Arizona republican., 1922-04-25
Are Puzzled BY Goldfish

Where are your feet?" she asked.
"Have you gotten on the goldfish ~
We gave it up. Peke dogs we could
understand. There was a package
that looked like a bird cage and that
we could understand. There was an
other package covered with a cloth,
into which Jim sometimes looked
with an air of unbearable ennui. But
goldfish were beyond us. Why should
strangers to this country--the few
words they had interchanged stamped
them as strangers-trayel with a
harem of goldfish?
We dropped from the level OF
Puebla into the lowlands-a decline OF
five or six thousand feet in but few
miles. Date palms began to appear.
Bananas flourished along the water
courses of wide, pale green plumes.
Huge cacti of a score OF sorts prom
| ised thorny punishment to the un-
wary. Indian women offered cactus
| buds-for a centavo--and we found
! them to look like pale raspberry jam
| inside and taste like cactus buds. The
! human envelopes became more Scanty
so that the men went about bare
| legged to the thigh, their black
brown legs set out sharply against the
white of their vestnents. The woH1i-
en- displayed round arms and opulent
i sTaa-t1 4
breasts with careless kindness. The
emerald valleys became more narrow
as they succeeded each other, set in
ever closing rims OF sharp hills OF
bare brown rock.
Jim Is Goaded to Grcans
sT don't suppose said the pretty
! girl, that you ever gave a thought
4 to them rabbits?"
Jim groaned. The pretty girl told
! him he was gettin' on her nerves
somep'n awful We climbed for miles.
| We came to the beginning Of that
superb canyon which is the sole gate
way to the state of Oaxaca, and.
thanks to which the state maintained
| its Independence, even to the coinage
of money and armed defiance, during
| CarranZa's time. 1t is a fair rival to
the Royal Gorge of Colorado or those
huge cuts in the everlasting hills
through which the Canadian noun
| tain railways run. We stopped at the
lunch station kept by the Chinaman
and ate heartily, diverted by the
flauntings of great pigeons over the
tables from their nests in the comb
of the roof above. Parrots screeched
lin cages. The cool mountain hreezes
| entered through the interstices in the
waited walls.
Gee said the pretty girl. Il
wisht l was back in Iowa. I been
1 travelling these Latin countries for
five years now, and I'm tired. I'd like
to have some fried chicken and gravy
a la my mother
She said she was q member OF
vaudeville act that had been touring
wherever they talked Spanish. jim
she said, had been fired from the ma
4 rines down in Nicaragua and they
had picked him UP in Tucson. He
had been left in the car in charge Of
the Pekes and the rabbits and the
Il goldfish. When the engine wnistied,
with the dexterity of practice, she
slapped a cold fried egg between two
slices of the Cllinaman's bread for
8 Jin's lunch. / offered her my own
cold fried eggs, but she declined them.
Jim, she said. didn't care for eggs
He got all the eggs he wanted, she
said.
That night we saw the show. Dur
ing the act the conjuror broke egg
after egg and Jim saved them in a
hat. When we went behind we saw
1.-THE saved eggs arnassed in tin basin
. for Jinn's breakfast.
Il wisht," said Jim mournfully, 4
could git back to Nicaragua / was q
J sucker ever to git fired from them
marines"