July 17th.
Don't fear that I shall do anything rash about going to Tehuantepec in the present state of things. I have even given up the trip to Puebla. They are fighting and killing there again, and in Calle Humboldt they are not.
Notwithstanding the press, which has its liberties and the smiles of the government, things are not really very stable. Aunt L. writes that San Gerónimo has been filled to overflowing with refugees from Juchitan, the county-seat, twelve miles away. The feeling there between the Maderistas and Porfiristas is very bitter, and has just culminated in an uprising of the Indians against the new Federal authorities, who had to fly for their lives from a howling mob of two thousand Indians armed with rifles, clubs, and machetes. The Federal General Merodia made no resistance, but came with the civil authorities of the government to San Gerónimo, giving the mob no excuse for sacking and robbing Juchitan. Every house in San G. is full, and furniture piled in the street. It seems to me no one but the Mexicans will be surprised that the overthrow of Diaz has not brought about the millennium.
De Weede,[6] who departs this evening for Vienna via the Grand Cañon and the Yellowstone Park, has just been squeezed into N.'s frock-coat and top-hat (not carrying such impedimenta himself) to call on the President. The Dutch minister lives in Washington.
General Crozier comes for dinner on Wednesday. We have just lunched at Stalewski's (the Russian minister's), and he served the delicious blinis with caviar that all expect when lunching there. He often takes remote journeys into the interior, coming back with a silver ingot and curious bits of carving. The diplomatic species always dream dreams, and his is to tread again the streets of Berne. In the evening Captain Sturtevant, our military attaché, gives a dinner at the American Club for General Crozier.
Later.
I have spent a last delightful evening with Prescott, and Humboldt is waiting in five attractive, clearly printed old volumes, Paris, 1811, that Mr. de S. brought me yesterday. Now, just a century after, I am to turn the pages. I have also some volumes of Alaman, who brings things down to 1846.
I forgot to speak about my Spanish teacher, with whom I have been studying as well as "Castellano." Her mind is about as mobile and receptive as a tin saucepan upside down, and she is always late. Sometimes her watch stops, sometimes the tramcar won't stop, sometimes she forgets her purse or her keys, and has to go back, etc.
She is still young, heavily powdered, insistently perfumed, big-busted, tightly laced, tightly skirted, and keeps a very short foot in a tight, high-heeled slipper in front of her. She hates the sun, as I discovered when I tried to have the first lessons in the sunny corridor.
This morning she told me in a lackadaisical, dreamy way that the noise of the typewriter (she has some sort of afternoon office work, for which she is doubtless totally unfitted) was not good for her; that she had been thinking over things, and had concluded that, if I would arrange it, introducer of foreign ladies to the President's wife was what she was fitted for. She said I probably did not realize what temptations the despacho office offered.