He had also some Western cactus as a curiosity for the tenderfoot who had never fooled with a cactus much.
It was the clear thing, however. I sat down on one to test its genuineness. It stood the test better than I did. When you have doubts about a cactus and don't know whether it is a genuine cactus or a young watermelon with its hair banged, you can test it by sitting down on it. It may surprise you at first, but it tickles the cactus almost to death.
For a high-priced house plant and gentle meek-eyed exotic that don't care much for affection, the Rocky Mountain cactus takes the cake.
It is very easy to live, and don't require much fondling. It will enjoy life better if you will get mad at it about once a week and pull it up by the roots, and kick it around the yard. Water it carefully every four years; if you water it oftener than that, it will be surprised, and gradually pine away and die.
Another item I must not forget in giving directions for the cultivation of this rare tropical plant: get some one to sit down on it occasionally—if you don't feel equal to it yourself. There's nothing that makes a cactus thrive and flourish so much as to have a victim with linen pants on, sit down on it and then get up impulsively like. If a cactus can have these little attentions bestowed upon it, it will live to a good old age, and insinuate itself through the pantaloons of generations yet unborn. Plant in a gravelly, coarse soil, and kick it every time you think of it.
Returning to our subject, however, I think the Indian is a trifle uncertain and at times tricky by nature. Of course I do not wish to say anything that would have a tendency to injure the reputation of the Indian, for in all candor I will say that he means well.
I do not wish to have what I may say published as coming from me, because the Indian has always used me well, perhaps because I never allow myself to stray into his jurisdiction, but he has little, hateful, mean ways which I despise. Some think that if he were to have more chance to learn, more normal schools and base-ball clubs and upright pianos, he would have more ambition to do right and get ahead, but I almost doubt it.
I am very humane myself, but I am more apt to be harsh in my measures with the Indian than most Eastern people of culture are. Perhaps this is because I have seen people who had been shot full of large size bullet holes by the red man. This makes a difference, and I may be prejudiced.
When the average philanthropist has seen a family lying scattered around promiscuous and shot so full of holes that even the coarsest kind of food is of no use, he begins to ask in his mind whether a more severe method of treatment would not be beneficial to the Indian.
I want to look this matter calmly in the face, and ask whether night shirts and civilization and suspenders will make good citizens out of these unfettered children of the forest or not? Is it the opinion of the gentle reader that a nation of flea-bitten, smoke-tanned beggars will come forward and submit to the ennobling influences of Christianity and duck vests and horse-shoe scarf pins and quarterly meetings and gauze underwear? Methinks not.