104 OBSERVATIONS OF A RANCHWOMAN 



every able-bodied man in the State of Utah 

 will take up arms and defy the East!' In 

 response to this martial declaration, the en- 

 thusiast was gently reminded that the able- 

 bodied men in the entire State of Utah were 

 not equal in number to those contained in 

 one city of * the effete East.' 



The ignorance of one section of this 

 country concerning another is, as before 

 hinted, a surprise to the immigrant ; but it is 

 something he would do better to understand 

 in advance, for it has to be reckoned with. 

 Americans are indeed extensive travellers, 

 and shrewd and observant beyond the 

 common way of men ; but their travelling 

 in their own land lies very much in beaten 

 tracks, and it is a truism to remark that what 

 a man learns before he makes his home in a 

 section, and what he learns after, are wide 

 as the poles asunder too wide sometimes 

 for comfort. Authors and literary people 

 generally are not a little to blame for sectional 

 ignorance publishers also, if the truth were 

 known. I was visiting once in a Southern 

 city, and found myself in a room full, as it 

 chanced, of Virginians. I ventured the re- 

 mark that I had never read a novel dealing 



