wildest parts of Texas shortly after the war. It
certainly does not adequately describe the cowboy of the last twenty
years. Another writer, who was himself for more than a quarter of a
century engaged in the work of herding cattle, gives a much fairer
description of the cowboy. He divides those entitled to this name into
three classes, and argues that there is something noble about the name.
He also claims that in view of the peculiar associations, privations,
surroundings and temptations of the cowboy, he is entitled to much
credit for the way in which he has retained the best characteristics of
human nature, in spite of his absence from the refining influences of
civilization.

According to this authority, the first class of cowboys include the
genuine, honest worker on the prairie, the man who has due respect for
the rights of all. He is scrupulously honest, but yet charitable enough
to look leniently on the falling away from grace of his less scrupulous
brothers, and he is loyal to a remarkable extent to every one who has a
right to claim his friendship. In the second class is placed the less
careful cowboy, who is not quite so strict in his moral views, although
no one would like to class him as a thief. The story is told of the
Irishman who found a blanket bearing upon it the Government mark "U. S."
Paddy examined the blanket carefully and on finding the mark shouted
out: "U. for Patrick and S. for McCarty. Och, but I'm glad I've found me
blanket. Me fayther told me that eddication was a good thing, and now I
know it; but for an eddication I never would have found the blanket."

Reasoning of this kind is quite common among this second class or
division of the cowboy. It is not suggested that he is exactly a thief,
because he would scorn the acts of the city light-fingered gentleman,
who asks you the time of day, and then, by a little sleight-of-hand,
succeeds in introducing your watch to a too obliging and careless
pawnbroker at the next corner. But he is a little reckless in his ideas
of what lawyers call the rights of individuals, and he is a little too
much inclined, at times, to think that trifles that are not his own
ought to be so.

The writer, to whom we are referring, includes in class three the
typical cowboy, and the man used by the fiction writer as a basis for
his exaggerations and romances. Into this class drifts the cowboy who is
absolutely indifferent as to the future, and who is perfectly happy