A Texas Matchmaker | Page 3

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?"
"Yes; it would be a good idea. How in the name of common sense
could you expect young sap-heads like you boys to understand
anything about a woman? I know what I'm talking about. A single
woman never shows her true colors, but conceals her imperfections.
The average man is not to be blamed if he fails to see through her
smiles and Sunday humor. Now, I was forty when I married the second
time, and forty-five the last whirl. Looks like I'd a-had some little sense,
now, don't it? But I didn't. No, I didn't have any more show than a
snowball in--Sis, hadn't you better retire. You're not interested in my
talk to these boys.--Well, if ever any of you want to get married you
have my consent. But you'd better get my opinion on her dimples when
you do. Now, with my sixty odd years, I'm worth listening to. I can take
a cool, dispassionate view of a woman now, and pick every good point
about her, just as if she was a cow horse that I was buying for my own
saddle."
Miss Jean, who had a ready tongue for repartee, took advantage of the
first opportunity to remark: "Do you know, brother, matrimony is a
subject that I always enjoy hearing discussed by such an oracle as
yourself. But did it never occur to you what an unjust thing it was of
Providence to reveal so much to your wisdom and conceal the same
from us babes?"
It took some little time for the gentle reproof to take effect, but Uncle
Lance had an easy faculty of evading a question when it was contrary
to his own views. "Speaking of the wisdom of babes," said he,
"reminds me of what Felix York, an old '36 comrade of mine, once said.
He had caught the gold fever in '49, and nothing would do but he and
some others must go to California. The party went up to Independence,

Missouri, where they got into an overland emigrant train, bound for the
land of gold. But it seems before starting, Senator Benton had made a
speech in that town, in which he made the prophecy that one day there
would be a railroad connecting the Missouri River with the Pacific
Ocean. Felix told me this only a few years ago. But he said that all the
teamsters made the prediction a byword. When, crossing some of the
mountain ranges, the train halted to let the oxen blow, one
bull-whacker would say to another: 'Well, I'd like to see old Tom
Benton get his railroad over this mountain.' When Felix told me this he
said--'There's a railroad to-day crosses those same mountain passes
over which we forty-niners whacked our bulls. And to think I was a
grown man and had no more sense or foresight than a little baby
blinkin' its eyes in the sun.'"
With years at Las Palomas, I learned to like the old ranchero. There
was something of the strong, primitive man about him which
compelled a youth of my years to listen to his counsel. His confidence
in me was a compliment which I appreciate to this day. When I had
been in his employ hardly two years, an incident occurred which,
though only one of many similar acts cementing our long friendship,
tested his trust.
One morning just as he was on the point of starting on horseback to the
county seat to pay his