Mr. Gladsden did not laugh at the rhodomontade, while preparing the steeds.
The sight of the corpse, so lately a vigorous man springing out of cover to take his life, had in one little instant made him comprehend on what dangerous ground he groped his, perhaps, henceforth hourly threatened way.
[1] Of the Paris weekly newspaper in which this romance had delighted the insatiable reader.
[2] Gen. Winfield Scott, a hero of the War of 1812, and that with Mexico, is an idol in the American Walhalla. His name becomes an invocation only partially playfully used by the frontier army officers, their men, and the hunters.
What a difference between this rough country, where the earth was full of pits as a prairie dogs' village, and that old European soil teeming with hotels and inns, where the wealthy traveller could count upon a smiling welcome.
Mr. Gladsden's surprise was tempered with awe. All his ideas were perturbed. His notions of the true and false were upset. His education turned against him, and the instinct of self-preservation made him greet with joy all that he had acquired now of utility in that adventurous passage in his life which he had begun to deplore, and which he took the utmost care his growing sons should never know in detail.
He congratulated himself on having been prompted not to neglect physical experience in favour of the moral, and to fill his mind with practical learning. Intelligence was an important factor, but it had to be backed up by strength and skill to be a conqueror in the desert.
If ever he had felt the European aristocrat's conceit over the Western Americans, he withdrew any injurious depreciation, for he saw clearly that this New World belonged to the clear head and strong arm, and that there was no more desirable comrade than this embodiment beside him of the Great Republic, who had supplemented his inborn powers with the savage's sharpness, strategy, and address.
In other days, he had lightly confronted similar perils from sheer ignorance of their extent; but now, drawn back into the terrible whirlpool from the metropolitan centre of refinement, he felt his heart squeezed by a sudden weight; he was no longer sure of himself as danger, hydra-headed, appeared under new, frightful and multiplied forms.