ntatives, where I had
strolled for sight-seeing but stayed to listen. The Democrats were hot
to make the Territory a State, while the Republicans objected that the
place had about it still too much of the raw frontier. The talk and
replies of each party were not long in shaking off restraint, and in the
sharp exchange of satire the Republicans were reminded that they had not
thought Idaho and Wyoming unripe at a season when those Territories were
rumored to be Republican. Arizona might be Democratic, but neither
cattle wars nor mine revolutions flourished there. Good order and
prosperity prevailed. A member from Pennsylvania presently lost his
temper, declaring that gigantic generalities about milk and honey and
enlightenment would not avail to change his opinion. Arizona was well on
to three times the size of New York--had a hundred and thirteen thousand
square miles. Square miles of what? The desert of Sahara was twice as
big as Arizona, and one of the largest misfortunes on the face of the
earth. Arizona had sixty thousand inhabitants, not quite so many as the
town of Troy. And what sort of people? He understood that cactus was
Arizona's chief crop, stage-robbing her most active industry, and the
Apache her leading citizen.

And then the Boy Orator of the Rio Grande took his good chance. I forgot
his sallow face and black, unpleasant hair, and even his single
gesture--that straining lift of one hand above the shoulder during the
suspense of a sentence and that cracking it down into the other at the
full stop, endless as a pile-driver. His facts wiped any trick of manner
from my notice. Indians? Stage-robbers? Cactus? Yes. He would add
famine, drought, impotent law, daily murder; he could add much more, but
it was all told in Mr. Pumpelly's book, true as life, thirty years
ago--doubtless the latest news in Pennsylvania! Had this report
discouraged the gentleman from visiting Arizona? Why, he could go there
to-day in a Pullman car by two great roads and eat his three meals in
security. But Eastern statesmen were too often content with knowing
their particular corner of our map while a continent of ignorance lay in
their minds.

At this stroke applause sounded beside me, and, turning, I had my first
sight of the yellow duster. The bulky man that wore it shrewdly and
smilingly watched the orator, who now dwelt upon the rapid benefits of
the railways, the excellent men and things they brought to Arizona, the
leap into c