ow; 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 Abbey," "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," "The Solitary
Reaper," "Expostulation and Reply," and a few other poems are more
conducive to a "wise passiveness" than any native writing.

There are no substitutes for nobility, beauty, and wisdom. One of the
chief impediments to amplitude and intellectual freedom is provincial
inbreeding. I am sorry to see writings of the Southwest substituted for
noble and beautiful and wise literature to which all people everywhere
are inheritors. When I began teaching "Life and Literature of the
Southwest" I did not regard these writings as a substitute. To reread
most of them would be boresome, though _Hamlet_, Boswell's _Johnson_,
Lamb's _Essays_, and other genuine literature remain as quickening as
ever.

Very likely I shall not teach the course again. I am positive I shall
never revise this _Guide_ again. It is in nowise a bibliography. I have
made more additions to the "Range Life" chapter than to any other. I
am a collector of such books. A collector is a person who gathers unto
himself the worthless as well as the worthy. Since I did not make a
nickel out of the original printing of the _Guide_ and hardly expect to
make enough to buy a California "ranch" out of the present printing,
I have added several items, with accompanying