A neat, active figure of a man, carefully dressed, as one who pays all proper honor to the body in which he walks about; a gentleman, not only in the broader and more generous sense, but also according to the narrower, conventional meaning of the term; plainly a scholarly man, fond of books, and knowing the best books; with that modest, diffident air which bookish men have; with a curious shyness, indeed, as of one who was not accustomed and did not like to come into too close contact with the every-day world:  such Theodore Winthrop appeared to me.  I recollect the surprise with which I heard—­not from him—­that he had ridden across the Plains, had camped with Lieutenant Strain, had “roughed it” in the roughest parts of our continent.  But if you looked a little closely into the face, you saw in the fine lines of the mouth the determination of a man who can bear to carry his body into any peril or difficulty; and in the eye—­he had the eye of a born sailor, an eye accustomed to measure the distance for a dangerous leap, quick to comprehend all parts of a novel situation—­you saw there presence of mind, unfaltering readiness, and a spirit equal to anything the day might bring forth.

In the Memoir prefixed to “Cecil Dreeme” Curtis has drawn a portrait, tender and true, of his friend and neighbor.  The few words which have written themselves here tell of him only as he appeared to one who knew him less intimately, who saw him not often.

I come now to speak of the writings which Winthrop left.  These have the singular merit, that they are all American.  From first to last, they are plainly the work of a man who had no need to go to Europe for characters or scenery or plot,—­who valued and understood the peculiar life and the peculiar Nature of this continent, and, like a true artist and poet, chose to represent that life and Nature of which he was a part.  His stories smack of the soil; his characters—­especially in “John Brent,” where his own ride across the continent is dramatized—­are as fresh and as true as only a true artist could make them.  Take, for instance, the “Pike,” the border-ruffian transplanted to a California “ranch,”—­not a ruffian, as he says, but a barbarian.

“America is manufacturing several new types of men.  The Pike is one of the newest.  He is a bastard pioneer.  With one hand he clutches the pioneer vices; with the other he beckons forward the vices of civilization.  It is hard to understand how a man can have so little virtue in so long a body, unless the shakes are foes to virtue in the soul, as they are to beauty in the face.

“He is a terrible shock, this unlucky Pike, to the hope that the new race on the new continent is to be a handsome race.  I lose that faith, which the people about me now have nourished, when I recall the Pike.  He is hung together, not put together.  He inserts his lank fathom of a man into a suit of molasses-colored homespun.  Frowzy and husky is the hair Nature crowns him with; frowzy and stubby the beard.  He shambles in his walk.  He drawls in his talk.  He drinks whiskey by the tank.  His oaths are to his words as Falstaff’s sack to his bread.  I have seen Maltese beggars, Arab camel-drivers, Dominican friars, New-York aldermen, Digger Indians; the foulest, frowziest creatures I have ever seen are thorough-bred Pikes.”