The times., 1897-08-22

WILKINS.
of his spiritual condition as compared witt
that OF youthful parson He says:
This yere gents too narrow: his hea,
is built too much the shape of a quail trap
tie may do to chase jack bbits and sech
but he's size too smallfor game like me
Save souls, says youi Why. if that onp'lits
| person was TO meet soul like ninc comm
| up the trail, he'd shorely omit what to dt
entire he'd he that stampeded. He'd be
| some hard 20 locate, / takes 1t, after
1 he meets up with a soul like mine whole
| Iot.'
| The same old gentleman on another occa
| sion explains the reason why he is '.allers
! wifeless a whole lot" The danger which
| impended over d WolfSille gentleman Is
| delicately expressed by a friend, thus
I'm powerful afraid he'd spoiled Chero-
! kee whole lot And when this same
Cherokee, who is sort of Jack Hamlin
| N O sombrero, gets out of a stage coach 10
which he is being tumbIed over by two
children (''which is about as lefreshn' 10
Cherokee as bein' burned at the stake, -
says tie Old Cattieman), and fights crowd
of Indians, and is thanked by the mother
of the infants, he says quite calmly:
'When makes the play you names. I
simply seizes on them savages that away
as an excuse to get loose from them blessed
children of youIn "a whole lot
The especial feature of this book is thor
oughly :, american. Itis the mixin gof slang,
dialect and what might be called store
talk, as distinguished from the live speech
nf no
for being "a heap petulant,'' and another
Wolfvillc gentleman explains that "a party
who's g0in' 10 shine in Arizona as a racon-
toor has done got TO cultivate direct,
incisiye style
Mr.. Lewis has a direct, incisive style.
and he surely ought TO shine in Arizona,
or anywhere else, as 'raoontoor-
There arc so many spar king bits of fun
In the book that one might quote and
quote, ana never make an end Of quot.
ing; tut one which is inirnitably way.
siSh * a character sketch of a mule. TIE
mule, explains the old Cattleman. is bad
medicine He is a kleptomaniac When
a tenderfoot essays 70 travel in compan
with the mule the owner and friend of the
mule holds for tn briefly and to the point:
Don go near him, colonel, au' particu-
lar don't 20 crowdin round TO get no r'ar
view OF him. You all has no idee of the
radius of trat mule-what you might call
his sweep You never will till he's kicked
you once or twice, and the information
amt tworthno sech price. So Iton 'treckon
I'd fool with him, none whatever.
And, s2Cshul, colonel, don't lay nothin'
round loose where this yere Jerry mule
can grab it. I'm the last freighter on the
plains to 60 slandeIin' an detractin' of a
pore. helpless mule onless it's straight; bat
If You all takes TO leavin' keepsakes an
menentos layin about casual an care
less that away, JeTry'll eat 'em, and the
first you saveys your keepsakes is within
Jerry's intorior, and thar You be-
The facr is, stranger, this Jerry mules a
thief. II he's human Jerry would be
lynche,l But otherwise he's sincere, earn
est mule, so iorgives him bein' thief an
allows it's a peccadillo v
In spite of this candid explanation Jerry
one day saunters down by the riverside,
where the colonel was taking a swim, and
he and the colonel ''get their destinles
mixed y The colonel's false teeth are file q
away in Jerry.
There is more about Jerry, but nc room
here in which to tell the tale.
Other cpics leal with the adventures OF
Cherokee Hall, from the time he entered
Wolfv,lle to the end of the book; the va
ried specimens of womankind which the
town had the good or ill-fortune to know,
two or three brushes with Indian tribes
and many Illustrations of the quaint no.
tons of honor which prevail in a landwhere
honor is homemade. The spirit which
l,rp has
adventures is that of Forty nine grown to
the stature of Ninety-seven. Itcould have
grown nowhere else but in America. 1t
possesses the stoicism of the Indian, the
grim tenacity Of the Anglo Saxon, the hot
blood of the Spaniard, and the humor- the
humor must he Indigenous. 1t is only like |
Bret Harte in dealing with similar types
The treatment Is new
Bret Harte never had Remington as an |
Illustrator, either. Remington is pecul |
iarly at home here and his ranchrT1en and |
miners and faro dealers are as good as |
his brouchos and cavalry horses, which Is |
saying ell that can be said for any soft |
Of drawing The book is one to be en- |
joyed in siuall doses at time, like whisky |
straight tits too concentrated to be read |
through at a sitting. Every touch tells
in the work of Remington, and every phrase
counts in the work of Lewis. New York:
a. Stokes Company