22 OBSERVATIONS OF A RANCHWOMAN 



the severest of all trials for the * tenderfoot ' 

 is the struggle to acquire the mongrel tongue 

 of a mongrel race. Oh yes, you are going 

 to do wonderfully ; you are going to learn a 

 new language, and an easy one 1'Espanol ! 

 It is easy? Assuredly, under certain con- 

 ditions. In the first place, you must divest 

 yourself of the delusion that this that you 

 are about to acquire is a language ; for it is 

 a patois, pure and simple. In the second, 

 you must, while learning the jargon, put all 

 more important concerns out of your head 

 which, for a new-comer in a strange land, 

 settling into a strange home, is a manifest 

 impossibility. When, with a dozen serious 

 matters weighing on your mind, you turn 

 aside from these at some critical moment 

 only to confront an unknown tongue, and 

 rush wildly to dictionary or grammar, in nine 

 cases out of ten it will be your unhappy 

 lot to discover that the Spanish and the 

 Mexican word have scarcely even a blood 

 relationship, and that the dogged and irri- 

 tating ' no sabe ' of the nominally American 

 citizen rises like a dead wall in your 

 harassed path. Then you lose patience, fling 



