Books: Old New Mexico

NATIVE TALES or NEW MEXICO—Frank G. Applegate—Lippincott—($2.50).

In Authoress Mary Austin's introduction to this collection of tales, folk, historical and otherways, she writes of the late Author Applegate's collecting of the various handicrafts of New Mexico's varied groups as his initiation into the mosaic racial pattern of Southwestern culture. "Through his sympathy with the things created, he came into touch with the things experienced." These experiencings, reaching him first by native word-of-mouth, he gracefully transcribes in full-flavored variety. A specimen:

Once upon a time, in the Rio Arriba country, there was a fat,...