Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) STEPSONS OF LIGHT BY EUGENE MANLOVE RHODES _Author of "Good Men and True," "Bransford of Rainbow Range," "The Desire of the Moth," "West is West," etc._ WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1921 Copyright, 1920, by THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY Copyright, 1921, by HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY TO MY WIFE STEPSONS OF LIGHT There are two sorts of people--those who point with pride and those who view with alarm. They are quite right. The world will not soon forget Parkman "of Ours." Here was a man of learning, common sense, judgment and wide sympathies. Yet once he stumbled; the paregorical imperative, which impels each of us to utter ignominious nonsense, urged Francis Parkman to the like unhappiness, drove him to father and put forth this void and singular statement: I have often perplexed myself to divine the various motives that give impulse to this strange migration; but whatever they may be, whether an insane hope of a better condition of life, or a desire of shaking off the restraints of law and society, or mere restlessness, certain it is that multitudes bitterly repent the journey. The year was 1846; the place, Independence, in Missouri; that strange migration was the winning of the West. Mr. Parkman viewed it with alarm. The passage quoted may yet be found in the first chapter of "The Oregon Trail." We, wise after the event, now point with pride to that strange migration of our fathers. The Great Trek has lasted three hundred years. To-day we dimly perceive that the history of America is the story of the pioneer; that on our shifting frontiers the race has been hammered and tempered to a cutting edge.