Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1889-07-05
OUT WEST Is VAGUE.
A RELATIVE TERM SUBJECT TO SEW
ERAL CONTINGENCIES.

One Is the Location of the Speaker Wheel.
He Uses the Expression-The Ideal. the
Real and the "Hild WoolIy"-An Incl
dent in Buena vista's Early Days.
When Horace Greeley said go west,
young man, go westl" he should have ex-
planned how far west he meant He should
have said whether he meant west of Chicago
or merely west of New York, for ''the west"
is merely relative term, and a place that in
some localities is spoken of as 1.-The west, in
other portions of America is mentioned as
tsbaek east"
In Boston and New York even Chicago is
thought of and spoken of as the west, while
in Colorado every small town in Indiana,
every hamlet in Missouri, Iowa, Kansas or
Wisconsin is mentioned as ''back east"
So the terms tout west" and ''back east"
are, after all, merely relative and mean only
so much or SO little of the real east or west as
may enter into the conception of certain
localities Nevertheless there are distinctive
sectional characteristics belonging to each.
There is an ideal west, a real west, a cultured
west, and, alas and alack-a-day, ''too, too
utterly wild, woolly west!"
THE IDEAL AND REAL.
The ideal west is ''the land of the free and
tine home of the brave" 1t is redeemed, re-
gAne1 ated and disenthralled from the tout
worn" creeds of materialistic and often
corrupt civilization 1t is not afraid to say
that its soul is its own lest it should lose
sairne or risk the loss of u dollar. 1t has no
exaggerated ideas in regard to the value of
money. 1t has "old fashioned" notions Of
propriety and has no foolish atfectations,
fondly supposed to be $50 English, you
IT, bo. e+,.
dignity without pomposity, sympathy with
out ''gush," and discriminating hospitality
that never fails to render ''honor to whom
honor is DUE" The ideal west has liberty
without license, conformity without servility,
ambition without small trickery, and a mag
nifcent enterprise that means devotion to
noble uses
This is the ideal west and it is fair as the
moon, bright as the sun, and to all forms of
4tgenteel ignorance" it is indeed terrible as an
army with banners for it has ''frankness
in saying what others only think"
The real west differs from the ideal and is
open to the same objection advanced by Mr..
Howells young lady who refused her lover
because he was ''too much of a mixture"
The real west is like merchants lob lot,"
where twenty-five cents will buy an article
worth fifty cents or one worth only ten cents,
according to the discrimination of the buyer.
There is modified west where certain land
marks enable one to feel that he has "got out
@f the wilderness" of utter chaos Reasonable
concessions to long established and widely &C
eepted customs take away the ''stranger-in-a-
strsaage-land" feeling incident to the totally
unaees1stomed and one is given ''leave to be-"
THAT ,discloses in very short time the nature
and extent of his possibilities and limitations.
The cultured west is the ideal west and is
perhaps "a dream of Utopia, since it has both
vigor and elegance, both law and liberty,
power without tyranny, and an independ-
ence whose most eager and joyous manifesto
tion is to succor the weak and comfort the
faint hearted and lend hand to help every
benefcent influence.
THE WILD AND wooLLY" WEST.
The wild woolly" is kind according to its
ednception of Blindness" Sensitive people
sometimes shrink, as from a red hot iron,
when this kindness" happens to touch a
~t.galled spot" but in that case they are
livery sensitive" or 'real cranky" or saw
fully exacting," or "better go back east if
they don't like our west" Nevertheless,
kindness is kindness and not to be spurned
whatever its manifestation.
To illustrate: A woman once died in the
town of Buena Vista, Colo. She was the
mother of four or five children, and the en-
tire family lived in two small rooms and
drank the dregs of prosaic and repulsive
poverty. The woman died suddenly and died
in red flannel underwear, that seemed to
make death more hideous.
Nothing in her surroundings but the chill
dren suggested anything not simply repul-
sive.
Moth how he o1xr
thetic, and when the husband and father at
tempted to kill himself the sympathies of
the entire community were aroused and the
little hut was packed with sympathetic
neighbors and friends anxious to render the
last honors to the dead and the first offices of
kindness to the living. The funeral sermon
was preached in one of the village churches,
and there was not vacant seat.
The dead womans female relatives came,
dressed in 'their Sunday BEST" and with
profuson of hair dressing suggestive of in
tervals when curling irons had usurped the
throne of grief and antcipations of the
funeral had obtained the mastery over sor-
rows mad abandon. The funeral sermon
was Literary" effort, and at its close the
congregation was requested to laval them
selves of the corpse" by passing up one aisle
and down another, in order that they might,
by viewing the deceased, who was men
toned as ''the deceased, show their ire
spects to the dead" There was nothing to
do but to march up with the procession and
view the woman in her coffin, if one would
not refuse respects"
She had died in red flannel she had been
sallow and thin and violently en- deshabille
in her death hour, yet in her coffin she wore
white tarletan and artificial flowers made of
paper, home made, and evidently made for
the occasion. Her face was covered with
cosmetics and her forehead profusely orna-
mented With "slate pencil curls," narrow,
stiff, burned and laborious curls that would
have made professional hardresser hang
himself in rage at this travesty of his art.
Thus did the kindness of the wild woolly"
manifest itself and therein was it perhaps
quite as successful as in its intellectual
Salads" literary lunches" and cultured
circles" and yet it is suggestive that large
majority of ''the wild woolly west" were
born in New England and emigrated from
the rural districts there and elsewhere
Agnes Leonard Hill in Chicago Times.