Читать книгу In the Oregon Country - George Palmer Putnam - Страница 10

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HAT is the most pronounced difference between East and West?" A Bostonian once asked me that. I was East after a year or two of westerning, and he seemed to think it would be easy enough to answer off-hand. But for the life of me I could find no fit reply. For a time that is—and then it struck me.

"Everyone is proud of everything out West," said I. "Local patriotism is a religion—if you know what I mean."

You who have lived on the Pacific Slope will understand. You who have visited the Pacific Slope will half-understand. Did you ever hear of a New Jersey man fighting because his town was maligned? You never did! Have you yet encountered a York State small-town dweller who would devote hours to proving that his community was destined to outdistance all its neighbors because God had been especially good to it—and ready to back his boast to the limit? No indeed! Yet most of us have seen Westerners actually come to blows protecting the fair name of their chosen town, and I know scores of them who can, and will, on the slightest provocation, demonstrate that their particular Prosperity Center is the coming city of destiny.

"The Palouse dweller pictures wheat fields." The grain country of eastern Washington From a photograph by Frank Palmer, Spokane, Wash.

"The man from Boisé describes God's country in terms of sagebrush and brown plains"

In short every Westerner is inordinately proud of his town and his country. On trains you hear it, in hotel lobbies, on street corners. The stranger seated at your side in the smoking compartment regales you with descriptions of his particular "God's Country." If ever there was an overworked phrase west of the Missouri, it is that, and the inventor of a fitting synonym should reap royal rewards, in travelers' gratitude if nothing else. The man from Boisé describes "God's Country" in terms of sagebrush and brown plains; the Palouse dweller pictures wheat fields, mentioning not wind storms and feverish summer mercury; the Californian sees his poppy-golden hills; the eyes of the Puget Sound dweller are bright with memories of majestic timber and broad waterways, unclouded by any mention of gray rain; the man from Bend talks of rushing rivers and copper-hued pines, his enthusiasm for the homeland unalloyed by reference to summer dusts; the orchard owner of Hood River or Wen-atchee has his heaven lined with ruddy apples, and discourses amazing figures concerning ever-increasing world market for the product of his acres; he who hails from the Coast cities, whose all-pervading passion is optimism, weaves convincing prophecies of the golden future. And so it goes. Each for his own, each an enthusiast, a loyal patriot, a rabid disciple. Eastern travel acquaintances produce the latest photograph of their youngest offspring, but the Westerner brings forth views and plats of his home town; no children of his own flesh are more beloved.

Yes, truly, it is a bore. The thing is overdone. There is too much of it. And yet—well, it is the very spirit of the West, a natural expression of the pride of creation, for these men of to-day are creating homes and towns, and doing it under fiercely competitive conditions. They have builded upon their judgment and staked their all upon the throw of fortune. They are pleased with their accomplishments and vastly determined to bend the future to their ends. It is arrogance, no doubt, but healthy and happy, and the very essence of youthful accomplishment. And its very insistency and sincerity spell success, and are invigorating to boot.

The old differences between East and West are no more, of course. Except for a trifle more informality under the setting sun, clothes and their wearing are the same. The Queen's English is butchered no more distressingly in California than in Connecticut. Proportionately to resources, educational opportunities are identical. Music and the arts are no longer strangers where blow Pacific breezes, nor have they been for decades. The West is wild and woolly no more, railroads have replaced stagecoaches, fences bisect the ranges, free land is almost a thing of the past. Yet, withal, existence for the peoples of the two borders of our continent is not cast in an identical mold.

"Back East" residents are apt to regard the West as a land of curiosities, human and natural. "Out West" dwellers are inclined to be supercilious when they mention the ways of the Atlantic seaboard.

All statements to the contrary notwithstanding, East is East, and West is West, no matter how fluently they mingle. The difference between them is not to be defined by conversational metes and bounds. It is not merely of miles, of scenery, or of manners, or even of enthusiasm. It is, in fact, quite intangible, and yet it exists, as anyone who has dwelt upon both sides of our continent realizes. Aside from the trivialities—which are wrapt up in such words as "culture," "custom," "precedent," and the like—the fundamental, explanatory reason for the intangible differences is one of years. Most of the West is buoyantly youthful, some of it blatantly boyish. Much of the East is in the prime of middle age, some of it senile. Naturally the East is inclined to conservative pessimism—an attribute of advancing years—and the West to impulsive optimism.

Do not foster the notion that the term "extreme" West really applies, for it doesn't. The West, as I have seen it, is too nervous, socially speaking, to dare extremes. It is too inexperienced to essay experiments, too desirous of doing the correct thing. While it wouldn't for the world admit the fact, socially it is quite content to keep its intelligent eyes on the examples set back East, and even then its replica of what it sees is apt to be a modified one.

A Western mountaineering club on the hike From a photograph by Kiser Photo Co., Portland, Ore.

If this bashfulness holds good socially, it emphatically does not commercially. For in things economic there is far more dash and daring, and bigness of conception and rapidity of realization in Western business affairs than in those of the East. Opportunity is knocking on every hand, and those who think and act most quickly become her lucky hosts. The countries of the West are upbuilding with a rapidity for the most part inconceivable to Europe-traveled Easterners, and affairs move at a lively pace, so that the laggards are left behind and only the able-bodied can keep abreast of the progress. And with all the dangers of the happy-go-lucky methods, the pitfalls of the inherent gambling that lies beneath the surface of much of it, Western business life undoubtedly offers the favored field for the young man of to-day who has, in addition to the normal commercial attributes, the ability to keep his head.

Greeley's advice was never sounder than to-day; revised, it should read: "Come West, young man, and help the country grow."

The start has just been made. Perhaps the days of strident booms are over (let us trust so), and it may be that the bonanza opportunities are for the most part buried in the past, together with the first advent of the railroads, the discoveries of gold, and the exploitation of agriculture, which gave them birth. But the West is getting her second wind. The greater development is yet to come; the Panama Canal, with quickened immigration, manufacturing, and a more thorough-going cultivation of resources than ever in the past, spell that. What has gone before is trivial and inconsequential in comparison with what is to come. Pioneering is along different lines than in the old days, but it still is pioneering, and the call of it is as insistent for ears properly tuned.

I hear the tread of pioneers

Of cities yet to be,

The first low wash of waves where soon

Will roll a human sea.

The waves have wet the shores, but their true advance has scarce begun.