THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
TRANSCONTINENTAL LETTERS.— 
LXXV, 
MARY WAGER-FISnER. 
Eastern visitors; Southern Arizona; Tucson 
New Mexico; Western Texas; El Paso. 
Returning to Colton from Sau Diego we 
boarded the overland train for the East in the 
evening, the train being several hours behind 
time. It was then that the inflow of tourists 
into California was so great, because of the 
very low rates of travel. It was quite a sight 
to sea the in-coming trains from the East 
crowded with people—largely from the Missis¬ 
sippi Valley, and they were very generally 
“taken” with California, then looking her 
very best iu the way of verdure and flowers. 
To travel even hurriedly on a limited ticket 
with no “stop-overs” is better thau no travel; 
still it must be very unsatisfactorily and un¬ 
necessarily superficial, audit was amusing to 
listen to the opinions expressed by many of 
these flying visitors, some of whom invested 
in town lots after a day's sight-seeing, and 
upon the representation of “real estate” men. 
From Colton wo crossed the Colorado desert 
and the Colorado River in the night. Fort 
Yuma on the river has the notoriety of being 
the hottest place in the United States, the 
mercury standing at midnight at times, as high 
as 108 u . For <50 miles we rode below the sea 
level—the lowest point being 270 foot below the 
sea, ami here there are immense quantities of 
rock salt. Indians are allied to the negroes in 
the way of a wonderful memory and one here 
says that. 75 years ago this now dry sea held 
much water which has since evaporated. 
A cloudless morning found us in Arizona— 
this southern part of it being essentially a 
land of cacti—pillars as high os the telegraph 
poles aud looking very oddly plauted about 
over that desert plain of sage brush, not at¬ 
tractive like the Mojave desert with its spring 
flowers; but exceedingly monotonous iu spite 
of the ranges of mountains always in sight. 
Between twelve and one o’clock we reached 
Tucson, one of the most considerable towns in 
that Territory; rather an attractive hotel called 
St Xavier; some grass kept alive by irrigation, 
a city of r.,000 people, largely Mexican, living 
in adobe houses. New' Tucson is an exceed¬ 
ingly picturesque old mission (now in ruins) 
which is said to be the oldest church in the 
United States. Many Indians were loafing 
about and a most forlorn and decrepit-looking 
man bad some hairless South American dogs, 
which ho was trying to sell, because of their 
superlatively valuable electrical qualities 
which cured rheumatism. Vs for himself he 
said if he hadn’t one to sleep with him he 
would die from rheumatism. He asked §15 a 
pair for the ugly little beasts and found no 
purchasers at that time. 
A few miles east of Tucson the country was 
rolling in surface aud we saw a few cattle that 
seemed to be grazing, but upon what had to 
be left to the imagination. Further ou wo 
crossed a dry lake several miles iu extent, and 
on the western shore stretched a mirage like a 
river with houses on its banks. At Bowie we 
saw some soldiers in camp, and late in the af¬ 
ternoon we crossed the boundary into New 
Mexico. Rome elderly people in the car, who 
lived in Texas, hail been spending two months 
with a son living near Bowie, ou a rancho, aud 
the mother gave me some details of her visit. 
She said that she had heard so much about it 
being a great stock country, but she hud never 
been iu any place where she saw so little milk 
and butter used. Nothing could bo raised 
without irrigation, and women wore often wet 
to their waists in the irrigating ditches. The 
houses were adobe without other floors than 
the ground—to her mind she didn’t see why 
people should live in a desert, a Clod-forsaken 
land. 
We reached Deuulng that evening after 
dark, and there the train took on fresh cars 
and we wont on to El Paso, reaching that 
place about two in the morning, Auaxiinan- 
der’s persuasions triumphed over my fatigue 
and we alighted at this noted Texan town, 
went to lied in a clean aud very well kept ho¬ 
tel, so far as housekeeping went, and slept 
until nine the next morning when wo sallied 
forth for one of the most interesting days of 
sight-seeing that we hail so far enjoyed. 
Now I might as well say it here as later on, 
that Western Texas, as we saw it for hun¬ 
dreds of miles, was the moss wearisome, bar¬ 
ren, heart-breaking country I ever saw, and 
El Paso is situated in this terrible region, and 
still it is a busy, thriving, wealthy city, with 
a new court-house that cost §llK),(KH), five 
brick buildings and many uow brick dwelling 
houses iu progress of erection. Although I 
wouldu't live iu El Paso for a million of dol¬ 
lars yearly, yet the place was very interesting 
orm tho fact that it is such a marvelous illus¬ 
tration of American energy and enterprise. 
The men who live there say they like it—the 
women say that for the first year they nearly 
cried their eyes out, and can never like it! As 
in Arizona and all those adjacent regions, in¬ 
cluding Northern Mexico, the air is dry and 
delicious to breath, aud while the sun is in¬ 
tensely hot, the nights are cool, and one goes 
under a blanket to sleep iu midsummer. In 
winter the mercury falls sometimes as low as 
10 degrees above zero. No rain has fallen in 
Western Texas for seven or eight months, and 
sometimes iu El Paso no raiu to speak of falls 
for a year at a stretch. The Rio Grande 
River, which here divides Texas from Mexico, 
is a shallow, yellow, insignificant stream, but 
the natives say that it never quite dries up! 
and from it water is obtained for irrigating 
some gardens. A prospective irrigating canal 
in Arizona is to be 85 miles long, and is to 
water 200,000 acres. The town is flanked with 
arid hills, tho dust and sand were a foot deep, 
the wind always blows; the heavens are piti¬ 
less in their dearth of clouds. We walked out 
of the town upon a barren hill where a reser¬ 
voir was nearly completed—to lie fed from an 
artesian well—to supiply the city with water. 
We saw people usiug the hose, trying to keep 
Bermuda Grass green in the front yard. A 
German who had paid a water tax of §17 a 
month for his vegetable gardeo, exclaimed 
angrily: “Jesus! the vegetables may go!” 
Jesus is a common name hero among the Mex¬ 
icans, as it is in Spain—still it looks rather odd 
to see it used on signs the same as are John 
and Peter elsewhere. Bat people in Ran Fran¬ 
cisco sometimes pay as high as §17 
a month water tax for irrigating 
their grounds iu the dry season. As 
we returned from our rural tramp, we 
passed a German beer garden upon an eleva¬ 
tion—the terminus of a drive, aud command¬ 
ing an extended view over that arid eouutry. 
This guzzling place promised in time, by in¬ 
cessant watering and the application of fer¬ 
tilizers, to he quite an attractive spot. Fleurs 
de lis had been planted and cottonwood ami 
Chinese umbrella trees and even cacti. One 
man nearer the town, who had built a pretty 
house, had imported the soil for his lawn. 
El Paso is Spauish for Tho Pass, and the 
city carries on an extensive trade with Mexi¬ 
co, being on the border, and is a distributing 
poiut for a large region. Across the river at 
Paso d“l Norte (Pass of the North) is the hand¬ 
some station house and hotel of the Central 
Mexican Railway, over which one rides for 
several hundreds of miles through this terrible 
country to the city of Mexico, probably the 
most unique city iu Nort h America. 
We spent an hour or so while iu El Paso in 
a shop looking at curios from Mexico—the 
work of Aztec Indians and their kin. We 
bought fieautifully decorated porous pottery 
made iu Quadalajara. in which water cools 
by evaporation, and ns there is no ice in this 
country it is not strange that some means 
should have been discovered for keeping things 
cool. In the court of the hotels iu Los An¬ 
geles I noticed the jars of drinking water, but 
they seemed to be of ordinary uuglazed pot¬ 
tery. Undoubtedly the cooling property of 
porous pottery is very insufficiently utilized, 
and will be so long as people continue to use 
ioe—a great expense—aud wheudrauk in water 
speeding!y injurious ns a rule. An ordinary 
flower pot placed over butter,aud covered with 
a wet cloth (the pot) will harden the butter 
surprisingly. But such an arrangement is 
apt to attract the centipede which has a wou- 
drous liking for just such cool aud cosy re¬ 
treats. But the most interesting portiou of 
Our day in this region was passed iu Paso del 
Norte. The population of El Paso is placed at 
from five to seven thousand, and it has five 
hotels. 
XVfunflfi S Work. 
CONDUCTED BY EMILY LOUISE TAPLIN. 
OF INTEREST TO WOMEN. 
A very useful gift for a housekeeper is a 
bath rug to put under a bath tub when in use. 
“Home Decoration” suggests for this use a 
large red army blanket. Bind tho edges all 
round with heavy braid, then work across 
two ends in heavy worsted a large bunch of 
flowers. If preferred a large monogram may 
be worked in one corner. Another good ma¬ 
terial fora bath rug is burlap; this should be 
lined with carpeting to prevent it from wear¬ 
ing. 
Plain Holland window shades are made very 
ornamental by working an outline design 
across the bottom. On an ecru shade the de¬ 
sign should lie dark brown washing silk iu 
some conventional pattern. 
The Decorative Art -Society recently' dis¬ 
played a pair of portiere curtains of brown 
denim. The wrong side is turned outward, 
and has a dado of rich brown plush with gold 
embroidery. Flowers in plushiaro appliqued 
on the body of the curtain with gold thread 
and the entire portiere is lined with cream 
canton flannel. 
The shop windows now display new spring 
styles iu dress fabrics. The Scotch ginghams 
are especially pretty in broken plaids of sub¬ 
dued colors. Ratines seem likely to be as pop¬ 
ular as ever; some of the floral designs are 
very graceful. The batistes, which were 
so much worn last summer, are to be had in 
plain aud figured styles, for combination cos¬ 
tumes. 
One of the newspapers tells a rather apoc¬ 
ryphal story of a bright girl’s original theatre 
bonnet. She came to her seat with a lovely 
creation of flowers aud ribbons above her 
smiling face. With one dexterous movement 
she removed her bonnet, and presto! it was 
transformed iuto a corsage bouquet, without 
the slightest suggestions of headgear about it. 
This sounds charming, but we fear it is some¬ 
thing of a “fish story,” designed for the sup¬ 
pression of existing theatre headgear. 
If ridicule and censure were of any effect 
the silly Chicago girl who wants to marry 
Anarchist Spies would sink out of sight. But 
she seems to rather enjoy her dubious notor¬ 
iety, and is to publish (at her own expense) a 
book containing her correspondence with 
Hpies. A thorough “spanking,” repeated at 
regular intervals by her natural guardians, 
seems the only prescription for her case, as 
she evidently cannot understand other argu¬ 
ments, unless we charitably conclude that she 
is imbecile, and mentally irresponsible. 
GOSSIP ABOUT WOMEN. 
Ten per cent, of the students in the Zurich 
University are women. Year by year the 
professions, as well as the various avenues of 
employment, are being opened to the softer 
sex. One can scarcely read without tears of 
pity the struggles and trials of Rhoda Gale 
in Charles Reade’s “Woman Hater,” in her 
pursuit of the study of medicine. En these 
later years nous aeons change tout cela. 
Twenty-nine of the above lady students are 
studying medicine, 14 philosophy and two 
political economy. Within the last seven 
years 18 women have taken the medical de¬ 
gree in Paris, aud there are now 103 female 
students of medicine in that city and 48 in 
London. _ 
The palmistry craze is doing mischief 
among weak-minded girls. At a recent seance 
a young lady was told that her life line was 
broken at a very critical place, and that she 
would not live three months. The prediction 
seems to be in fair wav of being realized, as 
she has become ill from worrying about it. 
Female “drummers” are meeting with 
great success, a fact that I cannot reflect upon 
without a shudder. There are some occupa¬ 
tions that, if engaged iu, to my mind, take the 
bloom off of womanhood, aud this is one of 
them. Very few women can pursue such a 
calling without becoming masculine, if not 
somewhat bold—its' very nature demanding 
(for success) an amount of “cheek” that no 
delicate-minded woman possesses. Still, two 
of the leading wholesale houses iu Chicago 
have for two years employed each a lady to 
sell respectively borax and gloves, aud their 
sales exceed those of the men whose duties are 
the same. G. G. 
San Francisco, Cal. 
♦ - 
MY MISTAKE. 
I’HILEMY STEBBINS. 
Jeremier sez it was jest like me. He sez I 
allers jump at conclusions and never stop to 
see whether I’m right or not but jest blunder 
along like a sheep. That he hopes the lesson 
will teach me to be more careful in the futur, 
and so 4 th. 
Sech remarks as the foregoin’ from one so 
eonstitootionally awkerd as Jeremier himself, 
are not partickerly soothin’ to one whose con¬ 
science tells ’em they are deserved. However 
I endeavor to bear ’em iu a proper aud becorn- 
in’ sporrit, rememberin' that Solomon advises 
us not to arger with sech as him. Whether 
I am like a sheep or not, 1 am sure I felt sheep¬ 
ish enuff as you can imagine when I have de¬ 
scribed tho perdiekameut to you. 
Yon see I’m a-makiu’ a rag carpet. I've 
ben a-euttin’ and sewin’ rags all Summer. I 
reckoned I was a-goiu’ to be kinder short and 
so I’ve cut up everything I could spare aud 
some things as I shouldn’t. I don’t know 
what Jeremier will say when he finds his Ken¬ 
tucky Jane pants and alpacky coat are no 
more, but t felt that the cause demanded the 
saerlfls and so offered ’em up. 
I’d ben a waitin’ for pleasant weather to do 
my colorin’, aud so one moruiiv last week 
everything bein’ favorable, I hung mv kittles 
ou a pole, laid on some crotehod sticks in the 
back yard, built a tire uudor ’em and went to 
work. 
I’m jest in my aliment when I git to colorin.’ 
To my mind there’s no prettier sight in the 
world than a long line full of carpet rags, red, 
blew, green and yeller, all a floatin’ in the 
breeze. And its sech elevatin’. Inspirin’ work, 
while I'm engaged in it I don’t want my mind 
disturbed by no earthly thing. And so when 
Jeremier passed along by the wood pile and 
said he see Cousiu Em. and her husband and 
two children go by, I said I was thankful they 
didn’t feel called to stop. 
Well, I had furst rate good luck with the 
brown and tho red, likewise with the yellow, 
but when I come to the blew I found I’d lost 
the reseat. I couldn’t jest remember the por- 
portiousand didn’t dare to guess at it for fear 
(Continued on next page.) 
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WHY SE SATISFIED 
Half of what your farm can produce. 
WHEN. BY USING 
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AND 
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various crops require- One trial will convince. 
Send for descriptive pamphlet to 
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315 PEARL ST., NEW YORK. 
Established 1850. 
Plants Potatoes in a single operation. 
THOROUGH. ACCURATE and RELIABLE. 
Send for circular to 
A SPIN WALL M’F’G CO., 
Three Rivers. Mich. 
t«» farmers and gardeners. 
DRIED | DAIinDCTTC ' NIGHT 
GROUND i I UU UK C I | E i SOIL 
The cheapest and best fertlllxer made. Can be used 
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