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Show J1 s:;cn Story of the Bay "Tj had brought the 5 cents' worth away with me, I might, for aught I positively know, have been called upon to pay duty upon it. That was three days ago. Since then I have been to Juares twice, going a Itt-tle Itt-tle farther each time into the country southward. On both visits I found lark buntings in plenty. They move about and sit about in peculiarly dense flocks. One that I saw this morning might hare numbered a. thousand birds. If disturbed, they rise in a cloud, and on coming to rest again every one seems to desire a perch at the very tip of a bush. As they must all alight in the same one or two bunches of scrub, however, how-ever, there are by no means top seats enough to go round, and there is a deal of preliminary hovering, during which, the white patches of the quivering wings and tails showfng through, the spectacle is most animated and pleasing. pleas-ing. Unfortunately none of the birds now are In full black and whiteplum-age. whiteplum-age. I am extremely glad to see them, nevertheless, and the memtry of that hovering flock out In the Mexican chaparral, cha-parral, filling the air with a chorus of formless twitterings, will be one of the brightest of my Juarez memories. As for the city Itself, it- Is squalid, but to a stranger deeply interesting.' The white church: the little shops.-with their curious wares; the game cocks in the street, tethered each by "a yard of cord to a peg driven Into the ground on the edge of the sidewalk,, crowing lustily defiance to each other and regarded re-garded proudly by their owners, who now and then take them up . in their arms, caressing them fondly or shaking one In, the face of another, to see the feathers of their necks bristle; the bust of Bonito Juarez in the fenced plaza, the bust itself of a size to rest upon a parlor mantel, while the marble pedestal pedes-tal is ten cr fifteen feet high and at least ten feet square at the base; the Spanish signboards and placards; best of all, the people themselves, men, women, wo-men, and children the children, some of them, half naked even on a cold, windy forenoon, while the mi-n saunter or lean against an adobe wall in the sun, wrapped In thick, bright-colored blankets (I shall think of a. Mexican, as long as I live, as leaning against the side of a house) all those po to make a memorable picture for a New Kng-land Kng-land stay-at-home. I tried my Spanish Span-ish on the signs with, for the most part, flattering success, but was posed near the bridge by the following: "Tequila por mayor y minor." So. when I had passed muster at the customs ofP.ce. I said to the officer. "Excuse me, sir, but what Is teouila?" "It's a liquor," he said, "something like alcohol." "Thank you." said I: "I supr-ose that is why 1 failed to recognize the worcw" As for the remainder of the sign. ' Por mayor y minor," I was conscious of having known at some time what the phrase meant, hut I was half-way across the bridge, thinking of something some-thing else, before the mennip.R of its own accord returned to me at wholesale whole-sale and retail. Even now I n:i not absolutely ab-solutely certain that this is cu: eot. but having no dictionary to consult. I let the translation stand for my better instructed in-structed or better equlpTl rrader to laugh at, if it chances to be v. vor.g. It would be too bad he should not find something to amuse him in a newspaper newspa-per article which he has ha.! the condescension con-descension to read through i. the last paragraph. New York Post. IE THE XJLUD.Or DEOUCJUT. On my first morfiln at El Paso,Tby good rock, when, s before explained, I arrived nine or tea hours behind time, I made fta early start for Juaret, the Mexican city cidad) en the opposite bank of the rto Grande. As I waited for the car at the corner of the street, a rosy Mexican house finch stood on the top of a tall telephone pole near by and warbled ecstatically. Evidentlyvthls beautiful bird and beautiful singer Is quite at home in this bustling city, at least In winter, for I was hardly in my room on the afternoon of ray arrival before I heard Its warble, and looking out of the wlndw beheld the bird perched upon the eaves of the opposite hotel, where more than once since then I have heard it singing. I am sorry to say that the English sparrow, its most unworthy rival, is here. also, though for the moment In small numbers. When the car tatni along it proved to be an open one. . "A pretty cold morning for open cars," I said to the youthful conductor. "Oh. w run open cars all winter, he answered. "But I suppose we don't mind the cold so much," he added, emphasizing- the "we," "because we are out-of-doors all the time." A' Northern tenderfoot might naturally natu-rally be less Inured to frigidity, he seemed to imply; but I remarked that he wore a heavy winter overcoat with the collar up. Warm days (much like New England June), cool nights, clear skies, constant winds, dryness, and dust such Is the January climate of El Paso, if my four days here have given me a fair Impression of it. Presently we crossed a short bridge. "Was that the river?" I asked my seatmate, a minute afterward, a sudden sud-den suspicion coming over me. though it seemed so absurd that I was half ashamed to betray it. "Yes, sir: that was the Rio Grande. You're In Mexico now," he answered. Yes, and that was the Mexican custom cus-tom house officer whom I had seen step out of the door of a small building at the southern end of the bridge and salute sa-lute our conductor so politely. None of us looked like smugglers, I suppose. At all events, the car was not "held up." as happened at the other end of the bridge on a later occasion. International Interna-tional travel, even In an electric street car. Is liable to complications. As for the river, it was practically dry. Pedestrians Pe-destrians were crossing It to save toll on a few' small stepping-stones at a point where the current could not have been ten feet wide nor more than half of ten Inches deep. My seatmate explained ex-plained that so much water was drawn off above this Voint for Irrigation purposes pur-poses that the river had little left for Its own use; and. In fact, more than once afterward I saw Its bed absolutely dry, so that even the stepping-stones had gone out of business. Yet It is a real rlo grande for all that, and the life of a long, long strip of Texas. Drought Is the mark of this country. A friendly citizen warned me earnestly against wandering far out of the city. It some Mexican did not kill me "for the sake of the clothes I had on (an ignoble death, surely), I might get lost, and In that event, if nothing else happened hap-pened to me, I should perish of thirst." The car took me through the city (a five-minute passage, perhaps), and I struck out for the country, along the line of the Mexican Central railroad, in the direction of the mountains, heading my course for a cemetery out on the slope, in the midst of the chaparral. White-necked ravens were foraginsr along the track, and allowed me to pass almost as indifferently as so many Kn-gllsh Kn-gllsh sparrows might have done. "How soon the strange becomes familiar," I thought. I had never seen a white-necked white-necked raven (there Is no whiteness visible, vis-ible, the bird being a very Imp of darkness, dark-ness, to look at it), till less than twenty-four hours ago, and already I was passisg It almost with Indifference. I was not Indifferent, however, two afternoons af-ternoons later, when I saw a flock of several hundred soaring In mazy circles cir-cles far overhead, after the manner of buzzards or sea gulls. No other birds showed themselves till I come near the cemetery gate, when suddenly the bushes Just before me, straight between me and the sun. were alive with sparrows. My eyes, dazzled as they were by the sunshine, caught sight of one lark bunting as the flock took wing. I must see more of it It was my first one and I started hastily in pursuit. But the creatures were timid tim-id beyond all calculation, and though I pursued them with cautious haste for some distance. I found no lark buntingsnothing bunt-ingsnothing but white-crowned sparrows, spar-rows, handsome birds, the wght of which is almost an event In Massachusetts; Massachu-setts; but they are so abundant In Texas Tex-as at this time of the year as Lincoln finches are. also that I have begun to look upon them as almost a nuisance. It becomes vexatious to a man In search of novelties when even an old favorite keeps itself too persistently under his glass. As the proverb has it. there Is reason In all things. While I was beating the chaparral over, still on the hunt for that lark bunting. I noticed a funeral procession coming from the city. Heading the cortege cor-tege was what in a Massachusetts town would be called a "depot carriage." It served the purpose of a hearse, I suppose, sup-pose, and in it sat two men, bareheaded. It seemed a neighborly and Christian act to accompany a brother mortal to the grave In this fraternal manner. The second carriage was an open buggy, drawn by a white horse. These things I saw while the procession proces-sion was still a long way off (a military band still farther away, at the barracks, bar-racks, I suppose was playing, a march), and meantime I went up to the cemetery ceme-tery fenc and looked over. The monu- ments were mostly. If not wholly, wooden wood-en crosses, with the usual epitaphs. A man who seemed to be the keeper of the place approached me from the one house near at hand and asked me something some-thing in Spanish, to which I replied in English. We were unable to communicate communi-cate with each other till finally I said: "No sabe." That seemed to satisfy him, as indeed it ought to have done, for if ever he heard the truth spoken he heard it then. I returned to El Paso on foot, and as I reached the northern end of the bridge, walking, as it happened, on the wrong side of the road, with my overcoat over-coat on my arm, as careless as could be I was hailed by an officer in uniform. uni-form. I halted, and he approached. He seemed to expect me to speak first, and I said: "Do you wish to Inspect me?" "Well, what did you buy in Mexico?" he asked. "A postal card and mailed it." "Was that all you bought?" "Yes " "All right." The souvenir postal-ear Industry, though comparatively Infantile, is not 1 "protected," it appears, although, if I |