critics allege that in President Roosevelt’s personal preferences for Western scenes there may be found reason for the current popularity of the wild, wild West. If, indeed, this be true, there would seem to be one more thing—the only one which at first thought comes to mind as remaining—which President Roosevelt ought to do before he wipes off his slate and hangs it up on the wall. He ought to write an exposure of Wild West faking.
In the case of the nature fakers there was offered but a limited region for the Presidential activities—a few startled individuals who by accident had broken in where angels had worn no permanent pathway, and who had, in finding themselves noticed, suddenly sat up and taken serious and painstaking notice of themselves. What was done to them is ancient history. A newer and wider field lies at hand. It is not two or three Horatian fakers who hold the bridge. Their name is legion. The Wild West authorship of the day is commensurate only with the city directories of several cities.
The other day a friend was asking counsel regarding a trip to Durango, Colorado, where resided, in his phrase, a certain lame duck. My friend, who resides in Chicago, is very fond of wearing a silk hat and a sack coat, and it was his desire to know whether, in my belief, the former would be safe in Durango. It was of no use to assure him that the main danger lay in not piercing down the second article. He departed unassured, with many misgivings about the reception he would probably meet in Durango and the Terpsichorean feats he might be obliged to perform at the muzzle of a gun. He had been reading no haymow literature but only that found between the most respectable covers of the day.
The other day I got a letter from an artist in New York who has recently removed thither and instituted a Wild West studio. He was in search of information as to the wideness of saddle skirts, the extent of stirrup covers, the size of gun, etc., in Texas at about the time of 1870. although that was about the date of the beginning of the Long Trail (the writer perhaps originated that title in a chapter head many years ago, although the "Long Trail" is now located everywhere in fiction from Arizona to Oregon), the earnest young artist was not content when it was suggested to him that perhaps even at that stage of the world’s history there might have been a few cowmen who just wore clothes. He replied with some heat that his fancied source of information proved "too highly specialized" for the uses of modern art. This I regret. It is sad to be born with no special hysteria in one’s soul.
under this handicap of unemotionalism, I concluded to refer the inquiry to an old cow-puncher friend of mine who, ten years before my time, rode the trail from the Rio Grande to the British line at the dates mentioned, Andy Adams of Goldfield, a man who really knows about cows and cowmen in the early days. His comment ought to be useful to many artists and many writers:
Two years ago an earnest young writer, who had never been in either California or Texas in all his life, wrote two Wild West stories, which he sent to one of the best editors in New York. Both stories were promptly accepted.
"You prove to me", wrote the delighted editor, "what I have always said: that in order to know a country one must have lived in it and been a part of it. You have this Texas and California atmosphere perfectly."
It is a singular fact, not capable of any geographical or philosophical explanation so far as I know, that the best Wild West writers live in Brooklyn, New York, and that most of the prominent Wild West artists reside in Lyme, Connecticut. I don’t know why this is. Neither, for that matter, should one file any objection to this, because genius has no law. In the old days we were as apt to get pure Canadian maple sirup from Ohio as anywhere else. The only reservation existing in my mind is a purely legal one. It seems to me that there is a question of reasonable doubt under he pure food law whether these stories and fiction ought not to be labelled "99.5 per cent pure East"
Recently an editorial friend of mine discovered a new producer of that brand of foundry literature known as the Western story. He announced his entire confidence that the newcomer led all the rest by a block, or words to that effect.
"Just look!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm. "two town marshals and a sheriff die with their boots on. The populace lynches out the villain. Six people killed in the first chapter. Can you beat it? This man is the real Texas! I am going to send for his photograph to print with my editorial announcements."