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1831 AD (search for this): chapter 10
e that some of the vast energy hitherto employed in the task of opening the West will presently be spared from the toil of practical life, to give a good account of itself in literature. Early writers about the West. The first authors who came from the West to delight our young people at the East were. Audubon, the ornithologist, who had a way of interspersing between his bird sketches certain intermediate chapters called Episodes, usually personal narratives in the woods, beginning in 1831--and Timothy Flint, who wrote Ten years in the Valley of the Mississippi (1826), and also who wrote from Cincinnati to the London Athenaeum and had his books translated into French. These books, with those of Peter Parley (sometimes written by Hawthorne), gave a most vivid charm to the Western wilds and rivers. In The pioneers Cooper made us already conscious citizens of a great nation, and took our imagination as far as the Mississippi. Lewis and Clark carried us beyond the Mississippi
1851 AD (search for this): chapter 10
audience as Jefferson's imaginary dog Schneider in Rip Van Winkle, for whom he was always vainly whistling. This unseen singer, we were told, would thrill every heart with his song, Is it Raining, mother Dear, in South Boston? or, Mother, you are one of my parents, and could, we were assured, extract a fiver from the pocket of the hardest-hearted man in the audience. This was the kind of platform humor which captured two continents, and substituted for the saying of M. Philarete Chasles in 1851: All America has not produced a humorist, the still more dangerous assumption that America produced nothing else. The European popularity of this American humor was in part based, no doubt, upon the natural feeling of foreigners that something new is to be demanded of a new country, and this novelty is more naturally looked for, by the mass of readers, in costumes and externals than in the inward spirit. Much of the welcome was given most readily to what may be called the Buffalo Bill sp
1890 AD (search for this): chapter 10
rrific and almost sublime, in the very heart of the continent, nay, far east of that,--for Kentucky itself is barely a quarter way across it. Consider that this was but little more than a century ago, and then think of that vast continent now settled, cultivated, organized, schooled, first divided into territories, then into states, counties, towns, villages, all filled with people who can read and write and look to the philanthropist for a public library. The superintendent of the census in 1890 announced officially that there was no longer any frontier line in the population map. The continent has been crossed, the first rough conquest of the wilderness has been accomplished. This is the region to which we are now to look for authors. All the great literary territories on the continent of Europe, Italy, Germany, France, Austro-Hungary, could be laid together in a small portion of it. The mere size of a country is not a criterion of its productiveness in art, but it is reasonable
1835 AD (search for this): chapter 10
most vivid charm to the Western wilds and rivers. In The pioneers Cooper made us already conscious citizens of a great nation, and took our imagination as far as the Mississippi. Lewis and Clark carried us beyond the Mississippi (1814). About 1835 Oregon expeditions were forming, and I remember when boys in New England used to peep through barn doors to admire the great wagons in which the emigrants were to travel. Then came Mrs. Kirkland's A New home, Who'll follow? （1839). Besides this we had Irving's Tour of the prairies (1835) and his Astoria the following year. The West was still a word for vast expeditions, for the picturesqueness and the uncertainty of Indian life, and not for the amenities of a civilized condition. Aspirants for literary fame were not long lacking, to be sure, but as most of their work was based upon reading rather than experience, it had nothing characteristically Western about it. Most of them turned instinctively, ere long, to the Atlantic coast fo
1872 AD (search for this): chapter 10
wers, but of a well-nigh fatal instinct for superrefinement in life and art. So subtle and detached is his later method, that it has been said of him, not unfairly, Even his cosmopolitanism has its limitations; to be truly cosmopolitan a man must be at home even in his own country. Mark Twain. Over-refinement is not the fault with which Mark Twain can ever be accused; his reckless robustness, indeed, constitutes his main strength. I myself was first introduced to Mark Twain's books in 1872 by an unimpeachable English authority-on a somewhat different line from Mr. Clemens,--namely, Charles Darwin. What! he said to me, you have never read Mark Twain? I always keep his Jumping Frog on a chair by my bedside that I may turn to it in case of sleeplessness! and however doubtful this form of compliment may appear, it was certainly something that it cheered the wakeful hours of so great a brain. It is not to be admitted, however, that Englishmen have ever been very discriminating
1820 AD (search for this): chapter 10
ree fourths of the continent was a trackless wilderness; yet its recent development has been so rapid that it is hard for us actually to realize what that utter vacancy of human life meant to those who first had experience of it. It is not yet fifty years since an Eastern traveler who had ventured as far as Kentucky brought back this tale of An Empty the early solitude there as it had Continent. been fifty years before that time. The first explorer, Daniel Boone, he told us, who died in 1820, used to travel absolutely alone for weeks together in the Kentucky forests with only his rifle for company. He could not take even a dog for fear of the Indians; and once he had to travel a hundred miles on a single meal. There were springs in the Licking Valley where twenty thousand buffaloes came and went, and whole Indian tribes followed their tracks. The Indians never once even saw Boone, for they did not suspect that any white man could be there; and he avoided their tracks and never
1839 AD (search for this): chapter 10
awthorne), gave a most vivid charm to the Western wilds and rivers. In The pioneers Cooper made us already conscious citizens of a great nation, and took our imagination as far as the Mississippi. Lewis and Clark carried us beyond the Mississippi (1814). About 1835 Oregon expeditions were forming, and I remember when boys in New England used to peep through barn doors to admire the great wagons in which the emigrants were to travel. Then came Mrs. Kirkland's A New home, Who'll follow? （1839). Besides this we had Irving's Tour of the prairies (1835) and his Astoria the following year. The West was still a word for vast expeditions, for the picturesqueness and the uncertainty of Indian life, and not for the amenities of a civilized condition. Aspirants for literary fame were not long lacking, to be sure, but as most of their work was based upon reading rather than experience, it had nothing characteristically Western about it. Most of them turned instinctively, ere long, to the
1826 AD (search for this): chapter 10
t will presently be spared from the toil of practical life, to give a good account of itself in literature. Early writers about the West. The first authors who came from the West to delight our young people at the East were. Audubon, the ornithologist, who had a way of interspersing between his bird sketches certain intermediate chapters called Episodes, usually personal narratives in the woods, beginning in 1831--and Timothy Flint, who wrote Ten years in the Valley of the Mississippi (1826), and also who wrote from Cincinnati to the London Athenaeum and had his books translated into French. These books, with those of Peter Parley (sometimes written by Hawthorne), gave a most vivid charm to the Western wilds and rivers. In The pioneers Cooper made us already conscious citizens of a great nation, and took our imagination as far as the Mississippi. Lewis and Clark carried us beyond the Mississippi (1814). About 1835 Oregon expeditions were forming, and I remember when boys i
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