Just how he gets half way across the continent is a matter of detail.  Sometimes the misguided youth is too proud to beg and too honest to steal, in which case he probably saves up his pocket money and buys a cheap ticket.  The more romantic and strictly correct course to adopt is to start out without a dollar, and to beat one’s way across the continent, so as to be thoroughly entitled to recognition on the prairie.  Many a young man who has commenced the pilgrimage towards glorified badness, has had the fever knocked out of him before advancing 100 miles, but others have succeeded in getting through, and have arrived in Texas, Wyoming or Montana, as the case may have been, thoroughly convinced of their own ability to hold their own in all company.

The disappointment that awaits the adventurous one is almost too great to be expressed in words.  If the cowboys were one-half as bad as they are painted, they would proceed to demonstrate their right to an evil reputation by murdering the newcomer, and stealing his wearing apparel and any money he might happen to have with him.  Instead of doing this, the cowboy generally looks with amusement on the individual who has come so many miles to join him.  The greeting is not of the exuberant character expected, and frequently the heart of the newcomer is broken by being told to go back to his mammy and spend a few years more in the nursery.  A runaway tenderfoot just fresh from school is not wanted on the cattle ranch, and although Western farmers are too good-natured to resent very severely the liberty taken, they never flatter the newcomer by holding out any inducements or making any prophecies as to his future.

The writer met a runaway enthusiast of this character a few years ago.  His destination was the extreme West.  As he did not know himself the State to which he was bound, he presumed that no one else did.  When found, he had got as far as Kansas City, and hunger and lack of a place where he could sleep in comfort had cooled his ardor and inaugurated a vigorous attack of home-sickness.  As the ideal cowboy life does not provide for feather beds or meals served in courses, it was suggested to the lad that possibly he was having a good experience in advance, and getting himself accustomed to the privations of the life he had decided to adopt.

This logic did not commend itself at all to the runaway, whose sole ambition now was to borrow enough money to telegraph a message of penitence to his father.  A small sum necessary for the purpose was given him, and the dispatch sent.  Within an hour an answer was received and money transmitted by wire to supply the lad with a ticket for his home, where it is exceedingly probable what little cowboy fever he had left in him was speedily removed in old-fashioned and regulation manner.