“Well,--as numbers go,--not so many. Perhaps forty, possibly more. They will go back to their own ways. Yet they are a splendid people to work with,--a delightful people. I have many real friends among them. The parish is slowly improving. We have paid off the mortgage, and are now putting an addition on the church. The men have erected the frame, and when the ladies of the parish finish planting, they will put the plaster on the walls.” Thus imperceptibly had the good man merged New Mexico with New England. At the village school next morning we saw another phase of the white man’s standards grafted upon the red man. The teacher, a Pueblo Indian woman and a graduate of Carlisle, wife of a white man in the neighborhood, in spotless print dress and apron was showing twenty little Indians the locality of Asia Minor. They were neat and shining and flatteringly thrilled by the presence of visitors. “And now,” said their beaming teacher, when we had heard their bashful recitations, “you must hear the children sing.” We heard them. The difficulty would have been to avoid hearing them. Bursting with delight, each of the twenty opened their mouths to fullest capacity, and twenty throats emitted siren tones,--not the sirens of the Rhineland, but of a steel foundry. They began on “Come, Little Birdie, Come,” though it is doubtful if anything less courageous than a bald-headed eagle would have dared respond to the invitation. Toby clutched me, and I her, and thus we kept each other from bolting out of the door. We even managed a frozen smile of approbation as we listened to the discordant roar, like the voices of many hucksters, which issued from their mouths. A white child would have warped his throat permanently after such effort, but these roly-poly babies finished in better condition than they began. “I am going to let them sing one more song,” said the teacher when we rose hastily. “They don’t have visitors every day.” They sang “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton,” and if Sweet Afton had been Niagara it would have wakened Mary less than the stertorous warning which bellowed from that schoolroom. Then a dozen brown hands waved in the air, and a clamor arose for other bits of their repertoire to be heard. Teacher was smilingly indulgent, proud of her pupils and anxious to give them and the visitors a good time. So we were treated to Old Black Joe, and Juanita, and other sad ditties, which never seemed sadder than now.