or
crossing the mountains of New Mexico by the great Scenic Highway built
for motors to the very snow tops.

[Illustration: An Indian girl of Isleta, New Mexico, carrying a water
jar.]

And if you take to studying native Indian life, at Laguna, at Acoma, at
Taos, you will find yourself in such a maze of the picturesque and the
legendary as you cannot find anywhere else in the wide world but
America. This is a story by itself--a beautiful one, also in spots a
funny one. For instance, one summer a woman of international fame from
Oxford, England, took quarters in one of the pueblos at Santa Clara or
thereabout to study Indian arts and crafts. One night in her adobe
quarters, her orderly British soul was aroused by such a dire din of
shouting, fighting, screams, as she thought could come only from some
inferno of crime. She sprang out of bed and dashed across the _placito_
in her nightdress to her guardian protector in the person of an old
Indian. He ran through the dark to see what the matter was, while she
stood in hiding of the wall shadows curdling in horror of "bluggy
deeds."

"Pah," said the old fellow coming back, "dat not'ing! Young man, he git
marry an' dey--how you call?--chiv-ar-ee-heem."

"Then, what are you laughing at?" demanded the irate British dame; for
she could not help seeing that the old fellow was literally doubling in
suffocated laughter. "How dare you laugh?"

* * * * *

"I laugh, Mees," he sputtered out, "'cos you scare me so bad when you
call, I jomp in my coat mistake for my pants. Dat's all."

* * * * *

It would pay to cultivate a little home sentiment, wouldn't it? It would
pay to let a little daylight in on the abysmal blank regarding the
wonder-land of our own world--wouldn't it?

I don't know whether the affectation recognized as "the foreign pose"
comes foremost or hindermost as a cause of this neglect of the wonders
of our own land. When you go to our own Western Wonder Land, you can't
say you have been abroad with a great long capital A; and it is
wonderful what a paying thing that pose is in a harvest of "fooleries."
There is a well-known case of an American author, who tried his hand on
delineating American life and was severely let alone because he was
too--not abroad, but broad. He dropped his own name, assumed the pose of
a grand dame familiar with the inner penetralia and sacred secrets of
the exclusive circ