But what changes can ever efface that early vision which began with the antelope? Wyoming burst upon the tenderfoot resplendent, like all the story-books, like Cooper and Irving and Parkman come true again; here, actually going on, was that something which the boy runs away from school to find, that land safe and far from Monday morning, nine o’clock, and the spelling-book; here was Saturday eternal, where you slept out-of-doors, hunted big animals, rode a horse, roped steers, and wore deadly weapons. Make no mistake: fire-arms were at times practical and imperative, but this was not the whole reason for sporting them on your hip; you had escaped from civilization’s school-room, an air never breathed before filled your lungs, and you were become one large shout of joy. College-boy, farm-boy, street-boy, this West melted you all down to the same first principles. Were you seeking fortune? Perhaps, incidentally, but money was not the point; you had escaped from school. This holiday was leavened by hard bodily work, manly deeds, and deeds heroic, and beneath all the bright brave ripple moved the ground-swell of tragedy. Something of promise, also, was in the air, promise of a democracy which the East had missed:-- “With no spread-eagle brag do I gather conviction each year that we Americans, judged not hastily, are sound at heart, kind, courageous, often of the truest delicacy, and always ultimately of excellent good sense. With such belief, or, rather, knowledge, it is sorrowful to see our fatal complacence, our as yet undisciplined folly, in sending to our State Legislatures and to that general business office of ours at Washington, a herd of mismanagers that seems each year to grow more inefficient and contemptible, whether branded Republican or Democrat. But I take heart, because oftener and oftener I hear upon my journey the citizens high and low muttering, ‘There’s too much politics in this country’; and we shake hands.”