334 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



considers that he is quite capable of throwing off old associations 

 and old habits in the same moment that he gives away his old 

 red coat for church decoration or crow-scaring, and that he can 

 accept a totally new life and new playfellows as easily and 

 jubilantly as a boy changing his school. In earnest truth, no 

 man is less likely to encounter with any sense of pleasure the 

 ways of the West and the bearing of its inhabitants. 



Throughout life — from the day he was first asked his name 

 at Rugby, and received a wholesome correction for da-ing as a 

 uew boy to ask in return that of his interrogator, to the last 

 occasion on which he marched his company past the saluting 

 point, for approval or otherwise, of the inspecting deity in 

 feathers — discipline has been his guiding star, and the sub- 

 ordination of man to man has been inculcated in him as a 

 necessary principle in all the relations of life. He has been 

 accustomed to courtesy on the part of superiors, and to respect 

 from inferiors, whether in the service or out of it. Rank in the 

 army ; station, accomplishment, and age elsewhere — these are to 

 trim tangible differences, which no amount of vulgar assurance 

 would ever avail the snob, the scoffer, or the social communist 

 to bridge over successfully. To these principles he has been 

 educated, and any breach of them he has been taught to 

 resent — especially, of course, when directed against his own 

 ■status. Imagine him, then, brought on terms of the closest 

 intimacy, of the most unsparing familiarity, with men in his 

 own employ in menial capacities — men whose only claim to 

 intellect is based upon their talent for chopping a log, whose 

 accomplishments are confined to squirting tobacco juice across 

 the floor, whose tastes soar no higher than New Orleans 

 molasses when at work and the most fiery of whisky when 

 at play; whose conversation, often unintelligible through its 

 thickly interlarded and senseless oaths, is utterly pointless 

 when purged of the same ; whose personal cleanliness is limited 

 to a dash of water (when not too cold) on hands and face once 

 -a day, and whose underclothing leaves not their bodies — night 

 aior day — till absolute necessity demands that the decayed 



