THE FOREIGNER TAKING AMERICAN NOTES. WAITER: "Yaas, sir; dey is two branches of our soldiery. What you see now is got up jes' fo' times o' peace and is styled alicious-what we call de raglers is only jes' fo' war." Uncle Ezek's Wisdom. A BUSYBODY is an individual who goes about stealng other people's time, and fooling away his own. THERE is truth enough in existence for a dozen worlds like this, and there are lies enough for fifty. PITY and water-gruel are much alike, and a man vill thrive on one just about as fast as on the other. THE man whose most ardent admirers are his own amily, never amounts to anything in the world. HAPPINESS is an art, and we have to learn how to be happy, just as we have to learn how to be good. If we could see ahead as well as we can see behind, most of us would take the back track at once. TO THE wicked all things are vile. THERE are few animals that you can trust with IF a man acts natural he is sure to act honest; his absolute liberty, and fewer men. conscience never made him dishonest. THE brain thinks, but the heart decides. TO BE a successful prude, a woman must be at least wo-thirds a coquette. FORMS and ceremonies are just as necessary as law und gospel; without them mankind would be no better han an organized mob. UNIFORM politeness is a species of godliness; it may not make a saint of a man, but it makes a lovely sinner. ADVERSITY links all things closer. Who ever heard of a beggar advertising for a lost dog? Uncle Ezek. But when I'm gone, who 'll ride thee, Will other understand thy playful tricks, And who will drive thee, pony, And loaned thee: how thou brokest trace and rein And, leaving him, sped home to me again! With Pen and Ink. WITH pen and ink one might indite Not mine the poem; they 'd send it back And not for me the billet-doux ; Ah me! the while I stop to think His pen,- broad-nibbed and rather stiff, Or was it brains? No ink I know So this the miracle explains, He used his pen and ink with brains. Pepita. Walter Learned. UP in her balcony where Sweet as a blossom is sweet, Often a glimpse of her face Pink as the morning is pink, I who dwell over the way Name like the song of a bird, Look where the little leaves stir! There in a blossomy blur Breaks a diminutive dawn;Dawn and the pink face of her,— Name like a lisp of the south, Fit for a rose's small mouth,Pepita ! THE DE VINNE PRESS, PRINTERS, NEW YORK. Frank Dempster Sherman. MIDWINTER NUMBER. THE CENTURY MAGAZINE. VOL. XXXV. FEBRUARY, 1888. No. 4. THE RANCH LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. IN THE CATTLE COUNTRY. ILLUSTRATIONS BY FREDERIC REMINGTON. HE great grazing lands of the West lie in what is known as the arid belt, which stretches from British America on the north to Mexico on the south, through the middle of the United States. It includes New Mexico, part of Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and the western portion of Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota. It must not be understood by this that more cattle are to be found here than elsewhere, for the contrary is true, it being a fact often lost sight of that the number of cattle raised on the small, thick-lying farms of the fertile Eastern States is actually many times greater than that of those scattered over the vast, barren ranches of the far West; for stock will always be most plentiful in districts where corn and other winter food can be grown. But in this arid belt, and in this arid belt only,-save in a few similar tracts on the Pacific slope,-stock-raising is almost the sole industry, except in the mountain districts where there is mining. The whole region is one vast stretch of grazing country, with only here and there spots of farm-land, in most places there being nothing more like agriculture than is implied in the cutting of some tons of wild hay or the planting of a gar OLD-STYLE TEXAN COWMAN. den patch for home use. This is especially true of the northern portion of the region, which comprises the basin of the Upper Missouri, and with which alone I am familiar. Here there are no fences to speak of, and all the land north of the Black Hills and the Big Horn Mountains and between the Rockies and the Dakota wheat-fields might be spoken of as one gigantic, unbroken pasture, where cowboys and branding-irons take the place of fences. The country throughout this great Upper Missouri basin has a wonderful sameness of character; and the rest of the arid belt, lying to the southward, is closely akin to it in its main features. A traveler seeing it for the first time is especially struck by its look of parched, barren desolation; he can with difficulty believe that it will support cattle at all. It is a region of light rainfall; the grass is short and comparatively scanty; there is no timber except along the beds of the streams, and in many places there are alkali deserts where nothing grows but sage-brush and cactus. Now the land stretches out into level, seemingly endless plains or into rolling prairies; again it is broken by abrupt hills and deep, winding valleys; or else it is crossed by chains of buttes, usually bare, but often clad with a dense growth of dwarfed pines or gnarled, stunted cedars. The muddy rivers run in broad, shallow beds, which after heavy rainfalls are filled to the brim by the swollen torrents, while in droughts the larger streams dwindle into sluggish trickles of clearer water, and the smaller ones dry up entirely, but in occasional deep pools. All through the region, except on the great Copyright, 1888, by THE CENTURY Co. All rights reserved. |