the youth of the fiery locks
blushingly explained that his present name was "Jail-Bird," which some
fool Scandinavian had used instead of "Grey-Bird," his authentic and
original appellative. But I stuck to my name, though we have shortened
it into "Paddy." And Paddy must indeed have been a jail-bird, or
deserved to be one, for he is marked and scarred from end to end. But
he is good-tempered, tough as hickory and obligingly omnivorous. Every
one in the West, men and women alike, rides astride, and I have been
practising on Paddy. It seems a very comfortable and sensible way to
ride, but I shall have to toughen up a bit before I hit the trail for
any length of time.

I've been wondering, Matilda Anne, if this all sounds pagan and foolish
to you, uncultured, as Theobald Gustav would put it? I've also been
wondering, since I wrote that last sentence, if people really need
culture, or what we used to call culture, and if it means as much to
life as so many imagine. Here we are out here without any of the
refinements of civilization, and we're as much at peace with our own
souls as are the birds of the air--when there _are_ birds in the air,
which isn't in our country! Culture, it seems to me as I look back on
things, tends to make people more and more mere spectators of life,
detaching them from it and lifting them above it. Or can it be that the
mere spectators demand culture, to take the place of what they miss by
not being actual builders and workers?

We are farmers, just rubes and hicks, as they say in my country. But
we're tilling the soil and growing wheat. We're making a great new
country out of what was once a wilderness. To me, that seems almost
enough. We're laboring to feed the world, since the world must have
bread, and there's something satisfying and uplifting in the mere
thought that we can answer to God, in the end, for our lives, no matter
how raw and rude they may have been. And there are mornings when I am
Browning's "Saul" in the flesh. The great wash of air from sky-line to
sky-line puts something into my blood or brain that leaves me almost
dizzy. I sizzle! It makes me pulse and tingle and cry out that life is
good--_good_! I suppose it is nothing more than altitude and ozone. But
in the matter of intoxicants it stands on a par with anything that was
ever poured out of bottles at Martin's or Bustanoby's. And at sunrise,
when the prairie is thinly silvered with dew, when the tiny hammocks of
the spi