Yes, truly, it is a bore. The thing is overdone. There is too much of it. And yet--well, it is the very spirit of the West, a natural expression of the pride of creation, for these men of to-day are creating homes and towns, and doing it under fiercely competitive conditions. They have builded upon their judgment and staked their all upon the throw of fortune. They are pleased with their accomplishments and vastly determined to bend the future to their ends. It is arrogance, no doubt, but healthy and happy, and the very essence of youthful accomplishment. And its very insistency and sincerity spell success, and are invigorating to boot.
[Illustration: "The Palouse dweller pictures wheat fields." The grain country of eastern Washington
From a photograph by Frank Palmer, Spokane, Wash.]
[Illustration: "The man from Boisé describes God's country in terms of sagebrush and brown plains"]
The old differences between East and West are no more, of course. Except for a trifle more informality under the setting sun, clothes and their wearing are the same. The Queen's English is butchered no more distressingly in California than in Connecticut. Proportionately to resources, educational opportunities are identical. Music and the arts are no longer strangers where blow Pacific breezes, nor have they been for decades. The West is wild and woolly no more, railroads have replaced stagecoaches, fences bisect the ranges, free land is almost a thing of the past. Yet, withal, existence for the peoples of the two borders of our continent is not cast in an identical mold.
"Back East" residents are apt to regard the West as a land of curiosities, human and natural. "Out West" dwellers are inclined to be supercilious when they mention the ways of the Atlantic seaboard.
All statements to the contrary notwithstanding, East is East, and West is West, no matter how fluently they mingle. The difference between them is not to be defined by conversational metes and bounds. It is not merely of miles, of scenery, or of manners, or even of enthusiasm. It is, in fact, quite intangible, and yet it exists, as anyone who has dwelt upon both sides of our continent realizes. Aside from the trivialities--which are wrapt up in such words as "culture," "custom," "precedent," and the like--the fundamental, explanatory reason for the intangible differences is one of years. Most of the West is buoyantly youthful, some of it blatantly boyish. Much of the East is in the prime of middle age, some of it senile. Naturally the East is inclined to conservative pessimism--an attribute of advancing years--and the West to impulsive optimism.