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A POSITION DIFFICULT TO ATTAIN--A "PLAINS CELEBRITY."--A TITLE IMPERISHABLE

To fain great local and national fame as a "plains celebrity" in the days of old was not an easy task; rather one of the most competitive struggles that a young man could possibly engage in. The vast, comparatively unknown, even called "Great American Desert of twenty-five and thirty years ago was peopled only by the descendants of the sturdy pioneers of the then Far West--Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, etc. born, raised, and used to hardships and danger, and attracted only the resolute, determined adventurers of the rest of the world, seeking an outlet for pent-up natures, imbued with love of daring adventure. Hundreds of men achieved local, and great numbers national fame for the possession of every manly quality that goes to make up the romantic hero of that once dark and bloody ground. When it is brought to mind the work engaged in, the carving out of the advance paths for the more domestically inclined settler, of the dangers and excitements of hunting and trapping, of carrying dispatches, stage driving, freighting cargoes of immense value, guiding successfully the immense wagon trains, gold hunting, it is easy to conceive what a class of sturdy, adventurous young spirits entered the arena to struggle in a daily deadly dangerous game to win the "bubble reputation." When such an army of the best human material battled for supremacy, individual distinction gained by the unwritten law of unprejudiced popular promotion, possessed a value that made its acquirer a "plains celebrity" stamped indelibly with an honored title rarely possessed unless fairly, openly, and justly won--a prize so pure that its ownership, while envied, crowned the victor of the friendship, following and admiration of the contestants. Thus Boone, Crockett, Carson, Beal, Fremont, Cody, Bridger, Kinman, Hicock, Cosgrove, Comstock, Frank North, and others, will live in the romance, the poetry, and history of their each distinctive work forever. The same spirit and circumstances have furnished journalists innumerable, who in the West imbibed the sterling qualities they afterward used to such effect. Notably Henry M. Stanley, who (in 1866) saw the rising sun of the young empire that stretches to the Rockies; General Greeley, of Arctic fame (now of signal service), and the equally scientific explorer, Lieut. Schwatka, passed their early career in the same school, and often followed "the trail" led by "BUFFALO BILL"; Finerty (of the "Chicago Times"); "Modoc" Fox, and O'Kelly (of the "New York Herald"), 1876; while last year new blood among the scribbles was initiated to their baptism of fire by Harries (of "Washington Star"), McDonough ("New York World"), Bailey (of "Inter Ocean"), brave young Kelly (of the "Lincoln Journal"), Cressy (of the "Omaha Bee"), Seymour ("Chicago Herald"), and Allen (of the "New York Herald"), present in battle, who were honored by three cheers from "Old White Top" Forsythe, gallant 7th Cavalry, the day after the battle of "Wounded Knee," as they went charging over Wolf Creek to what came near being a crimson day, to the fight "down at the Mission." That there are still "successors to every king" is assured by the manly scouts so prominent in last winter's rehearsal of past (hoped no more future) frontier dramas in such men as FRANK GUARD, now the most celebrated of the present employed army scouts; of "LITTLE BAT," true as steel, and active as the cougar; PHILIP WELLS, LOUIS SHANGRAU, "BIG BAPTISTE," and JOHN SHANGRAU; while the friendly Indians furnish such grand material for any future necessity as "No Neck," Major "SWORD," "RED SHIRT," and "YANKTON CHARLEY."

BILL CODY.--(BY AN OLD COMRADE.)

You bet I know him, partner, he 'aint no circus fraud,
He's western born and western bred, if he has been late abroad;
I knew him in the days way back, beyond Missouri's flow.
When the country round was nothing but a huge Wild Western Show. When the [Injuns?] were as thick as fleas, and the man who ventured
through
The sand hills of Nebraska had to fight the hostile Sioux:
These were hot times, I tell you; and we all remember still
The data when Cody was a scout, and all the men knew Bill.

I knew him first in Kansas, in the days of '68.
When the Cheyennes and Arapahoes were wiping from the slate
Old scored against the settlers, and when men who wore the blue,
With shoulder straps and way up rank, were glad to be helped through
By a bearer of dispatches, who knew each vale and hill
From Dakota down to Texas, and his other name was Bill.

I mind me too of '76, the time when Cody took
His scouts upon the Rosebud; along with General Crook;
When Custer's Seventh rode to their death for lack of some such aide
To tell them that the sneaking Sioux knew how to ambuscade:
I saw Bill's fight with "Yellow Hand," you bet it was a "mill,"
He downed him well at thirty yards, and all the men cheered Bill.

They tell me that the women folk now take his word as laws.
In them days laws were mighty [skerce?], and hardly passed with squaws,
But many a hardy settler's wife and daughter used to rest
More quietly because they knew of Cody's dauntless breast;
Because they felt from Laramie way down to Old Fort Sill,
Bill Cody was a trusted scout, and all their men knew Bill.

I haven't seen him much of late, how does he bear his years?
They say he's making [ducats?] now from shows and not from "steers,"
He used to be a judge of "horns," when poured in a tin cup,
and left the wine to tenderfeet, and men who felt "way up."
Perhaps he cracks a bottle now, perhaps he's had his fill.
Who cares, Bill Cody was scout, and all the world knows Bill.

To see him In his trimmings, he can't hardly look the same,
With laundered shirt and diamonds, as if "he run a game."
He didn't wear billed linen then, or flash up diamond rings,
The royalties he dreamed of then were only pasteboard kings,
But those who sat behind the Queens were apt to get their fill,
In the days when Cody was a scout, and all the men knew Bill.

Gridiron Club. WM. E. ANNIN,

Washington, D, C., Feb. 28thm 1831. Lincoln (Neb.) Journal.