Then we got on to the eternal land question. There's a lot said about the 80 per cent. speaking out and asking for land, but vox populi here bears very little resemblance to vox dei, and it's only confusing when a few (generally oppressors, not oppressed) do begin to mutter.
Madero walked to the presidency on the plank of the distribution of land, which he promptly and inevitably kicked from under him—it didn't, couldn't hold. It appears that he bought from one of the computed two hundred and thirty-two members of the family a large tract of land in Tamaulipas, but when it was parceled out it came so high that no Indian could buy it, and wouldn't have known what to do with it had he bought it.
What he loves is his adobe hut running over with children and surrounded by just enough land, planted with corn, beans, and peppers, not to starve on, when worked intermittently, as fancy or the rainfall indicate. The Indians certainly seem, under these conditions, a thousand times happier than our submerged tenth, but it's never any use comparing especially dissimilar matters. Anybody who has been to Mexico, however, knows that the Indian of the adobe hut has little or no qualification to permit of his being changed into a scientific farmer by the touch of any wand. And as for slogans! They're all right to get into office with, but try tilling the soil with them!
January 31st, evening.
... And so the anniversaries come. I feel but a stitch between your destiny and Elim's, holding the generations together in my turn. I am distant from you, but I embrace you all—the dear ones of my blood. I realize the fortuitousness of mine and all other human experiences. I have never had the things I worked for, prayed for, hoped for, but always something unexpected, which showed itself as inevitable only after it had happened, though at the time it seemed to come as a blow or a gift, accidentally, unrelatedly. The path has always lain where I never had an intimation of the tiniest trail. "Strange dooms past hope or fear" of which we all partake....
XVIII
Washington warns Madero—Mobilization orders—A visit to the Escuela Preparatoria—A race of old and young—The watchword of the early fathers
February 1st.
To-day a military lunch—De Chambrun, Captain Sturtevant, just leaving, and our new military attaché, Burnside, just arrived. Speculations as to the potentialities of the situation put a bit of powder into the menu, and the appearance of small fat ducks awakened a few hunting reminiscences, but mostly it was martial.
In the afternoon I made some calls with De C. First to Mrs. Harold W.'s, where we actually found an open fire in the big, book-lined living-room. Some exotic-looking logs of a wood priceless in other climes were making a sweet and long-unheard, comfortable, sputtering sound. She kept us waiting, though pleasantly, while she donned a most becoming, diaphanous, fur-trimmed, white chiffon tea-gown (the fair sex are apt to dress for De C.), coming down about twenty minutes later, looking extremely pretty.