CHAPTER I
"Out West"
HAT is the most pronounced difference between East and West?" A Bostonian once asked me that. I was East after a year or two of westerning, and he seemed to think it would be easy enough to answer off-hand. But for the life of me I could find no fit reply. For a time that is—and then it struck me.
"Everyone is proud of everything out West," said I. "Local patriotism is a religion—if you know what I mean."
You who have lived on the Pacific Slope will understand. You who have visited the Pacific Slope will half-understand. Did you ever hear of a New Jersey man fighting because his town was maligned? You never did! Have you yet encountered a York State small-town dweller who would devote hours to proving that his community was destined to outdistance all its neighbors because God had been especially good to it—and ready to back his boast to the limit? No indeed! Yet most of us have seen Westerners actually come to blows protecting the fair name of their chosen town, and I know scores of them who can, and will, on the slightest provocation, demonstrate that their particular Prosperity Center is the coming city of destiny.
"The Palouse dweller pictures wheat fields." The grain country of eastern Washington
From a photograph by Frank Palmer, Spokane, Wash.
