They
extended unlimited hospitality to every one alike, to friend or
stranger, to poor or rich. They were most charmingly polite in their
conversation, personal demeanor, and social intercourse and very
charitable and affectionate to their families and neighbors. These
people are happy as compared with other nations in that they do not
worry and fret over the unattainable and doubtful, but lightheartedly
they enjoy the blessings of the present, such as they are. Therefore,
if rightly understood, they may be the best of companions at times,
being sincere and unselfish; so I have found many of them to be later
on, during the intercourse of a more intimate acquaintance. In the
large towns, as Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Las Vegas, where there
lived a considerable number of Americans, these would naturally
associate together, as, for instance, the American colony in Paris or
Berlin or other foreign places, so as not to be obliged to mingle
with the natives socially any more than they chose. But in the
village where my relatives lived, we had not the alternative of
choosing our own countrymen for social companionship.
Therefore, I realized when I reached my destination that I had to
change my accustomed mode of living and adapt myself to such a life
as people had led eighteen hundred years ago.
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