Last night we had supper at the Gambrinus restaurant with the Gustavo Maderos, the Darrs, and Colonel Eduardo Hay, this last a figure of the Madero revolution.
The place started out by being a German affair, but no matter what nationality opens a hotel or restaurant here, it ends by being Mexican. Gustavo Madero repeated his famous remark that of a family of clever men the only fool among them was chosen for President. He has a sense of humor that does not care much who or what it demolishes, and a sort of prevision about a joke.
He incidentally spoke of El Cocodrilo; when I asked who the individual might be, they told me it was Diaz! How terrible is the stuff of dreams when it is spilt over a whole nation! It sometimes seems as if the entire government had eaten marihuana.[60] Gustavo Madero was elected Deputy in the last July elections, and has the majority in the House where he "wants" them—under his thumb.
He was amusing, but cynical (as he well may be), about the cry of "free land," saying that it would engulf, in the fulfilment of its high purpose, any man in any party starting out under its banner. "And the people won't get the land," he added; "they never do, anywhere. It isn't only in Mexico, as foreigners seem to believe."
We caused a cloud to come over his face when we asked if he were soon starting for Japan. He has been delegated to thank the Mikado for participation in the Diaz centenary celebration of 1910. You see how fast Mexican events move, and how infinitely unrelated to one another they sometimes are! He said, with a rather sharp look in his eye, that Japan was muy lójos (very far), and it certainly is far from these Mexican political fields, apparently white for the harvest.[61]
September 21st.
Recently a band of Mexican regulars made the journey from El Paso, via the United States, to some point in Sonora. Several of the more up-to-date papers at home are worrying for fear, unless our Monroe Doctrine be more extensive and comfortable, the "house guests" won't stay. There is one consoling aspect to the Zapatista outrages, as far as Madero is concerned. They always relate to his own people, and so can be dismissed. But the outrages in the north are not so easily disposed of where American and Mexican meum and tuum is involved.
A letter from —, dreading life, fearing death. His is a ravaged existence and "pain's furnace heat within him quivers." I sent him the inclosed verses, which came to me in the night. It is the simplicity of death, after all, that is its wonder.
To ———
Why should I fear to die?