 | Western clearings |  |
PREFACE.
To write a book is no great matter—as is very evident
from the multitudes of books which are written; to write a
preface is quite a different thing. It is the very tyranny of
fashion that requires something to be said when there is
nothing to say. But if one tells one's publisher so, he only
says, “Nothing can come of nothing; try again!” and so one
is thrust bodily before the public, like the little boy who clings
to his mother's apron, and tries to get behind her chair, while
all the family cry out at once, “Johnny, make a bow!” and
when Johnny makes his bow after much suffering, the company
do not even look at him! In this last particular there
is a decided affinity between our case and the little boy's, for
the public in whose behalf prefaces are insisted upon, very
seldom takes the trouble to glance at them after they are
written.
Some cynical people may ask why books must be made at
all, since to let them alone is the most easy and obvious way
of avoiding the difficulties which beset preface-writing. It
would require a whole new book fully to answer such an unreasonable
question, so numerous are the inevitable causes of
book-making. The first reason that might be given is, that
when one is born to write, it is impossible to refrain; and if
this should not be satisfactory, more than the orthodox thirty-nine
might be added, each one unanswerable—so we spare
case, we might urge that these are Western stories—
stories illustrative of a land that was once an El Dorado—
stories intended to give more minute and life-like representations
of a peculiar people, than can well be given in a grave,
straightforward history. To those who left Eastern and
civilized homes to try the new Western world, at a period
when every one was mad
impressions of so new a state of things will be needed. A traveller
may go to England without finding much that he feels
prompted to record for the amusement of friends at home. Almost
every body has been there before him; and while the language
and manners are essentially the same as his own, the peculiarities
that may strike him have been already reported so
often and so well, that even the best sketches seem almost like
mere repetitions or rechauffées of the observations of others.
But the wild West has had few visitors and fewer describers.
Its history may be homely, but it is original. It is like nothing
else in the wide world, and so various that successive travellers
may continue to give their views of it for years to come,
without fear of exhausting its peculiarities. Language, ideas,
manners, customs—are all new; yes! even language; for to
the instructed person from one of our great Eastern cities, the
talk of the true back-woodsman is scarce intelligible. His indescribable
twang is, to be sure, no further from good English
than the patois of many of the English counties. But at
the West this curious talker is your neighbour and equal,
while in the elder country he would never come in your way
unless you sought him purposely to hear his jargon. And for
in human brain, mixed with so much real shrewdness,
practical wisdom, and ready wit, that one cannot but wonder
how nature and a warping or blinding education can be so at
variance.
As to the ordinary manners of the back-woodsman, not a
word can be said in their favour. They are barbarous
enough. Yet he is a gentle creature in sickness; and when
death comes to the family of a friend or neighbour, his whole
soul is melted, and his manners could not be amended by
false Chesterfield himself. A delicacy not always found
among the elegant, will then temper his every look and movement
to the very tone of the time. And for substantial kindness
at such seasons—but I have tried to say what I thought
of that, elsewhere.
The customs of the West are such as might naturally
be expected to grow up among a most heterogeneous population,
contriving to live under the pressure of extreme
difficulties, and living not in the present but in the future.
This is the condition of shifts and turns—“expedients
and inventions multiform;” encroachments, substitutes,
borrowings; public spirit and individual selfishness; a feeling
of common interest, conflicting strangely with an entire readiness
to flit with the first offer of “a trade;” neighbourly
kindness struggling against the necessity of looking out sharply
for number one. That this combination,—or rather the
combination of which the particulars enumerated are but a
symbol,—should afford amusing materials for one's sketchbook,
is a matter of course. How to refrain, in cases where
to tell would be to infringe upon neighbourly comity, is the
only difficulty. And indeed, to tell at all, in however general
terms, is considered as doing this; since what may be said of
does not suffice to avoid the appearance of particularity. It is
a well-known fact that certain sketches of Western life have
been appropriated by more than a dozen communities, each
declaring them personal; while their sole personality lay in
the attempt to adhere closely to the general, to the entire
exclusion of the particular.
The papers included in the present collection were all written
at the West, and I may say with Goldsmith, “they certainly
were new when they were written.” Further claims
to originality most of them have not. Yet there is reason to
believe, after all the efforts made to instruct and delight the
people of these United States of Alleghania by Magazine and
Annual stories, very many of them still remain beyond the
pale; and might never acquire this part of their equipment
for the journey of life, if it were not for occasional reprints
like those of the present series.
Besides these echoes of the past, we entreat the reader to
believe that there is much of new, and (of course) good, to be
found in the following pages. We entreat him to believe
this, at least; and that kindly faith will help to give a
grace to what might else have but slender pretensions to his
favour.
| Western clearings | |