Louis L’Amour was a good listener, as eager to learn from the spoken as from the printed word. In EDUCATION OF A WANDERING MAN, (http://www.louislamour.com/nonfiction/education.htm) Louis L’Amour talks of his habit of . . . listening.

“In every town there was at least one former outlaw or gunfighter, an old Indian scout or a wagon master, and each with many stories ready to tell.

One story engendered another, and sitting on a bench in front of a store I’d tell of something I knew or had heard and would often get a story in return, sometimes a correction. The men and women who lived the pioneer life did not suddenly disappear; they drifted down the years, a rugged, proud people who had met adversity and survived. Once, many years later, I was asked in a television interview what was the one quality that distinguished them, and I did not come up with the answer I wanted. Later, when I was in the hotel alone, it came to me.

Dignity.

They all had dignity, a certain serenity and pride that was theirs completely. They might be poor, they might be eking out at the last a precarious living, but they had dignity.

They knew where they had been and what they had seen and done, and were content. Something was theirs, something within themselves that neither time passing nor man nor hard times could take from them.

I have worked beside them, eaten at their tables, sat beside them in sunlight and moonlight and firelight. I never knew one of the old breed who did not have it.”

In the photo is a young Louis circa the mid 1920’s when he worked as a caretaker for the Yoba Copper Mine near Prescott, AZ. When in town or around the campfire, he would listen to the stories told and memorize them for future reference in his writing.