December 28th.
The piñatas continue, one this afternoon at Mrs. C. R. Hudson's. They appear to be quite exciting, for little darlings dream and moan about them in their sleep.
Yesterday Elim was taking the papers out of the waste-paper basket in the library and loading them onto one of the Christmas wagons. He was clad in pale blue, looking inexpressibly fair and remote from earthiness, when he raised those blue, blue eyes to me and said: "Mama, ich bin der Mistmann" (I am the garbage-man). Talking of contrasts!
Now I must dress for the dinner at the French Legation for Monsignore. He is looking very worn. These long world-journeys that he makes for his emigration work take it out of him. From the founding of an orphanage in Corea to the visiting of Hungarian dock laborers on the Isthmus of Panama is rather a stretch of nerves as well as space.
We have the news that General Reyes' Christmas gift was his surrender to the Federal troops—quite a pleasant surprise for Mr. Madero's "stocking." He is eliminated; but all seem ready to fight over the bones of peace that Diaz left—though not one of them is worthy to tie his shoe-strings from the point of civic government and keeping of order, which last I now see is the first requisite for any state.
There is a cartoon in the Chicago Inter-Ocean of Madero trying to hold his hat on, with Diaz watching from Europe. That Parthian shot of his, that in the end the Government would have to use his methods, is going home.
December 29th.
The "angel boy" has lost a front tooth—one of those that you watched come. It fell out at Madame —'s piñata, in her big, too-handsome house, where the entertainment was most elaborate, and the toys that were scrambled for when the olla was broken were of the most expensive kind. Afterward all imaginable rich things were served in the big dining-room. The hottest, pepperiest tamales were passed around to about forty little Mexican darlings, who ate them, not only with relish, but composure; my taste brought tears to my eyes and a call for water.
Elim left his seat to bring his tooth triumphantly to me and tell me I must have it set in gold. He is so little that he will be around for years with a hole in his mouth. I felt much the way I would have felt had I discovered him growing a mustache. Madame —'s house, in good taste outside, architecturally, is like her pictures inside, the frames too rich for what they inclose. There are agate-topped tables and malachite bric-à-brac in heavy gilt vitrines, and "hand-painted" screens. It is beautifully situated in the Glorieta Colon, the rond-point where the statue of Christopher Columbus, by a French artist, was raised in 1877. It shows him surrounded by the two monks who helped him in the great adventure, and Fray Pedro de la Gante and Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, lovers and protectors of the Indians.
The monks are Padre Juan Perez de Marchena, prior of the convent of Santa Maria Rabada, who had the wit to understand and the power to further Columbus's project. The other, Fray Diego Dehasa, was the confessor and adviser of King Ferdinand. It's too bad Humboldt could not have seen it, for he says: "On peut traverser l'Amérique Espagnole depuis Buenos Aires jusqu'à Monterrey, depuis la Trinité et Porto Rico jusqu'à Panama et Veragua, et nulle part on ne rencontrera un monument national que la reconnaissance publique ait élevé à la gloire de Christophe Colomb et de Hernan Cortés."