I contend that a year spent on the hurricane deck of a cow-pony is one of the most useful and valuable pieces of experience a young man can possibly have in fitting himself for business of almost any kind, and if I were educating a boy to fight the battles of life, I should secure him such a situation as soon as through with his studies at school. A term of service on a frontier cattle-ranch will take the conceit out of any boy. It will, at the same time, teach him self-reliance; it will teach him to endure hardships and suffering; it will give him nerve and pluck; it will develop the latent energy in him to a degree that could not be accomplished by any other apprenticeship or experience. I know of many of the most substantial and successful business men in the Western towns and cities of to-day who served their first years on the frontier as "cow punchers," and to that school they owe the firmness of character and the ability to surmount great obstacles that have made their success in life possible.
I claim that the constant communion with Nature, the study of her broad, pure domains, the days and nights of lonely cruising and camping on the prairie, the uninterrupted communion with and study of self which this occupation affords, tends to make young men honest and noble--much more so than the same men would be if deprived of these opportunities, confined to the limits of our boasted "civilization," and compelled to constantly breathe the air of adroitness, of strategy, of competition, of suspicion and crime. I claim that in many instances a man who is already dishonest and immoral may be, and I know that many have been made good and honest by freeing themselves from the evil influences of city life, and betaking themselves to a life on the plains; by living alone, or nearly so, and habitually communing with themselves, with Nature, and with Nature's God. If every young man raised in town or city could have the advantages of a year or two of constant study of Nature, untrammeled by any air of vice, and at the proper time in life, we should have more honest men, and fewer defaulters, thieves, and criminals of every class.
Descriptions of cattle roundups in the far West have been written, and yet many of the characteristic scenes that the spectator at one of these semi-annual "beef-gathering parties" will observe have not been described. There is so much to interest and excite the denizen of the States who first attends a roundup on the great plains that I am tempted to speak of some of the more prominent points in this "greatest show on earth," for the benefit of such as have not had the pleasure of witnessing it.