semi-savages tears down a town in order to avenge the theft of a
faithless wife who was probably no better than she should have been--and
we have the _Iliad_. A petty king sets sail for his native land, somehow
losing himself ten years among the isles of Greece--and we have the
_Odyssey_. (I would back a Missouri River "rat" to make the distance in
a row boat within a few months!) An Argive captain returns home after an
absence of ten years to find his wife interested overmuch in a friend
who went not forth to battle; a wrangle ensues; the tender spouse
finishes her lord with an axe--and you have the _Agamemnon_. (To-day we
should merely have a sensational trial, and hysterical scareheads in the
newspapers.) Such were the ancient stories that move us all--sordid
enough, be sure, when you push them hard for fact. But time and genius
have glorified them. Not the deeds, but Homer and Æschylus and the
hallowing years are great.

We no longer write epics--we live them. To create an epic, it has been
said somewhere, the poet must write with the belief that the immortal
gods are looking over his shoulder.

We no longer prostrate ourselves before the immortal gods. We have long
since discovered the divinity within ourselves, and so we have flung
across the continents and the seas the visible epics of will.

The history of the American fur trade alone makes the Trojan War look
like a Punch and Judy show! and the Missouri River was the path of the
conquerors. We have the facts--but we have not Homer.

An epic story in its essence is the story of heroic men battling, aided
or frustrated by the superhuman. And in the fur trade era there was no
dearth of battling men, and the elements left no lack of superhuman