The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-01-18

There is a spirit of freshness and visor about stories of life in the west which IS very inspiring and few authors write ot the far vest with the same touch ana por as Owen wister, who knows the To- cality by long and intimate personal con- tact.
 Owen Mister is lawyer and litterateur of Philadelphia. He has written nunpei of good stories and magazine artieles' ou' his most notable work contains his nap py descriptions of frontier life. hle that is essentially American in every aspect. and yet phase of life that Ike the old-time negro in the south' mas already become a thing of the past Apropos of this the author says m tue preface to his new work "The Virsiniah'
 'Indeed, when you look at the roo. oi the matter, 1t is a colonial romance for Wyoming between 1874 and losV was colony as wild as was Virginia one nun dred years earlier. We know quite well the common understanding of the term historical novel; Hugh Wynne exactly Ats f. But Silas Lapham is novel as perfectly historical as is Hugh Wynne, for it pictures an era ana personines tyne. It matters not that In the one we find George Washington and in the other none save ina aginary figures; else The Scarlet Letter were not historical. Any narrative which presents faithfully day and a generation is of necessity historical md this one presents Wyoming between 1874 and 1890. Had you left New York or San Francisco at 10 o'clock this morning, by noon the day after tomorrow you could step out at Cheyenne. Then you .0ff hot the subject of my picture, yet you would look around you in vain for the reality It is a vanished world. The mountains are there, far and shining, and the sun light, and the infinite earth, and the air that seems forever the true foun- tain of youth-but where is the buffalo, and the wild antelope and the horseman with his pasturing thousands? You wait for the horseman to appear. But he will never come again. He rides in his his toric yesterday. You will no more see 4him gallop out of the unchanging silence athan you will see Columbus on the un- Changing sea come sailing from Palos with his caravels" Possibly the best ework Owen Mister has written about this now historic life in the west was Lin Me Jean;" he was not only the purest type zpf COW -puncher, but there was also the finest quality of humor tnroughout the entire story. And yet in some respects ms. new WOrK FIne NnSlnldn IS eNtH superior. There is throughout a truer flavor of genuine human interest in the story and "The Virginian" stands out in his vigor and originality as the truest 1exponent of his kind. Again the author says in his beautiful preface, What is become of the horseman, the cow-punch- Ter the last romantic figure upon our soil? For he was romantic. Whatever he did, he did with his might. The bread that he earned was earned hard, the wages that he squandered were squander- ed hard-half a years pay sometimes gone in a night-"blown in,'' as he ex- pressed it, or ''blowed in" to be per- fectly accurate. The cow-puncher's un- governed hours did not unman him. If he gave his word. he kept it. Wall Street would have found him behind the Hines Nor did he talk lewdly to women; Newport would have thought him old Fashioned"
 The story of ''The virginian'' is human and alive, and as you read, you feel all the vibrating, pulsing life of the ex- Npansive American west. The sympathy of the reader is aroused on the very first page, and although the story is a long one. one's interest never flags for the men and women are so real that they stand out vividly before the minds eye In the story are all the types which personify this extremely picturesque ex- istence from Judge Henry. the gentle man ranchman and his wild foreman, to the New England school-marm, much like being from another planet in this wild and untutored section. But all unite in forming a humanizing setting for the one central figure In the person of the Extremely interesting 'Virginian." Of him the author says, 'Lounging there at ease against the wall was slim young giant, more beautiful than pictures, His broad, soft hat was pushed back, a loose- knotted, dull-scarlet handkerchief sag ged from his throat and one casual thumb was hooked in the cartridge belt that santed across his hips. He had plain- aE come many miles from somewhere across the vast horizon, as the dust upon him slowed. His boots were white with 1t. His ovcralls were gray with 1t. The V veatssr boat-n bloom of his face shone thr s-ssA it q >sily, as the ripe peaches