The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-09-29

looks. Gambling 'in the open," as it
We're, looks odd to Eastern eyes The
tourist looks from game to game. There
are roulette monte, craps faro, poker
and a Chinese lottery. 1t is a commo-
dious room with a stove in the middle.
IN one corner on a platform is a piano.
The games are arranged around the wall,
excepting the monte and the poker
games. There are not many players, but
after the lights are lighted the room viii
be thronged. Cowboys, prospectors,
clerks, loafers and Cinnamon will elbow
each other at the games, and little brown
MeXicans will squeal over the yellow pic
ture cards at the monte table. The China
man prefer the lottery and faro. Faro is
the most popular American game with
the Chinese.
''When do you have to close?" asks the
tourist of the bartender.
I'VE never close" replied the barten-
der but things begin to slacken up
bout 5 a m"
The tourists wanderings take him past
the business houses, the feed stores and
livery stables into streets lined with
I compact trees making dense shade, and
which bound pretty lawns, yellowed in
spctS by ra;nless weeks, running back
to coo'-lool.ing adobe houses, one story
high, with RED roofs and sunk like an old
stone in trees ano vines and shrubbery.
Il always thought Il was a town Of
mud huts and implanted plae buildings
muses. the tourist, something IKE the
frontier towns that Remington draws.
AS he returns to the hotel, passing a
Sprinkling cart, many bicycles and fresh,
young American girls in white. the tour
list recalls some. of the descriptions of
Tucson he has read in Western stories.
He doesn't like to think the. writers
were liars, but it seems incredible that
this Tucson has developed so recently out
of a chaotic, incongruous frontier town,
half Mexican" as he recoIlects= one writ
er called it, What he has seen has
shaken UP his preconceived notions. AS q
center of adventure Tucson S a dismal
failure. This isn't the West he reads
about. This West would have no color no
characteristics, no value from the point
of view of story-making. The old West
is the best still for stories, he decides,
but how hard it is on the West of today!
What a reputation to live down when
Eastern cousins put revolvers in their
bags before they visit it, and think ev-
eryone wears a flannel shirt. He re-
calls the experience of a charming wom-
an from San Francisco; how she was
crossing the Atlantic and overheard some
fellow passengers discussing her. She
claimed an Eastern woman. 'Why, she
is quiet enough"
No, the conventionalizing influence OF
our life in the last few years has spread
more swiftly than we conceive, and has
run in unobserved streams far out and
beyond the little ring or our familiar
ground. And so, when we consign the
vast territory beyond the Rockies to the
oGoliquity of the wild and Woolly," we
are only poking our fingers into our own
eyes, losing sight of the great homo
geneity of our American life-we who
are all about the same from Bangor to
San Diego, and yet little different.
Thus the tourist muses., rejoicing phil
OSophically in the advance of things, and
yet humanely regretting- that the west
had not sat still for thirty years and
waited for him to see. However, with the
thermometer at 10 degrees, he is glad
TO get back to a modern hotel, to black
shade, a rocking chair, cool drink and
a newspaper. The tourist had seen the
figures ITO degrees on thermometer
outside the drug store. 1t certainly was
hot weather. He had perSpired, it seemed
to him, through soles of his shoes.
And yet, after ten minutes on the
yeranda, he was cool. He felt the wind
strike his neck and wrists with the Pc
culiar sensation of cold experienced by
iil4ldilLlS Willie edIlilS d peppermint. OIOp.
The tourist read through the Tucson
paper, mot a word about the heat he
commented; mo 'sweltering humanity
nothing about Old Sol or the weather
man; no list of prostrations." And there
would be none. There is no record of a
sunStroke in the territory, if exception
| is made of man, two-th1rds charged
with liquor, who once toppled over In
Phoenix Arizona enjoys the luxury of
no humidity. The sun burns and blisters
and starts the water from the body in
streams. Then comes the dry air from
! plains which have not tasted water for
months, and sets the human evaporator
in motion. The process of cooling the
drinking water is the same. A jar filled
! with water is wrapped with wet cloths,
and in a short time the water is as cool
| as that from a spring
! 1t is the kind of heat that you can
stand. There is no excavation, no intol-
cradle greasiness of skin. Better no de-
grees in Arizona than so degrees in New
! York.
When the tourist snapped out the cleo
trio light in his room that night he was
| still rejecting on the surprises the West
had provided him in the town of Tucson.
| Perhaps, he thought, everyone knows
| it is like this-modern, commonplace.
civilized. Perhaps they know there is a
university here that they're singing
| 'Goo-Goo Eyes, and that you see
. churches with notice boards on them say
| ing, Sunday School at $50; Preaching at
J IL. Perhaps no one believes in the
! pictures of Bret Harte and Dan Quin and
| Owen Wister any more. But L did, and
a.