Omaha daily bee., 1909-08-22

leaned back in his library chair and
laughed.
You know how" he went on, "a bunch
of normally mild-mannered, not to say
demure, cowboys standing around a rail-
road station in the cow country gravely
watching a halted Pullman train filled with
fasteners will suddenly tip each other the
wink and then begin to tear around like
madmen, popping their guns and emitting
frightful 'Yee-ows!' and 'Whoop-ees! and
soaring the credulous and timid ones on
the overland train into conniptions?
when they do this. Of course, the cow
boys at the station are only funning. They
know that most of the tourists on the train
have got them all cut and dried in their
minds as wild men, and so just to start
something and enjoy a little sport they turn
loose alongside the halted train and set up
a terrific uproar, to the profound perturba-
ton of the more timorous travellers.
II saw that happen a number Of times
during the progress of rambles through the
far west. And I noticed that, oddly enough,
quite a few of the cowboys Engaging in
these fictitious riotous doings don't know
how to play the part. They weren't realis-
tic at the work. They weren't accustomed
to bowling and whooping and y~ee-owing.
So that to the discerning eye their perfor-
nance was STACEY. They were obviously
just Initiating.
well, that's the way it was with some
Of these decidedly nonbreezy western busi-
ness and professional men whom l met on
my pilgrimage.
Look here I said to quite a number
OF them after ia failed utterly to find any
naturally breezy western men anywhere,
buck up, some of you fellows, and be
breezy, won't you? I've come all the way
out here to see at least a few really and
truly breezy westerners. l haven't found
even one yet. But please don't ell me, you
folks that I've been cherishing a delusion
all my life. Be westernly breezy, some Of
you-for heavens sake, be breezy
And the western chaps, ~loung,ng around
their luxurious clubs, would laugh and
then one or two of them maybe would
start in 10 give an imitation OF the east
erner's fixed and unalterable conception of
a breezy man OF the west. Their efforts to
7 do this all rang hollow; they were of the
stage stagey-the role manifestly was dead
new and unfamiliar to them so far as act
/ ing 1t was concerned; they simply didn't
know how to be breezy western men, even
when they were trying their blamedest to
amuse a guest.
moi that, all over the west, from Hell
ena TO Santa Fe and from Omaha TO Den
yer and the slope, I didn't find these west
ems fellows, jovial, hospitable, hearty,
even rollicking, devil-may-care and some
times a bit reckless. But such traits don't
express or embody breeziness. II ever
they or their forbears were westernly
breezy, after the breezy manner In which
they've been typified, then they've wan
dered as far away from their type as the
present day horse has from his equine
ancestor that was, they say, eleven inches
high.
Il found them the bulliest fellows i'm
a~ginable to flock and foregather with, but,
hang II all, they simply were not. never
had been and could not be breezy; and I'll
tell YOU what, it's pretty hard for a man
OF my age to nave 10 surrender an idea
that he gained in his earliest years and
that chung to him through his youth. man