Owen Wister (1860-1938) was an American writer of western novels. He studied at the Harvard Law School, where he was a classmate of Theodore Roosevelt and graduated in 1888. At first he aspired to a career in music, and spent two years studying at a Paris conservatory. Thereafter, he worked briefly in a bank in New York before studying law. Wister had spent several summers out in the American West and was fascinated with the culture, lore and terrain of that region. When he started writing, he naturally inclined towards fiction set on the western frontier. Wister's most famous work remains the 1902 novel The Virginian: Horseman of the Plains. This is widely regarded as being the first American western novel. Amongst his other works are: Lin McLean (1897), The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories (1900), Philosophy 4 (1903), Lady Baltimore (1906), Mother (1907), Padre Ignacio; or, The Song of Temptation (1911) and A Straight Deal (1920).
Chapter 1 Concerning One's Letter Box
Publish any sort of conviction related to these morose days through which we are living and letters will shower upon you like leaves in October. No matter what your conviction be, it will shake both yeas and nays loose from various minds where they were hanging ready to fall. Never was a time when so many brains rustled with hates and panaceas that would sail wide into the air at the lightest jar. Try it and see.
Say that you believe in God, or do not; say that Democracy is the key to the millennium, or the survival of the unfittest; that Labor is worse than the Kaiser, or better; that drink is a demon, or that wine ministers to the health and the cheer of man--say what you please, and the yeas and nays will pelt you. So insecurely do the plainest, oldest truths dangle in a mob of disheveled brains, that it is likely, did you assert twice two continues to equal four and we had best stick to the multiplication table, anonymous letters would come to you full of passionate abuse. Thinking comes hard to all of us. To some it never comes at all, because their heads lack the machinery. How many of such are there among us, and how can we find them out before they do us harm? Science has a test for this. It has been applied to the army recruit, but to the civilian voter not yet. The voting moron still runs amuck in our Democracy. Our native American air is infected with alien breath. It is so thick with opinions that the light is obscured. Will the sane ones eventually prevail and heal the sick atmosphere? We must at least assume so. Else, how could we go on?
Chapter 1 Concerning One's Letter Box
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Chapter 2 What the Postman Brought
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Chapter 3 In Front of a Bulletin Board
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Chapter 4 My Army of Spies
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Chapter 5 The Ancient Grudge
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Chapter 6 Who Is Without Sin
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Chapter 7 Tarred with the Same Stick
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Chapter 8 History Astigmatic
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Chapter 9 Concerning a Complex
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Chapter 10 Jackstraws
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Chapter 11 Some Family Scraps
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Chapter 12 On the Ragged Edge
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Chapter 13 Benefits Forgot
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Chapter 14 England the Slacker!
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Chapter 15 Rude Britannia, Crude Columbia
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Chapter 16 An International Imposture
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Chapter 17 Paint
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Chapter 18 The Will to Friendship--or the Will to Hate
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Chapter 19 Lion and Cub
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Other books by Owen Wister
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