182 THE DESERT AND THE ROSE 



And "menial?" So little did I know that I dropped 

 my napkin under the table' and fell headlong after 

 it to conceal convulsions of laughter. Some present 

 were indignant but to me the woman was simply 

 irresistibly funny ! Neither would she have under- 

 stood that I was not laughing at her because her 

 husband's income was small and he in a small way 

 of business, but because — as the children say. 



There are at least two other reasons for the com- 

 parative disappearance of winter healthseekers : 

 first, the lack of suitable accommodation ; second, the 

 dread of the consumptive, developed in recent 

 years. 



It is interesting and occasionally instructive, to 

 note how the wheel of time revolves. Exaggerated 

 terror of the consumptive has simply come round 

 to us again. In the days of Armijo, the last Govern- 

 or of New Mexico under Mexican rule, a careful 

 padre laid down regulations at once stringent and 

 absurd regarding the conduct of his flock should a 

 member of it pass the dwelling of a tuberculous 

 person. Amusing as some of these regulations were 

 they were scarcely more illogical than a few of 

 these prescribed by up-to-date alarmists. Discre- 

 tion is one thing, monomania quite another. Thus 

 revolves the eternal wheel; and there is nothing 

 new under the sun. 



The advice given patients by eastern specialists, 

 or by physicians landing in our midst like ballons 

 inflated with imported theories — both ignorant alike 

 of our climatic conditions and so forth — was bad 

 enough, and in extreme cases exasperating to our 



