Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863

This is not complimentary, but any one who has seen the creature knows that it is a portrait done by a first-rate artist.

Take, again, that other vulgarer ruffian, "Jim Robinson," "a little man, stockish, oily, and red in the face, a jaunty fellow, too, with a certain shabby air of coxcombry even in his travel-stained attire,"—and how accurately does he describe the metamorphosis of this nauseous grub into a still more disgusting butterfly!

"I can imagine him when he arrives at St. Louis, blossomed into a purple coat with velvet lappels, a brocaded waistcoat, diamond shirt-studs, or a flamboyant scarf pinned with a pinchbeck dog, and red-legged, patent-leather boots, picking his teeth on the steps of the Planters' House."

Or, once more, that more saintly villain, the Mormon Elder Sizzum.

"Presently Sizzum appeared. He had taken time to tone down the pioneer and develop the deacon in his style, and a very sleek personage he had made of himself. He was clean shaved: clean shaving is a favorite coxcombry of the deacon class. His long black hair, growing rank from a muddy skin, was sleekly put behind his ears. A large white blossom of cravat expanded under his nude, beefy chin, and he wore a black dress-coat, creased with its recent packing. Except that his pantaloons were thrust into boots with the maker's name (Abel Gushing, Lynn, Mass.) stamped in gold on a scarlet morocco shield in front, he was in correct go-to-meetin' costume,—a Chadband of the Plains."

When you see one of these men, you will know him again. Winthrop has sketched these rascals with a few touches, as felicitous as any of Dickens's, and they will bear his mark forever: T.W. fecit.

As for Jake Shamberlain, with his odd mixture of many religious and irreligious dialects, what there is of him is as good as Sam Weller or Mrs. Poyser.

"'Hillo, Shamberlain!' hailed Brent, riding up to the train.

"'Howdydo? Howdydo? No swap!' responded Jake, after the Indian fashion. 'Bung my eyes, ef you're not the mate of all mates I'm glad to see! Pax vobiscrum, my filly! You look as fresh as an Aperel shad. Praisèd be the Lord,' continued he, relapsing into Mormon slang, 'who has sent thee again, like a brand from the burning, to fall into paths of pleasantness with the Saints, as they wander from the Promised Land to the mean section where the low-lived Gentiles ripen their souls for hell!'"

Or Jake's droll commentary on the story of Old Bridger, ousted from his fort, and robbed of his goods, by the Saints, in the name of the Prophet Brigham.

"'It's olluz so,' says Jake; 'Paul plants, and Apollyon gets the increase. Not that Bridger's like Paul, any more 'n we're like Apollyon; but we're goan to have all the cider off his apple-trees.'"

Or, again, Jake's compliments to "Armstrong of Oregon," that galloping Vigilant Committee of one.

"I'll help you, if I know how, Armstrong. I ha'n't seen no two in my life, Old Country or New Country, Saints or Gentiles, as I'd do more for 'n you and your brother. I've olluz said, ef the world was chock full of Armstrongs, Paradise wouldn't pay, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob mout just as well blow out their candle and go under a bushel-basket,—unless a half-bushel would kiver 'em."

But the true hero of the book is the horse Don Fulano. It is easy to see that Winthrop was a first-rate horseman, from the loving manner in which he describes and dwells on the perfections of the matchless stallion. None but one who knew every point of a horse, none but one of the Centaur breed, could have drawn Don Fulano,—just as none but a born skater could have written those inimitable skating-scenes in his story of "Love and Skates."

"He was an American horse,—so they distinguish in California one brought from the old States,—A SUPERB YOUNG STALLION, PERFECTLY BLACK, WITHOUT MARK. It was magnificent to see him, as he circled about me, fire in his eye, pride in his nostril, tail flying like a banner, power and grace from tip to tip. No one would ever mount him, or ride him, unless it was his royal pleasure. He was conscious of his representative position, and showed his paces handsomely."

This is the creature who takes the lead in that stirring and matchless "Gallop of Three" to the Luggernel Spring, to quote from which would be to spoil it. It must be read entire.

In the "Canoe and Saddle" is recorded Winthrop's long ride across the continent. Setting out in a canoe, from Port Townsend, in Vancouver's Island, he journeyed, without company of other white men, to the Salt Lake City and thence to "the States,"—a tedious and barbarous experience, heightened, in this account of it, by the traveller's cheery spirits, his ardent love of Nature, and capacity to describe the grand natural scenery, of the effect of which upon himself he says, at the end,—

"And in all that period, while I was so near to Nature, the great lessons of the wilderness deepened into my heart day by day, the hedges of conventionalism withered away from my horizon, and all the pedantries of scholastic thought perished out of my mind forever."

He bore hardships with the courage and imperturbable good-nature of a born gentleman. It is when men are starving, when the plating of romance is worn off by the chafe of severe and continued suffering,—it is then that "blood tells." Winthrop had evidently that keen relish for rough life which the gently nurtured and highly cultivated man has oftener than his rude neighbor, partly because, in his case, contrast lends a zest to the experience. Thus, when he camps with a gang of "road-makers," in the farthest Western wilderness,—a part of Captain McClellan's Pacific Railroad Expedition,—how thoroughly he enjoys the rough hospitality and rude wit of these pioneers!

"In such a Platonic republic as this a man found his place according to his powers. The cooks were no base scullions; they were brethren, whom conscious ability, sustained by universal suffrage, had endowed with the frying-pan."

"My hosts were a stalwart gang.... Their talk was as muscular as their arms. When these laughed, as only men fresh and hearty and in the open air can laugh, the world became mainly grotesque: it seemed at once a comic thing to live,—a subject for chuckling, that we were bipeds, with noses,—a thing to roar at, that we had all met there from the wide world, to hobnob by a frolicsome fire with tin pots of coffee, and partake of crisped bacon and toasted dough-boys in ridiculous abundance. Easy laughter infected the atmosphere. Echoes ceased to be pensive, and became jocose. A rattling humor pervaded the forest, and Green River rippled with noise of fantastic jollity. Civilization and its dilettante diners-out sneer when Clodpole at Dives's table doubles his soup, knifes his fish, tilts his plate into his lap, puts muscle into the crushing of his méringue , and tosses off the warm beaker in his finger-bowl. Camps by Tacoma sneer not at all, but candidly roar, at parallel accidents. Gawky makes a cushion of his flapjack. Butterfingers drops his red-hot rasher into his bosom, or lets slip his mug of coffee into his boot drying at the fire,—a boot henceforth saccharine. A mule, slipping his halter, steps forward unnoticed, puts his nose into the circle, and brays resonant. These are the jocular boons of life, and at these the woodsmen guffaw with lusty good-nature. Coarse and rude the jokes may be, but not nasty, like the innuendoes of pseudo-refined cockneys. If the woodsmen are guilty of uncleanly wit, it differs from the uncleanly wit of cities as the mud of a road differs from the sticky slime of slums.

"It is a stout sensation to meet masculine, muscular men at the brave point of a penetrating Boston hooihut,—men who are mates,—men to whom technical culture means nought,—men to whom myself am nought, unless I can saddle, lasso, cook, sing, and chop,—unless I am a man of nerve and pluck, and a brother in generosity and heartiness. It is restoration to play at cudgels of jocoseness with a circle of friendly roughs, not one of whom ever heard the word bore,—with pioneers, who must think and act, and wrench their living from the closed hand of Nature."