-four below.


[This is presented as a poem; there is no indication it is a song.]