Hero

What Makes A Hero?

According to Richard K. Fox, the editor of the National Police Gazette ( 1877 to 1922), a hero had to possess some or all of the following qualities:

1.) The hero's accuracy with any weapon is prodigious.

2.) He is unequaled in bravery and courage.

3.) He is courteous to all women -- regardless of rank, station age or physical charm.

4.) He is gentle, modest, and unassuming.

5.) He is handsome -- sometimes even pretty, so that he seems even feminine in appearance; but
withal he is of course very masculine, and exceedingly attractive to women.

6.) He is blue-eyed. His piercing blue eyes turn gray as steel when he is aroused; his
associates would have been well advised to keep a color chart handy, so that they might
have dived for a storm cellar when the blue turned to tattletale gray.

7.) He was driven to a life of outlawry and crime – by having quite properly defended a loved
one from an intolerable affront - with lethal consequences.
Thereafter, however,

8.) He shields the widow and orphan -- robbing only the banker or railroad monopolist.

9.) His death comes about by means of betrayal or treachery, but

10.) It is rarely a conclusive death, since he keeps bobbing up later on, in other places, for
many years.

(List from The wild, wild west. American Heritage, XI, P. Lyon, 1960)