The new American saloons which competed with Jovita Mendez' Spanish venture had substituted a brutal masculine sincerity for her veiled feminine methods.

There was higher play, deeper drinking, darker passion.

Yet the opposition, after the fashion of most reformers, were casting back to the origin of the trouble in Jovita, and were confounding principles and growth.

"If it had not been for her the rule would never have been broken." "If there was to be a cleaning out of the gambling houses, she must go first!" The sounds of a harp and a violin played in the nearest saloon struggled up to them with the opening and shutting of its swinging baize inner doors.

There was boisterous chanting from certain belated revelers in the next street which had no such remission.