Though an unlettered man, Lance Lovelace had been a close observer of humanity.  The big book of Life had been open always before him, and he had profited from its pages.  With my advent at Las Palomas, there were less than half a dozen books on the ranch, among them a copy of Bret Harte’s poems and a large Bible.

“That book alone,” said he to several of us one chilly evening, as we sat around the open fireplace, “is the greatest treatise on humanity ever written.  Go with me to-day to any city in any country in Christendom, and I’ll show you a man walk up the steps of his church on Sunday who thanks God that he’s better than his neighbor.  But you needn’t go so far if you don’t want to.  I reckon if I could see myself, I might show symptoms of it occasionally.  Sis here thanks God daily that she is better than that Barnes girl who cut her out of Amos Alexander.  Now, don’t you deny it, for you know it’s gospel truth!  And that book is reliable on lots of other things.  Take marriage, for instance.  It is just as natural for men and women to mate at the proper time, as it is for steers to shed in the spring.  But there’s no necessity of making all this fuss about it.  The Bible way discounts all these modern methods.  ‘He took unto himself a wife’ is the way it describes such events.  But now such an occurrence has to be announced, months in advance.  And after the wedding is over, in less than a year sometimes, they are glad to sneak off and get the bond dissolved in some divorce court, like I did with my second wife.”

All of us about the ranch, including Miss Jean, knew that the old ranchero’s views on matrimony could be obtained by leading up to the question, or differing, as occasion required.  So, just to hear him talk on his favorite theme, I said:  “Uncle Lance, you must recollect this is a different generation.  Now, I’ve read books”—­

“So have I. But it’s different in real life.  Now, in those novels you have read, the poor devil is nearly worried to death for fear he’ll not get her.  There’s a hundred things happens; he’s thrown off the scent one day and cuts it again the next, and one evening he’s in a heaven of bliss and before the dance ends a rival looms up and there’s hell to pay,—­excuse me, Sis,—­but he gets her in the end.  And that’s the way it goes in the books.  But getting down to actual cases—­when the money’s on the table and the game’s rolling—­it’s as simple as picking a sire and a dam to raise a race horse.  When they’re both willing, it don’t require any expert to see it—­a one-eyed or a blind man can tell the symptoms.  Now, when any of you boys get into that fix, get it over with as soon as possible.”

“From the drift of your remarks,” said June Deweese very innocently, “why wouldn’t it be a good idea to go back to the old method of letting the parents make the matches?”