II
We had just acquired the mental attitude requisite to appreciation of Mexico—a state of unworried and unhurried tranquillity such as enables the Mexican himself to sit all day on a plaza bench, enjoying the balmy southern breezes, smoking innumerable cigarettes, discussing nothing in particular, watching the other idlers, and admiring the beauties—both animate and inanimate—of the whole pleasant scene.
Mazatlán had been designed for people with such a mental attitude. The climate was balmy. The whole city was quaintly Mexican. There was not a tourist sight in town. There was, in short, nothing to do except to sit in the plaza—such a plaza as might be found in any other Mexican city, a little square park with a music kiosk in the center, surrounded by palms and ferns and shaded walks, and with an aged white cathedral for its background. Sitting there, one saw the entire population pass in review, for as elsewhere in Mexico, the plaza was at once a club, a meeting place, a music-hall, a playground, and even a marriage market.
III
On my first morning, fortunately a Sunday morning, while I still retained a slight vestige of Anglo-Saxon energy, I was there at daybreak, determined to observe minutely what transpired.
At 6.30, the only other occupants of the benches were several ragged beggars.
At 7.00, the Mazatlán Street Cleaning Department, both members barefoot, appeared upon the scene, dragging a long hose, whereupon the beggars cautiously adjourned to the steps of the municipal building.
At 7.29, the first bootblack stopped to point accusingly at my shoes. No sooner had he polished them than a dozen other bootblacks stopped to point at them, evidently presuming that shoe-polish acted like alcohol, and that I would now suffer from an insatiable craving for more.
At 7.30, I discovered that wiggling a finger—the Latin-American gesture for “No!”—required less energy than shaking the head.
At 7.47, the first excitement! A policeman’s whistle screamed an alarm! The policeman was chasing a small and very ragged urchin diagonally across the park. The urchin appeared to be gaining, but just as they reached the corner, out popped another policeman, also tooting his whistle, and both pursued the youth up the north side of the square, until joined by a third officer, similarly shrilling the alarm. They disappeared around the cathedral, and the plaza idlers settled back into their seats. Popular sentiment seemed to be with the urchin.