colonial romance. As it now stands, the title will scarce lead to
such interpretation; yet none the less is this book
historical--quite as much so as any colonial romance. Indeed,
when you look at the root of the matter, it is a colonial
romance. For Wyoming between 1874 and 1890 was a colony as wild
as was Virginia one hundred years earlier. As wild, with a
scantier population, and the same primitive joys and dangers.
There were, to be sure, not so many Chippendale settees.

We know quite well the common understanding of the term
"historical novel." HUGH WYNNE exactly fits it. But SILAS LAPHAM
is a novel as perfectly historical as is Hugh Wynne, for it
pictures an era and personifies a type. It matters not that in
the one we find George Washington and in the other none save
imaginary figures; else THE SCARLET LETTER were not historical.
Nor does it matter that Dr. Mitchell did not live in the time of
which he wrote, while Mr. Howells saw many Silas Laphams with his
own eyes; else UNCLE TOM'S CABIN were not historical. Any
narrative which presents faithfully a day and a generation is of
necessity historical; and this one presents Wyoming between 1874
and 1890. Had you left New York or San Francisco at ten o'clock
this morning, by noon the day after to-morrow you could step out
at Cheyenne. There you would stand at the heart of the world that
is the subject of my picture, yet you would look around you in
vain for the reality. It is a vanished world. No journeys, save
those which memory can take, will bring you to it now. The
mountains are there, far and shining, and the sunlight, and the
infinite earth, and the air that seems forever the true fountain
of youth, but where is the buffalo, and the wild antelope, and
where the horseman with his pasturing thousands? So like its old