Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1890-02-05
REAL vs.. IDEAL.
Comparison of Genuine with Imaginary
Swashbuckiers.
From the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

SwashbuckIers.
From the st. Paul Pioneer Press.
We're it possible to convince the
youthful feeder on dime novels that
the most notorious of the reckless out
! laws. over whose 10-cent lives he gloats,
| are, or were at least, gentlemanly in
department, some good might be &C.
complished. 1t would go a long ways
in correcting the offensive manners of
the embryo desperate, lead him to Gull
tivate pleasing address, and, perhaps,
eventually yank him back into the
benefcent restrictions of society.
Now. the dashing, devil-may care
swash-buckler of whom the American
youth reads in the lurid literature of
the day does not and never did exist
in real life in the West or South. The
writer's who promote such stories are
totally ignorant of the chara cters whom
they attempt to describe. The drunken
cowboy who shoots out street lamps in
Colorado, Arizona, or Texas, is not a
typical desperate. Ali the 40-rod
whisky distilled west of the Alleghenies
will not make man eminent in the
desperate business. Slade, Sam. Bass,
Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Ben Thomp-
son, and kingfsher of Texas. were all
quiet, courteous, and gentlemanly in
department. especially toward citizens
who did not profess to belong to their
set. All over Texas Ben Thompson's
note was negotiable paper, and no man
who ever presented him with bill but
was treated with polite business court
esy.
| was introduced to Thompson 1T Aus
tin, Tex, and the meeting was not in
taloon, gam bling house, or even no.
sci. The place was in quiet, orderly
tOa
land his wife were eating strawberry
cream at a table near by TO coterie of
high school girls, one OF them being the
daughter of ex-Gov. Ireland, of Texas.
Thompson was a small-sized man, yet
not slender. He was elegantly, vet not
showily dressed; his clothes indicated
a correct taste, diamond stud and a
thread of gold watch-chain comprising
all bis personal jewelry. He was a
handsome man of As, with small black
mustache and hazel eyes. Yet this man
had a record of having killed thirteen
white men, and twice that number
of Mexicans and Indians. A few
months later he was himself
killed in Sau Antonio, along
with King fsher, in hand to hand con-
f1ict with two other men in the Vaude-
vile Theater. He was never known to
take an unfair advantage of an enemy,
a majority of his victims having had the
first shot at him. Once, in a store, he
ordered man with whom he was en-
gagged in lively dispute to go outside
and pass around the block 10 the right;
he would pass around to the left and
meet him. They did so; the man blazed
away at Thompson with shotgun load
ed with buckshot, missed, went into the
air at the crack of Ben's revolver, and
fell corpse.
And thus with every case of Thomp-
sons numerous killings; the prelimin-
aries were always favored with a dash
of dramatic sensationalism. AS Thomp-
son and his wife passed out of the ice
cream bazar / noticed that she had but
one arm. The other had been shat
tered by Winchester ball in Denver,
when she threw it across Ben's head
upon discovering a crouching form
drawing bead on him. At the time of
his death Thompson was city marshal
of Austin. He owned one of the finest
residences in the capital, for which
Sweet, of the Texas SiftIngs, paid him
$5Uper month rent.
'But, bless you," Sweet nsed to say,
81 dare not sit in the window evenings
for fear some up-country jimplicute
will take me for Ben Thompson and
shoot me. He's bound to 60 that way
sooner or later"
And he did. But he was gentle
man