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This picture is historical. Mr. Rogers has met most of the world's great ones—met them, and tweaked them and, best of all, watched them laugh at his jibes. And somehow, in spite all his elaborately conscious naiveté, his warped tie and penny chicle, he is important rather for being a symbol than for being a freak. This curious person tells you about .North America. His mother was a Cherokee Indian. His father was the Living Jingo. He was born on a reservation in Oklahoma in 1881 and grew to manhood on the back of a pinto. His early scavengings in border towns and on the property of neighboring ranchers came to the attention of an officer of the law who hinted that he might be able to advance himself more quickly in some other state. Mr. Rogers went to South America, then by cattle boat to South Africa, returning to the West in time to join the rodeo of Colonel Muhlbach which was about to start on a tour of the U. S. In May, 1905, Colonel Muhlbach's show came to New York and Rogers got into the news for the first time.
He owed this first snip of fame to a berserk steer which, pestered by circling ropes, went mad and jumped the paling that divided the ring from the spectators. In an instant a young cowboy dashed to the spot, swung his rope and, with a deft flick of the wrist, saved the life of a little girl. That young cowboy was not William Penn Adair Rogers. But a reporter liked the name. Rogers found himself a hero. The incident gave him confidence. A little later he kept a boisterous audience quiet by talking to them. Soon he was talking to audiences from the back of a wooden bronco in Keith's theatres. Then came money and fame and the Ziegfeld Follies.
If a man once gets a jester's license half the world will love him and half will fear him and all will ask him to dinner. Millionaires will tell him how to bet and boast of his acquaintance. Hamlet was proud to profess that he had been a friend of Yorick's. Not quite all of the celebrities whom Rogers, with unerring eye, has picked from darkened boxes at the Follies and hailed onto the stage have enjoyed the fun he had at their expense. But they have all laughed. His humor is fearless, nonchalant, and aggressively Western. The New York Times has called him America's Aristophanes, the Herald has hailed him as successor of the famed Mr. Dooley (Finley Peter Dunne). Woodrow Wilson admitted that he found Will Roger's political roulades not only funny but "illuminating."
Often he entertains at debutante parties. It is supper time. On little gilt chairs thrown up by the glazed tide of the ballroom floor, the guests settle themselves to watch Will Rogers unwrap a stick of gum and put it in his mouth. When he first began to go about in society, he tells them, he had a lot of trouble finding out which were the servants and which the gentlemen. Then he found a clue— butlers had no braid on their trousers. After that he was able to distinguish the butlers. Now his only trouble is to distinguish the gentlemen. . . .