Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1880-04-30
On the Plaza, Santa Fe.

Three times week the military band
plays in the plaza at sunset. and &C.
cept the invitation of General Edward
Hatch, that bravest of cavalry-men and
most genial of gentlemen, to Join him
in cigar ut Lead-q uarters, and listen
to the music. The benches on the
plaza soon fill up, and the psriales that
form complete colonnade over the
sidewalks around the whole square be-
come populOus with pleasure hunters.
1t is tri-weekly acquaintance day for
the whole town. A noisy train of long.
horned, thin.bodied oxen, dragging
trailed wagons piled high with freight
from the railway terminus, comes round
the corner, and stops to listen before
unyoking for the night, the whacker's
long whip cracking like pistol-shots as
he lashes his unwieldy beasts into po-
sition. Half a dozen donkeys, loaded
with immense burdens of fagots cut in
the foothills, are allowed t.. stop their
peregrinations in search of customer,
andmake squealing remarks to the rival
burros OF the grass merchant, whose
boy is kept busy with his club in pro-
tecting the verdant cargo. Here APP
proaches an aged, parchment cased
Mexican whose skin is much the color
of his shoes, and begs us to buy his
musk melons, or his peppers, or at
least, senores, the wild plums that lie
in red and saccharine masses under the
lid Of his home made basket. Then an
Indian, tall, straight, grinning from
under hair banged like Saratoga
90 n Il
under his striped blanket bony hand
and arm with "How ?" that seems to
come from the heels Of his beaded moo
casins. He tears from his handle u
fragment of coarse wrapping paper,
sprinkles upon it some tobacco, and
calmly begs light from the generals
cigar. 1t Is given dignity amounts to
nothing with an Indian in such matters)
and the aborigine moves on to range
himself with half dozen other shape.
less figures in stripes and checkers and
zigzags of Navajo blanket, who lean
upon the fence and keep time to the
quickstep with their active toes.
Everywhere are troops of women; and
just before us one Of the acknowledged
demi-monde sits chatting with young
mother, nodding to acquaintance, and
amusing the little laughing nut-brown
babe, without any one lifting an eye.
brow. A woman must be very far gone
indeed before Mexican society (barring
q select few will ostracizs her. This
girl is dressed in an attempt at Ameri-
can style, and loses by it. Her hat ex-
plains what becomes of the remnants Of
and culled-out stock
which must be left over from each sea-
son. The shops of Santa Fe are a ma-
scum of ancient styles in bonnets and
hats-relics of fashions which expired
before the war, and evidences of an
ingenuity in bad taste that could never
DO equaled by u design to produce
horrible effects. 1t is the country peo-
pie who buy them. What do they know
of fashion ut Santo Domingo or Abb
quiu?
l am inclined to believe that the re-
ported grace of motion traditional in
speaking of the Spanish has not been
wholly lost in their American descend
ants. In their gait, in their attitudes
(when not sitting on their heels), in
the use Of the ever-present fan, and the
motion OF the slender hand, there is o
natural and familiar grace not charac-
teristic of American ladies', and utterly
lacking i'll the peasantry OF the Teuton-
&c and northern races. What has often
been remarked of the senoritas of old
CASTLE is still true of the young women
OF Santa Fe.-ERNEsT INGERsoLn, in
Ha'per's Magazine.