The So-called Human Race Part 50

At Albuquerque I remarked a line of Mexicans basking in the sun (having, perhaps, finished jumping on their mothers). They looked happy--as happy as the Russian peasants used to be. Men who know Russia tell me that the peasants really were happy, even under the twin despotisms of Vodka and Czar. It was not, of course, a reformer's idea of happiness: a reformer's idea of happiness is perpetual attention to everybody's business but his own. People who are interested academically in other people's happiness usually succeed in making everybody unhappy. Now, the Russian's happiness was a poor thing, but his own. In reality he was wretched and oppressed, and his voice and bearing should have expressed his misery and hopelessness, instead of a foolish content and a silly detachment from political affairs. But he is at last emanc.i.p.ated, and, as was said of Mary's fleecy companion, now contemplate the condemned thing!

Liberty, equality, international amity, democracy, the kingdom of heaven on earth--All that is very well, yet Candide remarked to Dr. Pangloss when all was said and done, "Let us cultivate our garden."

There are so many interesting things along the way that I should, I suppose, be filling a notebook. But why mar the pleasure of a journey by taking notes? as the good Sylvestre Bonnard inquired. Lovers who truly love do not keep a diary of their happiness.

In Phoenix, Arizona, distance lends enchantment to the view. But the hills are far away, and as I did not visit the Southwest to contemplate the works of man, however ingenious, I followed the westering sun to where the mountains come down to the sea. I do not fancy the elevated parts of New Mexico and Arizona; and as there was no thought of pleasing me when they were created, I feel free to express a modified rapture in their contemplation. I should have remembered enough geology to know that granite is not found in this section, except at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The hills I like are made of old-fas.h.i.+oned stuff, not young upstart tufa and sandstone that was not thought of when the Laurentians were built. One really cannot have much respect for a rock that he can kick to pieces. The gay young b.u.t.tes in this land of quickly s.h.i.+fting horizons are not without their charm; they look well in certain lights, and they are decidedly better than no hills at all.

Although immature, they have an air of pretending to be very ancient, to be the ruins of mountains. They are picturesque and colorful. And I would swap a league of them for one archaic boulder the size of a box-car, with a thick coverlet of reindeer moss.

When I left the train at Pasadena I saw what I took to be a procession of the K. K. K. It proved to be citizens in flu masks. I was interested, but not alarmed; whereas a lady tourist who debarked on the following day fell in a swoon and was conveyed to the hospital. The newspapers charged her disorder to the masks, but as she was from Chicago I suspect that her reason was unsettled by the sudden revealment of a clean city.

And Pasadena is clean--almost immaculate. I was obliged to join the masqueraders, and I found the inconvenience only slight. The mask keeps the nose warm after sundown, and is convenient to sneeze into. And I have never remarked better looking folks than the people of Pasadena.

The so-called human race has never appeared to better advantage. The women were especially charming, and were all, for once, equally handicapped, like the veiled s.e.x in the Orient.

Whoever christened it the Pacific ocean was the giver of innocent pleasure to every third person who has set eyes on it since. "There's the Pacific!" you hear people exclaim to one another when the train reaches the top of a pa.s.s. "Isn't it calm! That's why it is called the Pacific. And it is pacific, isn't it?" Some such observation must have escaped the stout adventurer in Darien, before he fell silent upon his peak.

I shall say nothing about the never to be sufficiently esteemed climate of California, nor even allude to the windjammers of Loz Onglaze. The last word concerning those enthusiasts was spoken by a San Francisco man who, addressing the people of "Los," explained how the city might overcome the slight handicap imposed by its distance from the sea. "Lay an iron pipe to tidewater," he advised; "and then, if you can suck as hard as you can blow, you will presently have the ocean at your doors."

It would be difficult to improve on that criticism. And so, instead of praising the climate, I will gladly testify that it is easier to live in this part of the country than anywhere east of the Sierras. And San Diego impresses me as the easiest place in the state to live, the year round.

The mechanical effort of existence is reduced to its minimum in La Jolla, a suburb of San Diego, where I am opposing a holiday indolence to pen these desultory lines. "There's lots of good fish in the sea" that beats against this rockbound but not stern coast, and there is a fish market in the village. But each day I see the sign in the window, "No fish." The fisherman, I am told, is "very independent," a euphemism for tired, perhaps. He casts his hooks and nets only when the spirit moves him, and is not impelled to the sea by sordid motives. A true fisherman, I thought, though he never change his window sign.

To-day's newspapers contain the protest of the governor of Lower California against the proposed annexing of his territory by the United States, Senor Cantu may be a hairless dog in the manger; he may, as he claims, represent the seething patriotism of all but a negligible percentage of the population; but he is no doubt correct in merely a.s.serting that the peninsula will not be annexed. Incidentally, he is on sure ground when he attributes the chaos in Mexican affairs to "conflicting political criteria." It is all of that. So far as I have casually discovered, there is no active annexation sentiment on this side of the border, for there is no hope of overcoming that provision in the Mexican const.i.tution which makes it a matter of high treason to encourage a movement for the diminution of Mexican territory.

Gov. Cantu's phrase, "conflicting political criteria," applies rather happily to the doings in Paris these days. The Peace conference and prohibition in the United States are perhaps the two most prominent topics before the public, and they are the two things which I have not heard mentioned since I began my travels.

A LINE-O'-TYPE OR TWO

_"Lord, what fools these mortals be."_

COUNTRY LIFE IN AMERICA.

Sing high the air like dry champagne, The fields of virgin snow!

(Sing low the mile-hike from the train, In five or ten below.)

Sing high the joys the G.o.ds allot To our suburban state!

(Sing low the dinner gone to pot, Because the train is late.)

Sing high the white-arched woodland way, Resembling faery halls!

(Sing low the drifts that stay and stay, In which your motor stalls.)

Sing high, sing low, sing jack and game, Sing Winter's spangled gown!

(Let him who will these things acclaim-- _I'm_ moving in to town.)

Scratch a man who really enjoys zero weather, and you will find blubber.

Born in Sioux City, to Mr. and Mrs. Matt Hoss, a daughter. Who'll contribute a buggy?

"For Sale--1920 Mormon chummy."--Minneapolis Journal.

Five-pa.s.senger at least.

THERE WERE IMMORTALS BEFORE JET WIMP.

Sir: In the Lowell (Ma.s.s.) Daily Journal and Courier, dated Feb. 4, 1853, I find the following: "What's in a name! The name of the superintendent of the Cincinnati Hospital is Queer Absalom Death." Thus showing that there were candidates for the Academy seventy years ago.

Concord.

Some sort of j.a.pe or jingle might be chiseled from the fact that Lot Spry and Ida Smart were married t'other day in Vinton, Ia.

CONTRIBUTIONS THAT HAVE AMUSED US.

Proprietor of hotel in Keokuk, answering call from room: "h.e.l.lo!"

Voice: "We are in Room 30 and now ready to come down."