[Gutenberg 26244] • Cavanagh, Forest Ranger: A Romance of the Mountain West

Excerpt from Cavanagh, Forest Ranger: A Romance of the Mountain West

My Dear Mr. Garland: - You have been kind enough to let me see the proofs of Cavanagh: Forest Ranger. I have read it with mingled feelings - with keen appreciation of your sympathetic understanding of the problems which confronted the Forest Service before the Western people understood it, and with deep regret that I am no longer officially associated with its work (although I am as deeply interested, and almost as closely in touch as ever).

The Western frontier, to the lasting sorrow of all old hunters like yourself, has now practically disappeared. Its people faced life with a manly dependence on their own courage and capacity which did them, and still does them, high honor. Some of them were naturally slow to see the advantages of the new order. But now that they have seen it, there is nowhere more intelligent, convinced, and effective support of the Conservation policies than in the West. The establishment of the new order in some places was not child's play. But there is a strain of fairness among the Western people which you can always count on in such a fight as the Forest Service has made and won.