Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-06-03
JIM, EX-DEV|L DOG,
TIRES Of TRAVELLING
BY HERBERT COREY.


tourney Jim was a puzzle to us.
Then the light began dimly to dawn.
We first saw Jim in the station
at Puebla. 1t was between 4 o'clock
and o'clock in the morning. The
gray light filtered in through the
heavy stone pillars, between the
| throng of high-hatted poems and
watching soldiers and Indian women
with burdens on their heads and
Americans trying to buy tickets in
dialects never before heard on land
or sea. One is not at ones best at
such an hour. Jim would have
| passed as an indistinguishable atom
| in the crowd # it had not been for
| the girl.
Gee" said La Coss. what "a
perfectly pulchritudinous peach"
Tall and Divinely Fair.
Through that crowd of kindly,
courteous, silent, but somewhat
soiled Indians moved an apparition.
| Tall and divinely fair-you know
the rest of it-newly dressed and
hated from that part Of Broadway
| which lies between the Martinique
| hotel and the Capitol theater. Fol-
lowed by Jim. In Jim's hands were
the leading strings of two or three
Pekes, and in his arms were various
bundles, and on his face was look
of settled gloom.
where are checks for the
trunks?" asked the apparition. She
lifted the barrage. The shells Of
inquisition began to fall nearer him.
Where, she wanted to know, was
this and that, and what had he done
with this thing and the other? Jim
replied in depressed monosyllables.
Our first though: that he was her
husband was dismissed. He could
not be her brother. No brother
would be so docile to sister. They
fought their way to a double seat
just across the aisle from us in the
little first-class coach Of the little
narrow gauge railroad that runs to
Oaxaca. The train started. Dust
began to pour through the open
windows. Here and there one saw
the quaint tiled domes of the
churches left by the Dominican
fr:ars who came here in 1900 plus.
They stood out brown and steel
gray against the almost unbearable
blue of the sky. Over all flooded the
Wnlte neat OIL the sun.
Jim Has More Troubles
We came to the station which for
decades has been famous as the
home of the tamale, that succulent
delicacy of Indian earn and myster-
les The yellow dust was carpeted
with the DRIP husks of corn in which
they had been wrapped. We came
to the station that for decades has
specialized in blue steel spurs into
which the native silver had been
deity worked in Arabic traceries.
We spoke of the folly of calling
these Mexican spurs cruel. AS
fact our light, sharp-rowelled spurs
are doubly Furnishing. We came to
a station where scores Of rebosoed,
bare-armed, brown bosomed Indian
women fairly danced along the train
side, offering coffee and delicious
sweetened biscuits and fried chicken
and maguey worms
At the maguey worms we ceased
to look outside. They were too fat
and white. They brought back bar
barous memories of snails at the
Escargot dor in Paris. Across the
aisle the very pretty girl was curled
up on one seat, her feet resting
upon the one facing her, presenting
and enticing array Of cobwebby silk.
On the second seat sat Jim, more de-
pressed than ever, gazing stolldly
out of the window. He was so
packed with packages that he could
barely wriggle an ear. The pretty
girl spoke to him acidly.
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 another package covered
with cloth, into which Jim some
times looked with an air or unbear-
able ennui. But goldfish were be-
yond us. Why should strangers to
this Countrywide few words they
had interchanged stamped them as
strangers-travel 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 plun,es. Huge cacti of a
score of sorts promised thorny pun
isnment to the unwary. 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 vestments. The women dis
played round arms and opulent
breasts with careless kindness. The
emerald valleys became more mar
row as they succeeded each other,
set in ever closing rims OF sharp
| hills of bare brown rock.
Jim Is Goaded to GrOans
"I don't suppose" said the pref
| ty girl, that you ever gave
! thought 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 canon which is the
sole gateway to the state of OaXaca,
and, thanks to which the state
maintained it's independence, even
to the coinage Of money and armed
defiance, during Carranza's time. 1t
is fair rival to the Royal Gorge of
Colorado or those huge cuts in the
everlasting hills through which the
| Canadian mountain railways run.
We stopped at the lunch station
kept by the Chinaman and ate heart
lily, diverted by the flauntings of
great pigeons over the tables from
their nests in the comb of the roof
| above. Parrots screeched in
cages. The cool mountain breezes
| entered through the interstices in