Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/386

366 intending at least a temporary occupancy of the bush or the valley, even if they afterward move or “locate” themselves, as their word is, on a new spot. These self-reliant men, not infrequently too with wives and children who match them in their vigor and resource, passing beyond the ever-moving line and tide of emigration, have been well described as hanging like the froth of the billows on its very edge. These, too, are a miscellaneous gathering from our common humanity. While there have been among them law-defying scoundrels and wretches, carrying with them every form of demoralization and disease with which depraved humanity in its most degraded wrecks is ever afflicted, there have been also some who, discouraged by the selfish competitions and the struggling rivalries of human society alike in city and village, have been ready to sacrifice what would be their stinted share in the blessings of civilization for a hap-hazard lot in the woods.

These, however, are all scarcely more than the rags and tatters of humanity, fringing the borders between civilization and savagery. The legitimate and substantial characteristics of frontier life, steady and permanent in its hold upon each league of advance on this continent, are found in a class of persons, always to be named with respect, and to be regarded with a profound and admiring sympathy. They have gone out to labor, and to endure all manner of sacrifices, buffetings, and risks, with a view oftener to the ultimate prosperity of their families than their own. The romance of their lives, their exposure, their general success, was an element in which they had no conscious share; for all was reality to them, — prose, not poetry: the romantic is for other persons and other times to appreciate. It has come to be a common and pleasant fancy or opinion among vast numbers of our citizens, that we must henceforward look for our great statesmen, our presidents and high officials in the nation's service, to