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Show People East And West IH A LEARNED writer in a great eastern news- paper devotes much space in explaining the radical difference between Americans in the eastern and western states. There is not much H in that; that is not much worth discussing. Most men of middle age know both the east and tho west. The majority of eastern men of middle age know only the east, and down deep have a H thought that when people leave the cast and H go west, they simply camp out. That gives JM many of them a provincialism which it is some- times hard to get along with, for It is of that kind which no amount of explanation can rid them of; they listen with the look of sleep-walk- M ers on their faces, and go on thinking just the M same. When -Mark Twain went among them, M built a homo and became one of them, and when a few people of "quality" reported that he was M all right; they took to him generally, and every M extravagant phrase of his was repeated with wonder and delight, and not one of them ever M realized the kind of school he had graduated M from on the rough slope of Mount Davidson, ' M that save for that school he probably all his life M would have remained as he was for his first :H thirty years until he entered that school of wits : and wags and toughs and generous and brave ; H frontiersmen. Men begin life as little animals; H for three months the ordinary puppy has the ad- i-fl vantage of them in intelligence. After that he III knows what ho learns. In the east tho schools 3 I have tho advantage as a rule, while the west ex- I tends a broader experience. In the east so- fl ciety enforces its limitations; in the west there I is a broader freedom; less excluslveness, more i I appeals to the generous sentiments of people, I and so ordinary people east and west are differ- I ent, but the difference comes only from training I 'fll and environment. j 1 K Then climate and scenery have their influ- 1 1 fl ences. Tho man who dwells on the desert or in fjH B the deep hills, is liable to grow sententious and sparing of speech; in the past, In the west, In B Exploring and planting the stakes and blazing the B first rude trails, men have grown indifferent to B hardship, to hunger and cold, to thirst and ex- B posure; and have a kind of contempt for people B who have always lived in fine houses and eaten B rich food. The silence of the desert has had its B effect upon them; so has the roar of storms in Bj the mountains among the pines. Tell the aver- B age New Hampshire man that Mount Washington B Is a baby compared with Whitney or Shasta or B Ranter, and he will listen unbelieving. Give him B the figures and he will read them uncomprehend- ingly, even as he reads that the moon is 240,000 H miles away, the sun about 93,000,000, while old H Sirius is twenty millions of millions of millions H' of miles distant. It is all in the bringing up; in 1 the friction among men; in the habits and meth- B ods of those who surround us; in the trend of H our educations. Still deep down the man is the B same. Only education makes the difference. B Theodore Roosevelt makes a better speech before B n- company of scholars than he ever could had B he never ran down, roped and branded a steer. |