"Lyxcn Lawyers?" By William Paterson White; and ''The Duke of Chimney Butte," by G. W.
Pegden, Hodder & Stoughton, Ld.
It cannot be, surely, that the bad old days of the. Wild and Woolly West are to be taken from us! Never let it be said that the beat of the policeman is to march together with the advent of prohibition in the "Bad Lands" of Missouri—or is it Colorado? The. Eighteenth Amendment, it must be admitted, is contemptuously ignored in the latest "cowboy yarns" to hand: the bartender and_ his bottles of rye are still prominent in their pages. One of the "villyuns," in fact, packs as cargo a quart of Scotch and a quart of rye, both of which he absorbs during the course of and evening. So that in this respect) at least the bad old days ard still with us. But, if memory serves aright, from the days when Nick Carter and cowboy yarns were relished as stolen fruit" compared with the more lawful pursuit of G. A. Henry, R M. Ballantine, or "Treasure Island," it seems that never dich we-find in the last chapter the story of how they lived happy ever after. Memory may haved erred, however: it is probable that the enthusiasms of youth were directed more closely to the "shootings-up" and lynchings than to the space wasted on thd doings of the heroine, At all eventd the feminine interest ig particularly strong in the last two of these novels which have reached us.
There. is, of course, quite a fair-share of excitement. Six-shooters and derringers, ' knives and ropes, are in constant use. The sheriff with his hidden star is held in as little respect as might be anticipated in thd wildest dreams. Mail coaches with thousands of dollars are still held up and county gaols are broken into with surprising frequency. Arms are broken, fingers of the shooting hand are' Int at just the right moment to prevent the hero's capture, bullets miraculously spin ai "dime's" breadth from his temple, and he makes many. more wonderful escapes—just in the good old way. The picturesque cowboy of the novel-may be going the way of all flesh: he probably, spends his spare timd amusedly watching—_"'movie" depictions of his wild - life. But. the "cowboy yarn" is with us to stay. For the time being, at any rate, he appears to tolerably safe from the psychoanalysts. ats 3B J.W.F.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.