By this account it may be seen that "one of the most far-fetched notions that ever entered into the minds of men" is found domesticated among the Mexican aborigines. It is asserted, as a chronological fact, that the Mexican Pueblos "invented the mother-in-law joke gray ages before it dawned upon our modern civilization." The lamented Cushing, in his account of the "restful, patriarchal, long-lonely world" of his research, tells us that he found the mother-in-law a too pronounced factor in the Zuni family circle; and, as we know, in our own higher civilization the mother-in-law, held in good-natured reprobation, serves to point many a harmless jest. White enthusiasts--with whom the "wrongs of the Indian" are a standing grievance--but imperfectly realize the difficulty of taming these savages, getting them well off the warpath, and making them cleanly and self-supporting. It may, therefore, be well to present the side shown us by the agent in his able paper of statistical facts. "The Apache tribe," he tells us, "has one hundred and sixteen children at school,--nineteen at Fort Lewis, Colorado, and ninety-seven at the reservation boarding-school. Each child has one-half day in class and one-half day of industrial work. The girls take their turns in the laundry, sewing-room, and kitchen, and at dormitory work. The boys do the heavy work in the kitchen and laundry, chop the wood, and till the farm under the charge of the industrial teacher. All the vegetables for their use are raised on the farm, and the surplus sold. "The aim of the school is to teach the rising generation of Apaches how to make a living with the resources of the reservation, and, in time, to become self-supporting. "To this end useful rather than fancy trades are taught. Boys are detailed with the blacksmith and carpenter, to learn the use of common tools. To do away with the inborn contempt of the aboriginal male for the women of his tribe, boys and girls at the reservation are not only trained to study, recite, and sit at meals with girls, but a weekly 'sociable' is held for the scholars. "On such nights they have games and civilized dances. Every boy is required formally to approach and request, 'Will you dance this dance with me?' and to offer his partner his arm when the reel, quadrille, etc., is finished, and escorting her to her seat, leave her with a polite 'thank you.'" In the agent's report for the years 1896-97, "this year," he says, "the Indian boys raised twenty-five thousand pounds beets, twenty thousand pounds cabbage, one thousand pounds cauliflower, five hundred pounds turnips, one thousand four hundred pounds celery, five hundred pounds radishes, one thousand four hundred pounds of onions, nineteen thousand pounds of pumpkins and squash, four hundred pounds of peas, nine hundred and sixty pounds of corn, six thousand five hundred pounds of potatoes, besides cucumbers, pie-plant, and asparagus.