THE MINUTE MAN
ON THE
FRONTIER

BY

THE REV. W. G. PUDDEFOOT, A.M.

FIELD SECRETARY OF THE HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY

NEW YORK: 46 East 14th Street
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY
BOSTON: 100 Purchase Street

Copyright, 1895,
By Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

TYPOGRAPHY BY C. J. PETERS & SON,
BOSTON.

[iii]

PREFACE.

In a very able review of Maspero's"Dawn of Civilization," the writer says"that for hundreds of years it was believedthat history had two eyes; butnow we know she has at least three,and that archæology is the third."

This may account for the saying that"history is a lie agreed to;" for it needsto be argus-eyed to give us any adequateidea of the truth; and while the writerof the following sketches does not aspireto the rank of a historian, he has beeninduced to print them for two or threereasons. First, because urged to byfriends; and secondly, because of theunique condition of American frontier[iv]life that is so rapidly passing away forever.

One may read Macaulay, Froude,Knight, and, in fact, a half-dozen historiesof England, and then sit down tothe gossipy sketches of Sidney culledfrom Pepys's, Evelyn's, and other diaries,and get a truer view of English lifethan in all the great histories combined.It would be impossible to give even theslightest sketch of a country so large asours for a single decade in many volumes;although, in one sense, we aremore homogeneous than many suppose.

There was a greater difference in twocounties in England before the adventof the railways than between two of ourNorthern States to-day. To-day a manmay travel from Boston to San Francisco,and he will find the same headlinesin his morning papers, and for threethousand miles will find the scenery[v]desecrated by the wretched quack medicineadvertisements that produce "thattired feeling" which they profess to cure.

If he goes into one county in themother country, he will find the peoplesingeing the bristles of their swine, andcounting by the score, in another bythe stone, etc., and customs kept upthat had grown settled before travel becamegeneral. But with us it is different.We had no time to become crystallizedbefore the iron horse, the greatcosmopolitan of the age, rapidly levelledall distinctions; and it is only by gettingaway from the railway, and intosettlements that still retain all the primitivenessof an earlier day, that we findthe conditions of which much of thisbook treats.

[vii]

CONTENTS.