ome of it blatantly boyish. Much of the East is in the prime
of middle age, some of it senile. Naturally the East is inclined to
conservative pessimism--an attribute of advancing years--and the West to
impulsive optimism.

Do not foster the notion that the term "extreme" West really applies,
for it doesn't. The West, as I have seen it, is too nervous, socially
speaking, to dare extremes. It is too inexperienced to essay
experiments, too desirous of doing the correct thing. While it wouldn't
for the world admit the fact, socially it is quite content to keep its
intelligent eyes on the examples set back East, and even then its
replica of what it sees is apt to be a modified one.

If this bashfulness holds good socially, it emphatically does not
commercially. For in things economic there is far more dash and daring,
and bigness of conception and rapidity of realization in Western
business affairs than in those of the East. Opportunity is knocking on
every hand, and those who think and act most quickly become her lucky
hosts. The countries of the West are upbuilding with a rapidity for the
most part inconceivable to Europe-traveled Easterners, and affairs move
at a lively pace, so that the laggards are left behind and only the
able-bodied can keep abreast of the progress. And with all the dangers
of the happy-go-lucky methods, the pitfalls of the inherent gambling
that lies beneath the surface of much of it, Western business life
undoubtedly offers the favored field for the young man of to-day who
has, in addition to the normal commercial attributes, the ability to
keep his head.

[Illustration: A Western mountaineering club on the hike

From a photograph by Kiser Photo Co., Portland, Ore.]

Greeley's advice was never sounder than to-day; revised, it should read:
"Come West, young man, and help the country grow."

The start has just been made. Perhaps the days of strident booms are
over (let us trust so), and it may be that the bonanza opportunities are
for the most part buried in the past, together with the first advent of
the railroads, the discoveries of gold, and the exploitation of
agriculture, which gave them birth. But the West is getting her second
wind. The greater development is yet to come; the Panama Canal, with
quickened immigration, manufacturing, and a more thorough-going
cultivation of resources than ever in the past, spell that. What has
gone before is trivial and inconsequential in comparison with wh