Without the ballad, the weevil's effect
on economic history would be unchanged; but as respects
mind and imagination, the ballad gives the weevil all sorts
of significances. The ballad is a part of the literature of
the Southwest.
But I am assigning too many motives of self-improvement
to reading. People read for fun, for pleasure. The literature
of the Southwest affords bully reading.
"If I had read as much as other men, I would know as
little," Thomas Hobbes is credited with having said. A student
in the presence of Bishop E. D. Mouzon was telling
about the scores and scores of books he had read. At a pause
the bishop shook his long, wise head and remarked, "My son,
when DO you get time to think?" Two of the best educated
men I have ever had the fortune of talking with were neither
schooled nor widely read. They were extraordinary observers.
One was a plainsman, Charles Goodnight; the other was a
borderer, Don Alberto Guajardo, in part educated by an old
Lipan Indian.
But here are the books. I list them not so much to give
knowledge as to direct people with intellectual curiosity and
with interest in their own land to the sources of knowledge;
not to create life directly, but to point out where it has
been created or copied.
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