It is noted that you mine coal, and request $3000 annually for the pay of miners. This seems beyond all reason. The Office has been informed on good authority that excellent bituminous coal may be purchased at five dollars the ton, f.o.b. Gallup, New Mexico. Would it not be advisable to purchase fuel in Gallup? You are directed to procure bids f.o.b. your station, and transmit them to the Office for consideration and comparison with your mining costs. “Yes,” you are startled to hear him comment aloud; “The advanced class in idiocy will now recite. Required: 2000 tons of coal, now mined within two miles of the bunkers, costing $1.50 per ton. Would it not be efficacious, not to say superb and miasmic, to purchase at Gallup, ship in cars one hundred miles to Holbrook, and thence haul eighty miles in wagons at one cent per pound cartage? Total cost, $27.00 per ton delivered, plus handling-losses and slackage. Ask me?” But this inane query, signed by the Commissioner without reading, as he talked of the November elections with Congressman Grampus, must be answered. The record must be fixed in the mausoleum of files. The Agent will finally deny himself to Indians having real business requiring his attention, will neglect other duties, while he laboriously composes a fulsome answer, figuring the cost to five decimal places, and proving that $1.50 per ton in hand, supervised, is cheaper than $27.00 per ton on the road. He recommends—of course respectfully—that he be authorized to continue mining the coal God gave the Indians, until such time as the field may be leased to a syndicate; and then, with true official loyalty to those who arrange leases, to purchase from the syndicate, thus maintaining a perfect parity between whites who need money and Indians who do not need coal. Before you harshly judge this desert pessimist, reflect a bit. He will be found sufficiently educated to issue you a permit. In the long nights of winter he has time for reading and reflection. The ignorance of the Desert is slowly disappearing before education; but no one has endowed a grammar school for the relief of those you place in Washington. Classes in simple geography and numbers would help. Each season more and more people come to view the Prayer for Rain. Not all are strangers. Many Navajo ride in from the ranges, tribal differences for the moment forgotten, just as they attend the fiestas of the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico; and the Hopi are equally hospitable with food and fruit at this their gala time. Many white guests repeat, year after year. Next to our trading friends, the Hubbells, father and son, who undoubtedly hold the record as to regular attendance, there is an engineer of the Indian Service who has viewed more Snake Dances than any other seriously engaged man. My own record is not insignificant. But this class is at home in the country, with business or duties or friendship to excuse it.