During The Time We Were Stationed At Davids Island, Mr. Remington
And Jack Made A Trip To The Southwest, Where They Shot The
Peccary (Wild Hog) In Texas And Afterwards Blue Quail And Other
Game In Mexico.
Artist and soldier, they got on famously together
notwithstanding the difference in their ages.
And now he was going to try his hand at a novel, a real romance.
We talked a good deal about the little Indian boy, and I got to
love White Weasel long before he appeared in print as John
Ermine.The book came out after we had left New Rochelle - but I
received a copy from him, and wrote him my opinion of it, which
was one of unstinted praise. But it did not surprise me to learn
that he did not consider it a success from a financial point of
view.
"You see," he said a year afterwards, "that sort of thing does
not interest the public. What they want," - here he began to mimic
some funny old East Side person, and both hands
gesticulating - "is a back yard and a cabbage patch and a cook
stove and babies' clothes drying beside it, you see, Mattie," he
said. "They don't want to know anything about the Indian or the
half-breed, or what he thinks or believes." And then he went off
into one of his irresistible tirades combining ridicule and abuse
of the reading public, in language such as only Frederic
Remington could use before women and still retain his dignity.
"Well, Frederic," I said, "I will try to recollect that, when I
write my experiences of Army Life."
In writing him my opinion of his book the year before, I had
said, "In fact, I am in love with John Ermine." The following
Christmas he sent me the accompanying card.
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