Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/488

 the introduction of a few Lamb knitting machines, they could be taught to make stockings for the Southwestern market out of the wool raised by their own families, and thus help support the institution and open a better market for the products of their own tribe. They could be taught to tan the skins of their own flocks and herds, and to make shoes and saddles of the result. But all this must be put down as "whimsical," because there is no money in it "for the boys." The great principle of American politics, regardless of party lines, is that "the boys" must be taken care of at all times and in all places.

Tucson had changed the most appreciably of any town in the Southwest; American energy and American capital had effected a wonderful transformation: the old garrison was gone; the railroad had arrived; where Jack Long and his pack-train in the old times had merrily meandered, now puffed the locomotive; Muñoz's corral had been displaced by a round-house, and Muñoz himself by a one-lunged invalid from Boston; the Yankees had almost transformed the face of nature; the exquisite architectural gem of San Xavier del Bac still remained, but the "Shoo Fly" restaurant had disappeared, and in its place the town boasted with very good reason of the "San Xavier" Hotel, one of the best coming within my experience as a traveller. American enterprise had moved to the front, and the Castilian with his "marromas" and "bailes" and saints' days and "funcciones" had fallen to the rear; telephones and electric lights and Pullman cars had scared away the plodding burro and the creaking "carreta"; it was even impossible to get a meal cooked in the Mexican style of Mexican viands; our dreams had faded; the chariot of Cinderella had changed back into a pumpkin, and Sancho was no longer governor.

"I tell you, Cap," said my old friend, Charlie Hopkins, "them railroads's playin' hob with th' country, 'n a feller's got to hustle hisself now in Tucson to get a meal of frijoles or enchiladas; this yere new-fangled grub doan' suit me 'n I reckon I'll pack mee grip 'n lite out fur Sonora."

Saddest of all, the old-timers were thinning out, or if not dead were living under a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph; the Postons, Ourys, Bradys, Mansfields, Veils, Rosses, Montgomerys, Duncans, Drachmans, Handys, and others were unappreciated by the incoming tide of "tenderfeet," who knew nothing of the perils