New York brought Jim Conlan up with a start. Everything was amazing; everything was bewildering. He felt like a lost soul, stunned with the noise, dazed by the sights. In the fastnesses of his beloved West he had never imagined that such a place existed on the face of the earth. He felt stifled and ill at ease. His clothes were different to those worn in this city. People gave him a quick passing glance, knowing him at once for a Westerner. Feeling a trifle embarrassed under their glances, he reflected upon the advisability of buying new and more appropriate garb. A tailor was requisitioned and, finding his client to be indifferent in the matter of costs, fixed him up with a fine wardrobe—and a fine bill.
Jim spent the best part of two hours trying on the new things. The long mirror in his bedroom 15 did its best, but it wasn’t good enough for Jim. He groaned as he saw this stranger staring at him from the mirror. He wasn’t built for that sort of garb. The hard hat looked perfectly idiotic and the starched collars nearly choked him. Eventually he tore the offending article from his sunscorched neck and flung it across the room. The other things followed. He stood once more in the rough gray clothes that served for “best” out West, and jammed the comfortable Stetson hat on his head.
“I’m darned if I’ll wear ’em!” he growled.
A few days of shopping and theaters, and he began to grow homesick. Thoughts of Colorado and the boys constantly flickered in his brain. Here he was an outcast—a nonentity. He was not good at making friends, and the New Yorkers were not falling head over heels to shake hands with him, though more than one pair of eyes looked admiringly at his magnificent physique.
The loneliness of big cities! How terrible a thing it was. Never at any time had Jim felt so lonely. The rolling wind-swept prairie had at least something to offer. In every manifestation 16 of nature he had found a friend. The wind, and the hills, and the wild animals seemed in some queer way sterling comrades; but here—— He began to hate it. It was one huge problem to him. How did it live? What did all the millions do for a subsistence? It was the first time he had seen the poor—the real, hopeless, inevitable poor. He had seen men “broke,” down to their last cent; men on the trail, starving, and lost to all sense of decency. But that was merely transitory. These people were different; they were born poor, and would be poor until their bones were laid in some miserable congested cemetery. He found them actually reconciled to it—unquestioningly accepting their fate and fighting to postpone the end for as long as possible. It sickened him.
Oh, Colorado! With your wide prairie and your eternal peaks, your carpeted valleys and your crystalline streams, your fragrant winds and your gift of God—good men!
He was sitting in the lounge of his hotel one evening, feeling more than usually homesick, when he noticed a beautiful woman sitting near him. Her evening dress was cut well away at 17 the shoulders, displaying a white neck around which a pearl necklace glowed in the light. A mass of auburn hair was coiled up neatly round her head, with a rebellious little curl streaming down one ear.
The curl fascinated Jim. He thought it ought to be put back in its proper place, but a second’s reflection revealed to him the fact that it was intended to trickle thus alluringly. It was there for effect. It enhanced her considerable charm. In the midst of his interested survey she turned and caught his eye. He began to study his boots with an embarrassed blush. When he ultimately stole another glance at this wealth of feminine beauty he found she was busily engaged in similar scrutiny—of himself. They both smiled. Then she stood up, languidly, and came across to him.
“Pardon me, but you are from the West, aren’t you?”
“Right first time.”