(and how else should men be beautiful?) as this dear old
mother of an Earth ever suckled.

I stood once on the yellow slope of a hill and watched a round-up outfit
passing in the gulch below. Four-horse freighters grumbling up the dusty
trail; cook wagons trundling after; whips popping over the sweating
teams; a hundred or more saddle ponies trailing after in rolling clouds
of glinting dust; a score of bronze-faced, hard-fisted outriders,
mounted on gaunt, tough, wise little horses--such strong, outdoor,
masterful Americans, truly beautiful in a big manly way!

The sight of it all put that glorious little achy feeling in my throat
that you get when they start the fife and drum, or when a cavalry column
wheels at the word of command, or when a regiment swings past with even
tread, or when you stand on a dock and watch a liner dropping out into
the fog. It's the feeling that you're a man and mighty proud of it. But
somehow it always makes you just a little sad.

I felt proud of that bunch of strong capable fellows--proud as though I
had created them myself.

[Illustration: "THIS WAS BENTON."]

[Illustration: RUINS OF OLD FORT BENTON.]

[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF THE BOURGEOIS.]

And once again the glorious little achy feeling in the throat came. The
Congressman from Choteau County had returned from Washington with fresh
laurels; and Benton turned out to welcome her Great Man. Down the dusty,
poorly lighted, front street came the little band--a shirt-sleeved
squad. Halting under the dingy glow of a corner street-lamp, they struck
up the best-intentioned, noisiest noise I ever heard. The tuba raced
lumberingly after the galloping cornet, that ran neck-and-neck with the
wheezing clarinet; and the drums beat up behind, pounding like the hoofs
of stiff-kneed horses half a stretch behind.

It was a mad, exciting race of sounds--a sort of handicap. The circular
glow of the street-lamp became the social center of Benton. At last the
mad race was ended. I think it was the cornet that won, with the
clarinet a close second. The tuba, as I recollect it, complacently
claimed third money, and the bass-drum finished last with a shameless,
resolute boom!

A great hoarse cry went up--probably for the winning cornet; a
big-lunged, generous, warrior cry that made you think of a cavalry
charge in the face of bayonets. And the shirt-sleeved band swung off
down the street in the direction of the little cottage where the Great
Man l