‘These morose days through which we are living’
How often we learn about one thing when searching for something else. That’s one reason I encourage my 15-year-old son to read, read anything, read every chance he gets. It’s amazing what you might just learn, serendipitously, including smooth-feeling new words.
Such was the case this evening as I was perusing Western short stories by Owen Wister, a writer best known for creating The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains more than a century ago.
Beginning to read a book of his essays, with which I was not at all familiar (A Straight Deal; or, The Ancient Grudge), written in the mid- to late-teens, I came across this description of the times:
“Publish any sort of conviction related to these morose days through which we are living, and letters will shower upon you like leaves in October. No matter what your conviction be, it will shake both yeas and nays loose from various minds where they were hanging ready to fall. Never was a time when so many brains rustled with hates and panaceas that would sail wide into the air at the lightest jar.”
Such were the times in 1917, with America’s entry into the Great War, with the politics that swirled around everyone who spoke with conviction, with Wilson defeating Roosevelt, with the Socialists gaining ground and on and on.
These are the days, the beliefs, the feelings of the Bisbee Deportation. These are what we will be exploring herewith.