The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1909-09-11

the game" the rest of the afternoon.
And SO all my sympathy went to the
bull which is tortured for full half
an hour, goaded and driven and tor
mented, until he sinks exhausted
frothing, at the mouth and streaming
with blood. when, unable to get fur
Their amusement out of him, the ma
tador runs him through. And that
is the best part of the show. 1t is
such relief to know his sufferings
are over.
A vegetarian like Bernard Shaw
would say that mo meat-eater has
right to be finicky about a bull fight.
and I am certain no woman who
wears an aigrette can consistently rail
at the cruelty of the national pastime
of the Spanish.
But, outside of it's beggars and its
bull fights, Mexico is all right. The
capital of Mexico is a gay, beautiful,
cosmopolitan city. You may sit on
the verande of the Chapultepec cafe
on a Sunday afternoon and hear five
or six languages spoken at neighbor-
ing tables. There are smart English,
American. Italian. German and
French colonies in the Mexican capt.
tai beside the native fashionable set
of wealthy Mexicans. The horses and
equipages are magnificent and seem
to far outnumber the automob iles, al
though one sees many machines and
a great number of French cars. The
women are extensively and showily
though, not at a passing glance, ar
tistically dressed. We did not think
the Mexican women particularly beau
tiful and the men in our party
grumbled about 1t a good DEAL but
then a tourist never sees the choicest
beauties of course, and many of the
smartest Mexican families were out
of the city. have heard lots of peo-
pie who only come to Topeka to shop
and never get off Kansas avenue, say
that there are no pretty women in
Topeka, but we who live here know
better. We have knocked on the Mex
lean women, our principal objection
being the look of age and maturity
and acknowledgement of even the very
young ones (The Mexican maiden of
sixteen looks thirty during our en-
tire stay, but the day we reached El
Paso on our homeward trip and were
taking the train for Albuquerque we
ran into an excursion train just
emptying its human freight on the
station platform and noted that a
comparison of these Americans with
a crowd of Mexican women would
not result to the disadvantage of the
latter. I think I have never seen so
many ugly, ill-groomed, imperfectly
nourished or over-fed, coarse-skinned,
mongrel-bred women in my life as
that excursion crowd. What can you
expect from an excursion crowd? OF
course. But when you visit a strange
the street is the average lower middle
class, not the selected, highly special
lied upper class which alone con-
sistently produces beauty and grace
and the look of breeding.
No use being foolishly conceited
about your own country. In many
respects Mexico has us beaten. In
the arts the sister republic is far
ahead of US, naturally, as arts take
time and Mexico had cathedrals and
pictures and statuary from Europe
beside a well preserved aboriginal art
far in advance of that of the north
ern part of the continent, long be-
fore the Pilgrim Fathers landed or
Pocahontas saved John Smith. The
cathedral of the City of Mexico is
built on the ruins Of the Aztec temple
and some of the most exquisite
bronzes and onyx in 1t are Aztec relics.
It has paintings by Rubens and Guido
REM and Correa and heaven only
knows who besides. Our guide knew
and reeled off the names with sicken-
ing familiarity but we didn't have a
Baedeker and I have not yet found
time to look up the things I meant to
find out as soon as I got home.
If I had known I was going to
Mexico more than four hours before
the train started, which I didn't, I
should probably have crammed and
BpO1lGQ eli Dy impressions. AS IL was
I only had time to throw a few
clothes together and 1 had so COM
pletely forgotten everything I had
ever heard about the republic, geo.
graphically. historically, politically or
otherwise, that the whole trip was a
constant revelation to me. I couldn't
even remember, SO musty and dim
and far away are my school days,
WHETHER it was the tropfc of cancer
or of capricorn when we crossed it.
- -
the Isthmus,- we stopped at an old
the building in which the treaty be-
was signed after our Mexican war I
tried to look intelligent but failed ut
terly, because all I could remember
about that war was that Zachariah
Taylor had something to do with it.
I have since heard that it was
naughty war and we had no business
to get into it, but this is more or less
true of all wars and I don't know why
this was more reprehensible than any
of the other 1egalfzed, national butch
cries which have made history.
We might borrow an idea from our
neighbor republic, which has gov
eminent scholarships for promising
pupils in painting, in sculpture and in
music and sends them to Europe to
complete their education. The gov
eminent also subsidies grand opera
companies from Europe which are
brought at the public expense for an
occasional season in grand opera In
this country we, as a people, never
hear OF grand opera singers unless q