The Project Gutenberg EBook of To the Last Man, by Zane Grey

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Title: To the Last Man

Author: Zane Grey

Posting Date: November 19, 2008 [EBook #2070]
Release Date: February, 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TO THE LAST MAN ***

To The Last Man

by

Zane Grey

FOREWORD

It was inevitable that in my efforts to write romantic history of the
great West I should at length come to the story of a feud. For long I
have steered clear of this rock. But at last I have reached it and
must go over it, driven by my desire to chronicle the stirring events
of pioneer days.

Even to-day it is not possible to travel into the remote corners of the
West without seeing the lives of people still affected by a fighting
past. How can the truth be told about the pioneering of the West if
the struggle, the fight, the blood be left out? It cannot be done.
How can a novel be stirring and thrilling, as were those times, unless
it be full of sensation? My long labors have been devoted to making
stories resemble the times they depict. I have loved the West for its
vastness, its contrast, its beauty and color and life, for its wildness
and violence, and for the fact that I have seen how it developed great
men and women who died unknown and unsung.

In this materialistic age, this hard, practical, swift, greedy age of
realism, it seems there is no place for writers of romance, no place
for romance itself. For many years all the events leading up to the
great war were realistic, and the war itself was horribly realistic,
and the aftermath is likewise. Romance is only another name for
idealism; and I contend that life without ideals is not worth living.
Never in the history of the world were ideals needed so terribly as
now. Walter Scott wrote romance; so did Victor Hugo; and likewise
Kipling, Hawthorne, Stevenson. It was Stevenson, particularly, who
wielded a bludgeon against the realists. People live for the dream in
their hearts. And I have yet to know anyone who has not some secret
dream, some hope, however dim, some storied wall to look at in the
dusk, some painted windo