The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1902-07-26
Kate Stephens Writes of Owen
Wister's {" The Virginian."
A Strong Story of the Western
Plains.
HERO is A REAL ONE.
Reader is Conscious of Flesh
and Blood Presence.
Authors Style in Keeping With
His Subject.

..The virginian. a Horseman of the
Plains by owen a,,+ Wister i, author Nth san Of
Red Men s ana w Riosranh1, M atc Etc
With ilustrations by o Arthur 1 Keller.
This title calls at once to mind
Thackeray's THE Virginians." In other
ways than title this book is singular
where Thackeray's is plural. In the
persons represented, for instance. Fifty
years ago Thackeray was always pre-
Senting a complex and numerously peo-
pied drama. Novelists of our day fight
shy of such involutions as the masters
of the last generation freely used.
Mr.. Wister. however, must claim the
same privilege the author of THE Vlr-
ginians" put in words: Occasionally
to step down from the platform and
talk about them (his characters); II
they are good and kindly, to love and
shake them by the hand; if they are
silly, to laugh at them confidentially in
the readers sleeve; if they are wicked
and heartless, to abuse them in the
strongest terms politeness admits Of
for to do other would come from one
who has no reverence except for pros
perfty, and no eye for anything beyond
success"
1.-The virginian" is not a Virginian
except in birth and tradition. He is
a young horseman of the plains, who
ran away from his home in the Vir-
gin1a mountains when he was IA years
old, and since that time has 'srustled'-
for himself from Texas to Puget Sound
and from Arizona to North Dakota.
Nature gave him a fine body and
large soul Life made him broad
'.and then took his chance away" But
not quite away He had a desperate
struggle, and came out ''On top. as he
would phrase it. That is the story of
the book; and since no one could tell
it as well as the author the whole re-
lating belongs to him.
The time of the tale is in the eighties;
when the railways had for some years
opened for peopling the upper half of
the great shelving table land lying be-
tween the lazy waters of the Mississippi
and the watershed of the Rockies;
when there was general concession that
some OF the farm lands in the east
long sustaining a staunch race, were
crowded or worn out; when the laws
made by the territorial legislatures of
wyoming and neighboring common
WealthS permitted a vast ranging of
cattle, and the grass Indigenous to the
immense lands of the territories was
fresh. uncropped, unbeaten. 1t was
these conditions that led to the develop
ment of the cowboy, Not only these
legal and physical conditions were the
cause of his coming into being, but
commercial one also, the growth of the
packing houses, the expectation of beef,
etc. This story falls at the very height
OF the period of the cowboy, when he
had thoroughly developed his elemental
character. and before the break in his
power, which came in the early nineties,
was in sight The virgfnian, the hero
himself, is a cowpuncher.
1t was strong character that de-
veioped in that play ground of young
men," Only the large elements of hui
man nature seemed to have expression
the more animal elements you feel at
times. In the weight of the brain of
such men the muscular would far out
balance grey matter
The heroes of the time had first and
foremost a strict sense of justice,
primary justice which shoots and hangs.
as did the Vfrginian upon conviction that
its victim is an evil-doer, an enemy to
the social order about him; but with O.
human-heartedness that is afterwards
haunted by his former friendliness with
the sacrifice to his sense of duty.
Honesty, and love of honesty, is another
of the elements of this boy-ma A face
to-face- with-nature conviction of his
personal dignity is another. humble
ness to learn is another. Another was
nothing by halves. Another was the
ability to fall in love, and the more
feminine the woman the greater the
infatuation of the hero.
out OF such men romanceS are made
have been made since Homer sang the
Had Homer's heroes are-many of
them-cowboys- What else was Achilles?
What else were Arthur's knights of the
1eodiio IdOiC L HIS NlTSlIl1dn is mucn
like Achilles, much like the knights
whose deeds Sir Thomas Mallory re-
counts. But he is a product of de-
mocracy and springs from the people,
While the, cowboys of the early feudai
days of Homer, and the later feudal
times of Mallory, were offspring of a
most favored class. He springs from the
people, indeed, but the milieu in which
he dwelt came in it's latter days to have
much that was feudaL
The heroic cow puncher has still an
other element, without which human
nature is ,lugdbrious mixture, and his
large possession of it gives one of its
great charms to this book 1t is bed
rock humor. The Virginian is full to
overlooking of this great quality. 1t
mellows the hardships of his life as he
views it, and shines with cleaning light
in all his deeds before our eyes and the
pages that recount them. It is the force
by which he overcomes mutiny. It
stands hin in good stead in his love af-
fairs; 1T serves him when he meets the
bishop before the wedding day. 1t is
his faithful ally because it is an essen
tai part of himself Without 1t he could
never have been a cow puncher. 1t
makes the chapter In a State of SIM
one of the most laughter giving of writ
ten things. Not even a humorless person
could read these pages without as the
author says he was constrained to do
although with face deep in pillow, max
Ing sounds as of a hen who has just laid,
an egg
The virginian here shown is distinctly
a genuine personality He really has
lived, and the people with him have
lived. They are real things the author
tells Of. Such writing as this we call
fiction, but it is sometimes the truest
fact Doubtless Mr. Wister in WyominS
as tenderfoot, knew just such people
and just such events as he has here
connected into most captivating and
thoroughly good story.
The feeling of reality about the book
Is unusual among our late stories
which are often a series of dancing
marionettes. When You hear the yir-
ginian talk you are conscious of the
presence of flesh and well-oxygenated
blood, not of a decked-out puppet, or
brass-throated horn reeling sentences
in cracked falsetto.
1t is a broad-gauged story, evincing
large sympathies and large views. 1t
is moreover. as the foreword says, an