Once a common "short-cut" has been established across private property the public immediately regards it as its own possession, and go pronounced is this tendency that the law in certain localities recognizes it and owners are required at specified times to post notices stating that there is no thoroughfare, otherwise their private privileges are lost. But what indignation the withdrawal of: any such—favour arouses Take, for example, the prairie lands of the Western United States, common grazing ground for the ranchers' cattle. When settlers, or "nesters," as they were contemptuously called, began to homestead the land and put up fences to protect their holdings, they were all but run out by public minded citizens who resented being obliged to deviate from their direct paths across country. Many a man, nominally
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.