ornament to the theatre and a painful trial to the drama, and realized
that he was Buffalo Bill in the flesh--why, I was glad I had also read
"Buffalo Bill's Last Shot"--(may he never shoot it). The day has passed
forever, probably, when Buffalo Bill shall shout to his other scouts,
"You set fire to the girl while I take care of the house!" or vice
versa, and so saying, bear the fainting heroine triumphantly off from
the treacherous redskins. But the story has lived.

* * * * *

It was a happy and honored custom in the old days for subscribers to the
New York Ledger and the New York Weekly to unite in requests for the
serial republication of favorite stories in those great fireside
luminaries. They were the old-fashioned, broadside sheets and, of
course, there were insuperable difficulties against preserving the
numbers. After a year or two, therefore, there would awaken a general
hunger among the loyal hosts to "read the story over," and when the
demand was sufficiently strong the publishers would repeat it, cuts,
divisions, and all, just as at first. How many times the "Gunmaker
of Moscow" was repeated in the Ledger, heaven knows. I remember I
petitioned repeatedly for "Buffalo Bill" in the Weekly, and we got
it, too, and waded through it again. By wading, I don't mean pushing
laboriously and tediously through, but, by George! half immersion in the
joy. It was a week between numbers, and a studious and appreciative boy
made no bones of reading the current weekly chapters half a dozen times
over while waiting for the next.

It must have been ten years later that I felt a thrill at the coming of
Buffalo Bill himself in his first play. I had risen to the dignity of
dramatic critic upon a journal of limited civilization and boundless