The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1911-07-06

one must realize that the Captain
Jack Crawford of today is six-foot,
broad-shouldered, agile man of the
sixties, with magnificent head of
flowing hair, the clear eyes, the clean
skin and the steady nerves of q boy
of eighteen, and he attributes all his
physical perfectness to a life in the
open and total abstinence from in
tOxicants.
''Here is something that should be
suppressed by law and the publish
ers sent to the penitentiary, said
Captain Jack Crawford to a reporter,
holding up dime novel. 'This was
handed me this afternoon by young
man who asked me to look it over
and tell him if it was true story
and if I knew any of the bold he
roes who figure in it. 1t is a trashy
blood and thunder conglomeration
of the most improbable rot purport-
ing to be a true story of the far
west The man who wrote it was
never in the west, never saw an In
dian outside of a show, nor a scout,
hunter or trapper, but. Matched the
stuff in his own brain Just listen
to this paragraph: Naomi, the only
daughter of Red Cloud, the dread
chief of the Sioux, was as beautiful
as the summer dawn. A little above
the medium height, her form perfect
IN every line and curve, her every
movement the very poetry of motion,
her step elastic and as light as the
lawns. Her large, brown eyes
seemed to pour forth an enhancing
stream of liquid light from a face of
surprising loneliness. Her long,
black hair seemed jetty cataract of
lovely profusion pouring over her
we'll formed shoulders, and was
crowned with coronet of silver,
decorated with the choicest plumage
of the lordly eagle. When she
smiled two rows of ivory that a
queen would envy, peeped forth from
the portals of her bewitching mouth.
Her dress was of fawn skin, pro-
fusely decorated with beads, porcu-
pine quills and silver ornaments, and
with womanly instinct she had fitted
it so that one could trace the per-
feet outline of her incompatible
form beneath it's soft, plant folds
BAH" said the scout, throwing
the book away in disgust, that ac-
tually sickens me. I think I once
saw this beautiful creature at the
Red Cloud agency. She was sitting
behind one Of the warehouses sun
ming herself, and was running an
index finger through the 'luxuriant'
hair as if she had lost something.
Instead of the dress of fawn skin
she didn't seem to wear much of
anything but an air of abstraction.
| don't know anything about her
elastic step for | didn't see her on
her feet, but I can vouch for her
body being elastic, for when | last
saw her she was gracefully and dex-
trously trimming her toe-nails with
her pearly teeth, inserting one toe
after another into the portals OF
her bewitching mouth.
81 tell you," said Captain Jack
warmly, "the newspapers ought to
make war on the publishers of such
stuff and drive them from their &C
cursed business. The people little
know the number of boys they ruin
every year They fire the youthful
brain with their records of daring
deeds that were never accomplished
by border heroes who never existed
They record the most absurd impos-
sibilities and draw pictures of the
west as far different from the reali.
ty as an Apache Indian is different
from heavenly angel. Nothing but
blood and murder and daring deeds
in which the bold scout always res.
cues some girl from the savages anC
Furnishes her for getting into the
trouble by marrying her"
did you ever know any boys tt
come west through reading these
stories?" asked the reporter.