aw, says upon this very
subject. The quotation is taken from Jennings' reminiscences of his
prison days, when he and the late lamented William Sydney Porter--the
afterward famous author O. Henry--formed such a strong friendship. In
the following dialogue Jennings is in New York City visiting
Porter--whom he calls "Bill"--and Porter is speaking:

"I have accepted an invitation for you, Colonel." He was in one of his
gently sparkling moods. "Get into your armor asinorum, for we fare
forth to make contest with tinsel and gauze. In other words, we mingle
with the proletariat. We go to see Margaret Anglin and Henry Miller in
that superb and realistic Western libel, 'The Great Divide.'"

After the play the great actress, Porter, and I, and one or two others
were to have supper at the Breslin Hotel. I think Porter took me there
that he might sit back and enjoy my unabashed criticisms to the young
lady's face.

"I feel greatly disappointed in you, Mr. Porter," Margaret Anglin said
to Bill as we took our places at the table.

"In what have I failed?"

"You promised to bring your Western friend--that terrible Mr.
Jennings--to criticize the play."

"Well, I have introduced him." He waved his hand down toward me.

Miss Anglin looked me over with the trace of a smile in her eye.

"Pardon me," she said, "but I can hardly associate you with the lovely
things they say of you. Did you like the play?"

I told her I didn't. It was unreal. No man of the West would shake
dice for a lady in distress. The situation was unheard of and could
only occur in the imagination of a fat-headed Easterner who had never
set his feet beyond the Hudson.

Miss Anglin laughed merrily. "New York is wild over it; New York
doesn't know any better."

Porter sat back, an expansive smile spreading a light in his gray eyes.

"I am inclined to agree with our friend," he offered. "The West is
unacquainted with Manhattan chivalry."

That is the truth in a sentence; and while O. Henry and Jennings have
spoken for the West, may I add my own experience of wilderness men and
say that the North, also, is unacquainted with Manhattan chivalry.

LAW AND ORDER ENFORCED

Furthermore, while upon this subject, I wish to add to my own protest
against the novelists' wild dreams of outlawry in the Canadian
wilderness, a quotation from E. Ward Smith's "Chronicles of the
Klondyke." Mr. Smith--as you no doubt remember--was the first city
clerk, treas