New Britain herald., 1915-03-02
Disputing Over Frank James.
(NeW York Times.J

(New York Times.y
 No man of from thirty-f to fifty years of age can read without pain the discussion that has been going on about the character of Frank James since that excellent bandit died With ruthless hands some of
 these writers are stripping away the
 illusions with which the schoolboys of from 1875 to 1890 invested him and his greater brother. Jesse. Some
 of them even go so far as to portray
 these heroes as ruffians without 8 redeeming trait, even that of courage, and to give chapter and verse for it.
 One of them reaches the limit by de-
 priving us of our cherished belief that, whatever Frank and Jesse may have been in later life, they were at least brave Confederate soldiers, and
 giving facts to prove that their mii- tary career consisted in robbing banks and murdering occasional belated federals who had lost their way.
 In the name, not of romance, but of the childhood of a quarter of a century ago, we protest. It is as if one were to strip the mask from
 Robin Hood or to prove that Dick Turpin was an ordinary gunman like J nothing sacred from the iconoclast?
 We can stand-reluctantly the
 proofs that Pocahontas did not really
 rescue John Smith, that Paul Revere's ride was an incident dupli- cated more effectively by William Dawes. But are we to give up our dime novels? These dime novels have long subsided into limbo; they have been palely replaced by so-called
 "libraries''-the Nick Carter, the
 Boy Terrors, or whatever may be their corrupt names Autographed color pictures surmount their double columned dulness; it is sign of the progress of the age, doubtless, but what a substitute is that for Beadle's and The Wide Awake Library and The Boys of New York? Look at tho tagging messenger boy of today, com fortably ensconced in trolley car and reading one of these ineffective limitations, and compare him with the boy in school quarter of century ago, surreptitiously reading "The l James Boys Great Haul" and then passing it across the aisle to a school mate.
 To them the James oBys were not 1 real characters any more than Robin 1 I1OO0 was to lnClll llNC or SIX years 1 before. They were fairyland heroes. 1 The story of their crimes was part of i the strange fantastic haze that hangs l around the imagination of childhood l and translnutes all things into good. 1 Surely the James Boys robbed banks; l why not? It was not the robbery
 but the adventure that captivated the l childish ina agitation. None of us 1 really imagine the James Boys as human beings, any more than we did 1 Jonathan Wild. And now that we l are older and know better, something 1 of that happy, innocent, and irres- 1 ponsible love for the bandit of our ! imagination, the bandit who never :, existed except in that imagination 1 clings to us still; and it is as hard to 1 hear Frank and Jesse James cooly | dissected as common criminals as it i would be to hear Claude Duval ] treated as if he were a gunman.
 Stop, analysts and historians; leave
 us some of our illusions. Maybe
 they were common desperadocs. But 1 are you going to deprive us also of Old Sleuth, Old Cap Collier, Chips and | Chin Chin. Shorty in Search of His 1 Dad, and all the things that made | recess pleasant and school hours en- l dura Die to us stop at FTank ana
 Jesse James, and don't deprive us
 of Frank Wright, the Young En- aineer; or Durango Tom, or the works of Col Prentiss Ingrah ham and Ned Buntline The line must be drawn 1 somewhere. Were these conoclasts 1 ever children?
 Frank James was not a real per l son; we refuse to believe it, despite
 the newspaper obituaries. He was
 an imaginary character, whose deeds
 many a little boy now merged into l a serious and illusioned man, used to con in the hours when he should
 have been studying geography and
 than pass stcalthily to his chum in
 the next scat, hoping the teacher
 would not see him, and feeling a
 greater sense of guilt over it than
 ever did the real Frank James after
 he had held up a train.