The William F. Cody Archive: Documenting the life and times of Buffalo Bill

A WORTHY AMERICAN.

Colonel Wm. F. Cody, whom so many millions personally know as Buffalo Bill, is now with his wonderful Wild West Exhibition in London and is doing the greatest business ever done there by any entertainment and instruction company. Not long since in Windsor Forest he gave an hour's exhibition before Queen Victoria and the entire royal family, the party numbering two hundred of the most interested guests. Such an exhibition of horsemanship was probably never witnessed elsewhere in the world. There were Cossacks from Russia, Mexican Vacqueros, American Cowboys and wild riders from South America. The Queen was not only pleased but intensely interested. She made very valuable presents of diamonds and other precious articles to Col. Cody and to his business associates, and to Cody gave a reception. It was an event that occurs only once in a man's lifetime, and one that Buffalo Bill may well be proud of; and of the further fact that he is considered in the countries where he has been as a magnificent specimen of Americans. During all his work abroad he has been earnest and honest, polite and manly. He has done more than has any other one or fifty citizens of the United States to popularize America in the minds of the millions who have witnessed his Wild West Exhibition, and has set persons to thinking of the earnest, determined men in this country, where worth, capital, talent and good intention ever find generous welcome and an opportunity to better their so called fortune. Cody may be too busy to realize it, but millions of his countrymen here have their eyes on him and are proud of his success and of his American manliness. What a welcome he will receive on his return, and the millions who will visit him and his Exhibition if he continues it, as he probably will, for the education there is in it for the millions, aside from the entertainment itself.