As one peruses these novels one thinks of a new tale
to be told--The Last of the Fashionables, who died away, like the
buffalo and the grisly bear, in some canon or forest of the Wild
West. I think this distinguished being, Ultimus hominum
venustiorum, will find the last remnants of the Gentlemanly Party in
some Indian tribe, Apaches or Sioux. I see him raised to the rank
of chief, and leading the red-skinned and painted cavaliers on the
war-path against the Vulgarians of the ultimate Democracy. To
depict this dandy chief would require the art at once of a Cooper
and a Ouida. Let me attempt -
THE LAST FIGHT OF FOUR HAIR-BRUSHES
By this time the Sioux were flying in all directions, mowed down by
the fire of Gatling and Maxim guns. The scrub of Little Big Horn
Creek was strewn with the bodies of writhing braves. On the livid
and volcanic heights of Mount Buncombe, the painted tents were
blazing merrily. But on a mound above the creek, an ancient
fortress of some long-forgotten people, a small group of Indian
horsemen, might be observed, steady as rocks in the refluent tide of
war. The fire from their Winchester repeaters blazed out like the
streamers of the Northern Lights. Again and again the flower of the
United States army had charged up the mound, only to recoil in
flight, or to line the cliff with their corpses. The First Irish
Cuirassiers had been annihilated: Parnell's own, alas! in the heat
of the combat had turned their fratricidal black-thorns on
M'Carthy's brigade, and these two gallant squadrons were mixed and
broken, falling beneath the blows of brothers estranged.
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