The bull fight did not get farther west than El Paso. Tucson never had one that I have heard of, and very little in the way of outdoor “sport” beyond chicken fights, which were often savage and bloody. The rapture with which the feminine heart welcomed the news that a “baile” was to be given in Tucson equalled the pleasure of the ladies of Murray Hill or Beacon Street upon the corresponding occasions in their localities. To be sure, the ceremony of the Tucson affairs was of the meagrest. The rooms were wanting in splendor, perhaps in comfort--but the music was on hand, and so were the ladies, young and old, and their cavaliers, and all hands would manage to have the best sort of a time. The ball-room was one long apartment, with earthen floor, having around its sides low benches, and upon its walls a few cheap mirrors and half a dozen candles stuck to the adobe by melted tallow, a bit of moist clay, or else held in tin sconces, from which they emitted the sickliest light upon the heads and forms of the highly colored saints whose pictures were to be seen in the most eligible places. If the weather happened to be chilly enough in the winter season, a petty fire would be allowed to blaze in one of the corners, but, as a general thing, this was not essential. The moment you passed the threshold of the ball-room in Tucson you had broken over your head an egg-shell filled either with cologne of the most dubious reputation or else with finely cut gold and silver paper. This custom, preserved in this out-of-the-way place, dates back to the “Carnestolends” or Shrove-Tuesday pranks of Spain and Portugal, when the egg was really broken over the head of the unfortunate wight and the pasty mass covered over with flour. Once within the ball-room there was no need of being presented to any one. The etiquette of the Spaniards is very elastic, and is based upon common sense. Every man who is good enough to be invited to enter the house of a Mexican gentleman is good enough to enter into conversation with all the company he may meet there. Our American etiquette is based upon the etiquette of the English. Ever since King James, the mild-mannered lunatic, sold his orders of nobility to any cad who possessed the necessary six thousand pounds to pay for an entrance into good society, the aristocracy of England has been going down-hill, and what passes with it for manners is the code of the promoted plutocrat, whose ideas would find no place with the Spaniards, who believe in “_sangre azul_” or nothing. There was very little conversation between the ladies and the gentlemen, because the ladies preferred to cluster together and discuss the neighbors who hadn’t been able to come, or explain the details of dresses just made or to be made.