The Spirit of the West
BY HENRY LOOMIS NELSON, L.H.D.
. . . .now promises
Upon this land a thousand thousand blessings,
Which time shall bring to ripeness.
WHY do the mockers call it the "Woolly West"? This is a question that must go unanswered, for no answer is to be found in any mind. A woolly man is not unknown in any of the haunts of men, and some professors have met him in the class-room.
"Explain the pessimism of Ecclesiastes," said the professor of a not far-distant university.
"I do not understand the question," answered the football giant.
"What is the difficulty?"
"I don't know what the question means."
"You know what Ecclesiastes means?"
"Oh yes," said the captain of elevens; "it is a book in the Bible."
"Then it must be pessimism that troubles you," suggested the amazed (he was young) professor.
"That's it; that's it," bubbled the catapult.
"Why, you must know that; you cannot be ignorant of that. You know the words pessimism and optimism, do you not? Pessimism and optimism, optimism and pessimism; you certainly know what they mean?"
"Oh yes," replied he of the well-greaved shins; "I know what they mean, but I can't tell them apart."
Now here was intellectual wool; but you will not find its like in the far-reaching West,—or if you do, its victim will be on his way back East with pessimistic views of the possibilities of the new country. The prevailing element of the intellectual atmosphere of the West is ozone.
It is in this far region that we find the adventurous colonists of the country. Individual and social traits in this land of at least outward equality are atmospheric and geographical. They may be realizations of our Western visions, accentuations of proclivities not wholly unfamiliar to us, but with us they are not traits, as they are in the West. Perhaps attention has been arrested by an apparent misuse of the word Western, but it was deliberate, for we of the Atlantic fringe especially are of the Western habit of nearest Europe, while they of the plains and mountains are, to some extent, our Orientals. When we go among them we visit our dreamers of dreams, differing, from the nature of their blood, from the star-gazers of the real East because the best among them dream things that they can do.
When we turn our backs upon the "twin cities" or upon Duluth, we leave the meeting of the sections. Emigration within our boundaries, as they say in the newer part of the country, has moved by jumps. First went the New-Englander and the western New-Yorker into that Northwestern territory which is ours—and this cannot be too frequently emphasized—by the gracious desire of Lord Shelburne to do his best for reconciliation with the conquering colonies, and against the strong opposition of Vergennes. This is well to think of when we are erecting statues to our allies in war: but for our English friends in peace, we would now be contemplating the possibility of the adoption of Chamberlain's hostile tariff policy by the people dwelling on what would have been, if France had prevailed, Canadian lands, but which now constitute the States of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. These broad, rich States were settled from the farthest East, and are the better for it, as the East is better for the projection of its stock into the middle of the land. When the time came, the movement westward made a new leap, and this time the children of the Middle
