In these days of dynamite and roller rinks, and the gory meat-ax of a new
administration, we ought to make some provision for the future.




The Opium Habit.

I have always had a horror of opiates of all kinds. They are so seductive
and so still in their operations. They steal through the blood like a wolf
on the trail, and they seize upon the heart at last with their white fangs
till it is still forever.

Up the Laramie there is a cluster of ranches at the base of the Medicine
Bow, near the north end of Sheep Mountain, and in sight of the glittering,
eternal frost of the snowy range. These ranches are the homes of the young
men from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and now there are several
"younger sons" of Old England, with herds of horses, steers and sheep,
worth millions of dollars. These young men are not of the kind of whom the
metropolitan ass writes as saying "youbetcherlife," and calling everybody
"pardner." They are many of them college graduates, who can brand a wild
Maverick or furnish the easy gestures for a Strauss waltz.

They wear human clothes, talk in the United States language, and have a
bank account. This spring they may be wearing chaparajos and swinging a
quirt through the thin air, and in July they may be at Long Branch, or
coloring a meerschaum pipe among the Alps.

Well, a young man whom we will call Curtis lived at one of these ranches