almost without exception avenues of vice. It is strange that the
records of those days should be chosen by the public to be held
as the measure of the American cowboy. Those days were brief, and
they are long since gone. The American cowboy atoned for them by
a quarter of a century of faithful labor.

The amusements of the cowboy were like the features of his daily
surroundings and occupation--they were intense, large, Homeric.
Yet, judged at his work, no higher type of employee ever existed,
nor one more dependable. He was the soul of honor in all the ways
of his calling. The very blue of the sky, bending evenly over all
men alike, seemed to symbolize his instinct for justice.
Faithfulness and manliness were his chief traits; his
standard--to be a "square man."

Not all the open range will ever be farmed, but very much that
was long thought to be irreclaimable has gone under irrigation or
is being more or less successfully "dryfarmed." The man who
brought water upon the arid lands of the West changed the entire
complexion of a vast country and with it the industries of that
country. Acres redeemed from the desert and added to the realm of
the American farmer were taken from the realm of the American
cowboy.

The West has changed. The curtain has dropped between us and its
wild and stirring scenes. The old days are gone. The house dog
sits on the hill where yesterday the coyote sang. There are
fenced fields and in them stand sleek round beasts, deep in crops
such as their ancestors never saw. In a little town nearby is the
hurry and bustle of modern life. This town is far out upon what