CHAPTER XIX 



SOME HUMBLE WESTERN CHARACTERS 



EVERY once in a while I pick up a literary 

 ' review which takes a shot at Bret Harte. All 

 reviewers credit him with the production of real 

 literature, but some charge him with a gross exag- 

 geration of his western types, which they charac- 

 terize as unreal, and the creatures of a romantic 

 mind. Then I know that the reviewer has probably 

 looked out of a Pullman window on his way across 

 the continent, been wined and dined in some of the 

 western clubs, wherein he has probably met the 

 very types that Bret Harte described, but did not 

 recognize them in their dress clothes, or know of 

 their earlier lives. Bret Harte wrote of the long 

 ago, when one could squat in any mining camp, and 

 find his characters. The west is probably becom- 

 ing the east very rapidly, but it still has its "John 

 Oakhursts," as real today as then, but harder to 

 find, and the average book-reviewer could not get 

 in touch with them. 



It has been a felony for many years to gamble 

 in Texas. I think it is so in most western states, 

 but the west is still the west in most of the traits 

 and characteristics which dominate the frontier. I 



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