i 
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In the “Garden State” 
By PAULINA BRANDRETH 
T HROUGHOUT the Middle West, not only 
on first, but also on more intimate acquaint¬ 
ances, two existing conditions invariably 
impress one. These are the vast extent of arable 
territory, and the complete differentiation in the 
landscape, from anything known east of the Mis¬ 
sissippi. In Kansas especially are both these 
features forcibly apparent, where the country 
exhibits a character and individuality absolutely 
its own. It was long ago given the picturesque 
and appropriate title of “the Garden State,” a 
name, which, no doubt, as the years go on, will 
cleave to it more closely. But at the present day 
it still bears traces of an old primal wildness, 
and as yet the plow has not entirely succeeded 
in obliterating a memory of the red man. 
As a State it may be truthfully regarded as 
the golden heart of the West, and what with 
its green hills, fertile plains and river bottoms, 
and above all its generous even-tempered climate 
it forms a combination not easy to find else¬ 
where. One thinks of Kansas as lying directly 
ander the palm of the sun, always green, always 
smiling; and the bubbling villanelle of the lark 
seems adequately to express the nature of its 
spirit. As with all good things, however, a pinch 
of bitter is mingled with the sweet, and the 
winds of the region are proverbial. When they 
descend upon the land it is with the honest en¬ 
deavor to blow; and blow they do in no half¬ 
hearted fashion. Whirlwinds of dust fill the 
air, the hills are half hidden in a yellow haze, 
and the cottonwoods rend and crack as the gale 
goes rattling through their tops. While such 
tempers are alike disturbing and undesirable, the 
breezes of spring, and no doubt summer as well, 
stand in direct contrast. They seem to breathe 
the cool vigor of the Pacific, mingled with an 
indescribable fragrance, wafted from the grass 
lands of the great Southwest, or coming out of 
the north, they suggest the aroma of a far-reach¬ 
ing country, whose sky line is agleam with ripen¬ 
ing wheat. Even as the one whispers of tinkling 
music and sunny Mexico, of oceans booming and 
rivers slumbering southward, so does the other 
bring to mind visions of a more remote, raw 
and unconquered dominion, lapping over into 
the treasuries of the North, and backed by the 
green glaciers of the Alaskan ranges. 
It is this definite sense of expanse, this re¬ 
alization of vast uncramped boundaries that 
warms the heart as we travel westward. Here¬ 
in lies the spell which holds, and calls us back. 
There is so much of earth and air and sky that 
we think with an honest shudder of civilized 
confinement, and the ugly precincts of smoke¬ 
laden cities. I suppose, however, that its real 
secret will never be divulged, being 6ne of those 
things which remain unuttered for the simple 
reason that nobody can find words adequate to 
convey its full significance. Whatever it may 
be, it seizes certain individuals with a life-long 
grip, and among us there are those who, having 
once felt the martial sun of the West on our 
cheek, will not rest content until we feel it 
there again. 
In the autumn of 1906 I made my first trip 
to Fort Riley, and five months later found me 
speeding once more toward the land of "Smoky 
Water” with the profitable sensation that I was 
putting into action a long concocted plan, and 
with the firm belief hat it would be desirably 
fulfilled. This latter intimation proved indeed 
prophetical, • and for two months I drank the 
unstinted upland air and lived among people of 
whom it is good to think about. Now, looking 
back, its memory seems like a well-thumbed 
book, on every page of which stands out some 
fragrant and pleasant passage. 
The aspect of the country since the preceding 
November had naturally undergone a complete 
transformation. Instead of sober browns and 
grays of autumn the hills rolled away to the 
horizon in smooth green billows, the cotton¬ 
woods, brushed with young leaves, rustled over¬ 
head, and the cardinals sang and romped in the 
budding canons. Day after day the sky opened 
wide and deep and blue, while buzzards swung 
aloft in slow rhythmic circles; and day after day 
the hills waxed greener, and in spite of occas¬ 
ional snow squalls the valleys continued to bloom 
into a mist of vernal colors. At night the atmos¬ 
phere exhaled perfumes of newly-tilled soil, for 
sloping as it does from west to east with a gentle 
inclination of some seven feet to the mile, the 
land forms an ideal farming country, and its 
wheat, rye and alfalfa fields, mounting in broad 
luxuriant swells against the horizon, and rippled 
into a silver sheen by summer breezes, are fit 
subjects to inspire the maker of pastoral verse. 
Not far from Riley the old Mormon trail 
crosses the hills in what is now a well defined 
and well traveled road, while away to the south, 
blood-stained and historic, the Sante Fe trail 
winds along the Arkansas closely followed by 
the railroad. Strange as it may seem, there still 
lurks an atmosphere of those raw pioneer days, 
and when we chance to get up on some com¬ 
manding promontory and look for miles in every 
direction without seeing human sign or habita¬ 
tion, we experience an odd sensation as if, in¬ 
stead of the new, we were regarding the old, 
and that the next hillcrest may conceal a herd 
of mighty buffaloes, the smoke of an Indian en¬ 
campment, or the bulky white form of a prairie 
schooner. The former are merely chimeras of 
days long past, but the latter exists, and fre¬ 
quently one sees a family traveling gypsy fashion 
through the State, going north or south as the 
case may be. And so what was once uncouth 
and untamed has become passive and serene. 
The dust of slain settlers has long since blown 
away, and the primitive turned rustic. Years 
of massacre and strife and factional upheavals 
have been silenced and forgotten, and except 
for her rugged canons and unshaven buttes, 
Kansas wears an expression of cultivated beauty 
and repose. 
An army post in the day time exhibits to full 
extent the activity of the national spirit. From 
reveille until sunset the routine moves forward 
with smooth clock-like precision. Everybody is 
working and everybody for that matter seems 
contented. Men in blue and khaki come and 
go, mounted troopers clatter by, batteries with 
clanking gears and scarlet fluttering guidons 
rumble past, and only after the sharp blare of 
retreat, accompanied by the boom of the sun¬ 
set gun, does the post settle itself to a few hours’ 
of well deserved rest. Then the loud voice of 
the day quiets down to a subdued murmur, and 
as the color deepens in the west the night jars 
are unleashed and go twanging across the yellow , 
sky, while from some shadowed ravine drifts 
the low crooning of a wild dove. By 10 o’clock 
the metallic tinkle of a piano in the barracks has 
been hushed, and a short time later the keen, 
thrilling voice of a bugle echoes taps back and. 
forth from cavalry to artillery post. 
There is something unaccountably sweet and 
irresistible about this silver-throated instrument, 
and heard with a half drowsy ear, it awakens a 
soothing undercurrent of thought, as well as 
lowering one more quietly and serenely into the, 
night of sleep. After the last note has died 
away, silence, profound and complete, descends, 
from the hills, broken only by the occasional 
ring of a horse’s hoofs as the guard goes his 
rounds under the shining starlight. 
The American “Tommy Atkins” stands for 
the personification of a happy-go-lucky mortal. 
He works and plays with a certain jaunty ease 
that characterizes him apart from the rest of 
mankind. Nothing seems to worry him, and he 
follows his vocation, careless of the world at 
large, and apparently well pleased with life. 
But chief among his individualities and one 
which invariably strikes an outsider is the free 
and almost boyish enthusiasm he displays on 
certain occasions. This virtue being somewhat! 
scarce, at least in modern times, wears a favored 
and agreeable countenance. 
I remember one afternoon a series of Roman 
and Cossack races was given by the soldiers on 
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