The East never understands the West—the real West that is, which lies beyond the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Rocky Mountains. They know nothing of its ideas, its capacities, its possibilities, its educational facilities, its culture, its real power, in the East. And they do not wish to learn, apparently. The Easterners fatuously think, like Job, that they are the people, and wisdom will die with them. Some years since an article in the “Forum” on the theme, “Kansas more civilized than New York” conclusively proved the proposition to the satisfaction of the present writer at least.
Yet I know numberless dwellers in Gotham whose shibboleth is “nothing outside of New York City but scenery,” and they are a little dubious about admitting that. When one describes the Grand Canyon or the Royal Gorge they point to Nassau or Wall Street, and the Woolworth tower challenges Pike’s Peak!
I sat at a dinner table one day when the salted almonds were handed me with the remark: “I suppose you never saw anything like these out West. Try some.” And my wife has been quite gravely asked if we feared any raids by the Indians and if they troubled us by their marauding in Kansas. I have found it necessary to inform the curious that we did not live in tepees or wigwams when in Nebraska or Colorado.
Shortly after I came East to live I was talking with a man and a very stupid man at that, who informed me that he graduated from Harvard; to which surprising statement he added the startling information, for the benefit of my presumably untutored occidental mind, that it was a college near Boston! They have everything in the West that the East has so far as their sometimes limited means will provide them and when they have no money they have patience, endurance, grim determination, and courage, which are better than money in the long run.
The cities and smaller towns especially as a rule are cleaner, better governed, more progressive, better provided with improvements and comforts than corresponding places in the East. Scarcely a community exists without its water works, electric light plant, telephone system, trolleys, paved streets, etc. Of course, this does not apply to the extreme frontier in which my field of work largely lay so many years ago. The conditions were different there—the people too in that now far-distant time.
But to return to Christmas. One Christmas day I left my family at one o’clock in the morning. Christmas salutations were exchanged at that very sleepy hour and I took the fast express to a certain station whence I could drive up country to a little church in a farming country in which there had never been a Christmas service. It was a bitter cold morning, deep snow on the ground, and a furious north wind raging.
The climate is variable indeed out West. I have spent Christmas days on which it rained all day and of all days in the year on which to have it rain, Christmas is the worst. Still, the farmers would be thankful. It was usually safe to be thankful out there whenever it rained. I knew a man once who said you could make a fortune by always betting two to one that it would not rain, no matter what the present promise of the weather was. You were bound to win nine times out of ten.
I hired a good sleigh and two horses, and drove to my destination. The church was a little old brick building right out in the prairie. There was a smouldering fire in a miserable, worn-out stove which hardly raised the temperature of the room a degree although it filled the place with smoke. The wind had free entrance through the ill-fitting window and door frames and a little pile of snow formed on the altar during the service. I think there were twelve people who had braved the fury of the storm. There was not an evergreen within a hundred miles of the place and the only decoration was sage-brush. To wear vestments was impossible, and I conducted the service in a buffalo overcoat and a fur cap and gloves as I have often done. It was short and the sermon was shorter. Mem.: If you want short sermons give your Rector a cold church or a hot one!
After service I went to dinner at the nearest farm-house. Such a Christmas dinner it was! There was no turkey, and they did not even have a chicken. The menu was corn-bread, ham, and potatoes, and mighty few potatoes at that. There were two children in the family, a girl of six and a boy of five. They were glad enough to get the ham. Their usual bill of fare was composed of potatoes and corn-bread, and sometimes corn-bread alone. My wife had put up a lunch for me, fearing that I might not be able to get anything to eat, in which there was a small mince-pie turnover; and the children had slipped a small box of candy in my bag as a Christmas gift. I produced the turnover which by common consent was divided between the astonished children. Such a glistening of eyes and smacking of small lips you never saw!
“This pie makes it seem like Christmas, after all,” said the little girl, with her mouth full.