Abroad at Home: American Ramblings, Observations, and Adventures of Julian StreetStreet, Julian
General
Abroad at Home: American Ramblings, Observations, and Adventures of Julian Street
Street, Julian
United States -- Description and travel; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1865-1918
Some of the bronzed cattlemen one sees in Kansas City, though they yield
to civilization to the extent of wearing shirts, have not yet sunk to
the slavery of collars. They do not wear "chaps" and revolvers, it is
true, but they are clearly plainsmen, and some of them sport colored
handkerchiefs about their necks, knotted in the back, and hanging in
loose folds in front. Once or twice, upon my walks, I saw an Indian as
well, though not a really first-class moving-picture Indian. That is too
much to expect. Such Indians as one may meet in Kansas City are
civilized and citified to a sad degree. Nor are the Mexicans, many of
whom are employed as laborers, up to specifications as to
picturesqueness.
I feel it particularly necessary to state these truths, disillusioning
though they may be to certain youthful readers who may treasure fond
hopes of finding, in Kansas City, something of that wild and woolly
fascination which the cinematograph so often pictures. True, a large
gray wolf was killed by a Kansas City policeman last winter, after it
had run down Linwood Boulevard, biting people, but that does not happen
every day, and it is recorded that the youth who recently appeared on
the Kansas City streets, dressed in "chaps" and carrying a revolver with
which he shot at the feet of pedestrians, to make them dance, declared
himself, when taken up by the police, to have recently arrived from
Philadelphia, where he had obtained his ideas of western manners from
the "movies."
I mention this incident because, after having labeled Kansas City
"Western," I wish to leave no loopholes for misunderstanding. The West
of Bret Harte and Jesse James is gone. All that is left of it is legend.
When I speak of a western city I think of a city young, not altogether
formed, but full of dauntless energy. And when I speak of western people
I think of people who possess, in larger measure than any other people
I have met, the solid traits of character which make human beings
admirable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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