frontier backgrounds. If during a decade a man does not
change his mind on some things and develop new points of
view, it is a pretty good sign that his mind is petrified and
need no longer be accounted among the living. I have an
inclination to rewrite the "Declaration," but maybe I was
just as wise on some matters ten years ago as I am now; so
I let it stand.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself.


I have heard so much silly bragging by Texans that I
now think it would be a blessing to themselves--and a relief
to others--if the braggers did not know they lived in Texas.
Yet the time is not likely to come when a human being will
not be better adapted to his environments by knowing their
nature; on the other hand, to study a provincial setting from
a provincial point of view is restricting. Nobody should
specialize on provincial writings before he has the perspective
that only a good deal of good literature and wide history
can give. I think it more important that a dweller in the
Southwest read _The Trial and Death of Socrates_ than all the
books extant on killings by Billy the Kid. I think this dweller
will fit his land better by understanding Thomas Jefferson's
oath ("I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility
against every form of tyranny over the mind of man") than
by reading all the books that have been written on ranch
lands and people. For any dweller of the Southwest who
would have the land soak into him, Wordsworth's "Tintern