OF A RANCHMAN 27 



A western plainsman is reminded every day, 

 by the names of the prominent landmarks 

 among which he rides, that the country was 

 known to men who spoke French long before 

 any of his own kinsfolk came to it, and hence 

 he reads with a double interest Parkman's 

 histories of the early Canadians. As for 

 Irving, Hawthorne, Cooper, Lowell, and the 

 other standbys, I suppose no man, east or 

 west, would willingly be long without them ; 

 while for lighter reading there are dreamy 

 Ike Marvel, Burroughs* breezy pages, and 

 the quaint, pathetic character-sketches of the 

 Southern writers Cable, Craddock, Macon, 

 Joel Chandler Harris, and sweet Sherwood 

 Bonner. And when one is in the Bad Lands 

 he feels as if they somehow look just exactly 

 as Poe's tales and poems sound. 



By the way, my books have some rather 

 unexpected foes, in the shape of the pack 

 rats. These are larger than our house rats, 

 with soft gray fur, big eyes, and bushy tails, 

 like a squirrel's ; they are rather pretty beasts 

 and very tame, often coming into the shacks 



