By all ye will or whisper, By all ye leave or do, The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your G.o.d and you."
Of this past epoch of our national life there remains but one well-known representative. That one is my brother. He occupies a unique place in the portrait gallery of famous Americans to-day. It is not alone his commanding personality, nor the success he has achieved along various lines, which gives him the strong hold he has on the hearts of the American people, or the absorbing interest he possesses in the eyes of foreigners. The fact that in his own person he condenses a period of national history is a large factor in the fascination he exercises over others. He may fitly be named the "Last of the Great Scouts." He has had great predecessors. The mantle of Kit Carson has fallen upon his shoulders, and he wears it worthily. He has not, and never can have, a successor. He is the vanishing-point between the rugged wilderness of the past in Western life and the vast achievement in the present.
When the "Wild West" disbands, the last vestige of our frontier life pa.s.ses from the scene of active realities, and becomes a matter of history.
"Life is real, life is earnest," sings the poet, and real and earnest it has been for my brother. It has been spent in others" service. I cannot recall a time when he has not thus been laden with heavy burdens. Yet for himself he has won a reputation, national and international. A naval officer visiting in China relates that as he stepped ash.o.r.e he was offered two books for purchase--one the Bible, the other a "Life of Buffalo Bill."
For nearly half a century, which comprises his childhood, youth, and manhood, my brother has been before the public. He can scarcely be said to have had a childhood, so early was he thrust among the rough scenes of frontier life, therein to play a man"s part at an age when most boys think of nothing more than marbles and tops. He enlisted in the Union army before he was of age, and did his share in upholding the flag during the Civil War as ably as many a veteran of forty, and since then he has remained, for the most part, in his country"s service, always ready to go to the front in any time of danger. He has achieved distinction in many and various ways. He is president of the largest irrigation enterprise in the world, president of a colonization company, of a town-site company, and of two transportation companies. He is the foremost scout and champion buffalo-hunter of America, one of the crack shots of the world, and its greatest popular entertainer. He is broad-minded and progressive in his views, inheriting from both father and mother a hatred of oppression in any form. Taking his mother as a standard, he believes the franchise is a birthright which should appertain to intelligence and education, rather than to s.e.x. It is his public career that lends an interest to his private life, in which he has been a devoted and faithful son and brother, a kind and considerate husband, a loving and generous father. "Only the names of them that are upright, brave, and true can be honorably known," were the mother"s dying words; and honorably known has his name become, in his own country and across the sea.
With the fondest expectation he looks forward to the hour when he shall make his final bow to the public and retire to private life. It is his long-cherished desire to devote his remaining years to the development of the Big Horn Basin, in Wyoming. He has visited every country in Europe, and has looked upon the most beautiful of Old World scenes. He is familiar with all the most splendid regions of his own land, but to him this new El Dorado of the West is the fairest spot on earth.
He has already invested thousands of dollars and given much thought and attention toward the accomplishment of his pet scheme. An irrigating ditch costing nearly a million dollars now waters this fertile region, and various other improvements are under way, to prepare a land flowing with milk and honey for the reception of thousands of homeless wanderers. Like the children of Israel, these would never reach the promised land but for the untiring efforts of a Moses to go on before; but unlike the ancient guide and scout of sacred history, my brother has been privileged to penetrate the remotest corner of this primitive land of Canaan. The log cabin he has erected there is not unlike the one of our childhood days. Here he finds his haven of rest, his health-resort, to which he hastens when the show season is over and he is free again for a s.p.a.ce. He finds refreshment in the healthful, invigorating atmosphere of his chosen retreat; he enjoys sweet solace from the cares of life under the influence of its magnificent scenery.
And here, in the shadow of the Rockies, yet in the very "light of things," it is his wish to finish his days as he began them, in opening up for those who come after him the great regions of the still undeveloped West, and in poring over the lesson learned as a boy on the plains:
"That nature never did betray The heart that loved her."