In  very  fact,  a  great  deal  of  Spanish  is  spoken  in      his
New   Mexico;    and    in    Arizona,  more    than  a    West-  ^^^^horror

from-the-Car-Window  tourist  understands.  Over  both
noble  landscapes  still  wander  many  Persons  who  Pursue
Cows,  and  more  that  Hunt  Holes  —  and  dig  'em,  and  get
Stuff  out  —  and  other  Desperate  Characters.  There  are
many  people  who  cannot  write.  I  believe  Abraham
Lincoln's  mother  could  not.  There  are  a  still  larger  number  who
do  not  wear  kid  gloves,  nor  that  crowning  triumph  of  intellect-
uality, the  "Plug  Hat.  "  Neither  did  Horace  Greeley.  There  are
also  saloons  and  games  of  chance  ;  and  one  can  fancy  the  pious
shock  to  a  gentleman  from  Washington  at  discovering,  in  the
Wicked  West,  that  such  things  as  the  two  latter  can  be,  to  over-
come us  like  a  summer  crowd  without  our  special  wonder.  Also
the  unction  with  which  he  sees  and  says  that  the  openness  of
them  proves  the  moral  unfitness  for  statehood  of  com-
munities which  tolerate  it.  The  only  Truly  Moral  way,
of  course,  is  to  put  a  green  screen  before  these  omnipresent
vices  and  to  make  them  a  means  of  support-by-blackmail  for
thousands  of  base  parasites  who  are  always  useful  in  Practical


224  OUT    WEST

Politics;. as  is  the  fashion  in  New  York — and,  though  not  al-
ways so  shamelessly,  in  every  other  large  city  in  the  Union.
THERB  _  As  to  the  langfuage,  there  are  not  so  many  people

OTHBRS.
