I was out there too early in the year to meet the justly celebrated San Francisco flea. He's a Native Son, too; but there isn't so much bragging being done on his account. _LOOKING FOR LO_ [Illustration] _Looking for Lo_ IF it is your desire to observe the Red Indian of the Plains engaged in his tribal sports and pastimes wait for the Wild West Show; there is sure to be one coming to your town before the season is over. Or if you are bloodthirsty by nature and yearn to see him prancing round upon the warpath, destroying the hated paleface and strewing the soil with his shredded fragments, restrain your longings until next fall and then arrange to take in the football game between Carlisle and Princeton. But, whatever you do, do not go journeying into the Far West in the hope of finding him in great number upon his native heath, for the chances are that you won't find him there in great number; and if you do he will probably be a considerable disappointment to you; because, unless he is paid for it, the red brother absolutely declines to be picturesque. I am reliably informed that he is still reasonably numerous in Oklahoma, in North and South Dakota, and in Montana and Washington; but my itinerary did not include those states. I did not see a live Indian--that is to say, a live Indian recognizable as such--in Nevada or in Colorado or in Utah, or in a four-hour run across one corner of Wyoming. In upward of a thousand miles of travel through California I saw just one Indian--a bronze youth of perhaps twenty summers and, I should say, possibly half that many baths. He was wearing the scenario of a pair of overalls and a straw hat in an advanced state of decrepitude, and he was working in a truckpatch; if a native had not told me what he was I would have passed him by for a sunburnt hired hand. I saw a few Indians in New Mexico and a few more in Arizona, but not a great many at that; and these, as I found out later, were mainly engaged to linger in the vicinity of stations and hotels along the line for the purpose of adding a touch of color to the surroundings and incidentally selling souvenirs to the tourists. Mind you, I'm not saying there are not plenty of Indians in those states; but they mostly stay on their reservations and the reservations unfortunately are not, as a rule, near the railroad stations. A traveler going through the average small Southern town sees practically the entire strength of the colored citizenry gathered at the depot and jumps at the conclusion that the population is from ninety to ninety-five per cent. black. In the West he sees maybe one little Indian settlement in a stretch of five or six hundred miles, and he figures that the Indian is practically an extinct species.