Books › Blue Book v055 n01 [1932-05], 1932 › scan 1
Scan 1
Blue Book v055 n01 [1932-05], 1932
16 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1The West Is Within You
3LIKE the kingdom of heaven, the West is within you. . . .
5Because it has always been from east to west that civilized man has pioneered this so-fascinating globe, the West has from time immemorial been the undiscovered country. (So perhaps it came about that to the soldiers of the Great War, as well as to the ancient Egyptians, the West was sign and symbol of a country undiscovered indeed, a Happy Hunting-ground beyond the grave.)
7Horace Greeley of course meant his famous advice to youth in a sense entirely literal: America's unsettled West of his time offered young men a fine opportunity for a material success based on the vast untouched resources and freedom from competition which that then new land offered. But to us Americans of 1932, the West means not only that old untamed land of infinite opportunity, of pioneer perils and frontier hardship; not only the beloved and beautiful if only too well settled region that is the modern West; more than these, the West today is an idea, an ideal—a state of mind that reflects and carries on the spirit which won the old West and inspires the new.
9For these reasons stories of the West—sincere stories, that is, by men who know whereof they write—have for us a particular and peculiar appeal far beyond the glamour of a picturesque place or period. For they wake again a courage and preserve an attitude of mind that is close to the very soul of this America of ours. . . .
11BRET HARTE, Frederick Remington, Owen Wister—they have had a host of imitators and a dozen lineal descendants. The work of a few of these latter we have been privileged to publish in these pages—notably that of Frederick Bechdolt and Will James. So we know you will share our pleasure in the new drawing by Will James, which appears on another page of this issue. And we predict your special enthusiasm for Mr. Bechdolt's novella of the old West, "The Silver Trail," which will be a feature of the forthcoming June number.
13"Youth Rides Victorious," "The Hazardous Highway," "Sindbad of Oakland Creek"—you who recall these will remember also the fine quality of Mr. Bechdolt's writing and anticipate the new story with pleasure. You will be glad also to know that with it will appear some of the best work of such writers as S. Andrew Wood, Harold Titus, Arthur K. Akers, Clarence Herbert New, H. Bedford-Jones, Leland Jamieson and the like.
15—The Editor.
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