YOUTHFUL TRADITIONS DONE FOR. 117 



go to licking the Indians. Although the fire can not 

 be put out, one or the other, or possibly both, of the 

 combatants are "put out" in short order. 



Should the miserable parents succeed in getting 

 their daughter safely through this peril, it is only be- 

 cause she is reserved for a further laceration of our 

 feelings. The half-breed soon gets her, and the lover 

 and rare old plainsman get on his track immediately 

 afterward. And so on ad libitum. 



We beg pardon for condensing into our sunrise re- 

 flections the material for a novel, such as has often 

 run well through three hundred pages, and furnished 

 with competencies half as many bill-posters. It is 

 unpleasant to have one's traditionary heroes and 

 heroines all knocked into pi before breakfast. It 

 makes one crusty. Possibly, it may be their proper 

 desert, but, if so, could be better digested after dinner. 



The whole story would fail if the fire did, as novel- 

 ists never like to have their heroines left out in the 

 cold. But it is as impossible for flames as it is for 

 human beings to exist on air alone. It is scarcely 

 less so for them to feed, as they are supposed to do, 

 on such scanty grass. The truth is, that what the 

 bison, with his close-cropping teeth, is enabled to 

 grow fat on, makes but poor material for a first-class 

 conflagration. 



The grass which covers the great plains of the 

 Far West is more like brown moss than what its 

 name implies. Perhaps as good an idea of it as is 

 possible to any one who has never seen it, may be 

 obtained by imagining a great buffalo robe covering 



