The Content of Quiet Days 



89 



The interior of Camp Tepee 



showed himself a keen and acute critic of current magazine fiction 

 deaUng with range hfe. The point of his criticism was directed 

 most forcibly against the idiom and slang put into the mouths 

 of his cattlemen by the author of "Wolfville Days." Cowmen, 

 vide Counter, did not habitually use slang in that reckless and 

 superfluous way. In fact, their speech, even allowing for the 

 peculiar nomenclature of their calling, was far freer from per- 

 versions of the language than was that of most city dwellers. 

 It was not an uncommon thing to find men of education riding 

 the ranges, but even outside of these the typical rangeman would 

 be, to the "atmosphere-seeking" romance hunter, fed on mag- 

 azine dope, disappointingly restrained, not to say simple in his 

 speech. 



Mr. Counter, born in Kansas, "raised" in Montana, on the 

 range all his life, and Mr. Jay Whitman, born in Missouri, in 

 the West since 1881, equally a rangeman, may, it is assumed, be 

 taken as fairly typical examples of cattleman and ranchman 



