Cinco de Mayo (5th of May) was the next big day for Mexico. Then they commemorated the victory over the French, and it is done in princely style. A French paper rather sensibly remarked that it would look better if the Mexicans dropped this foolishness, as the French whipped them on the 4th and again on the 6th. Some little government-paid sheets came out in editorials as mad as turkey gobblers at the sensible insinuation.
I for one am glad Lent and its eggs, red-pepper, and bad-smelling fish is gone. What cowards our stomachs make of us all. I really have begun to long for home, or rather home-cooking. I have made out a list which I view every day, and see how much longer my stomach will have to endure this trash. Fifty-six more mornings to drink black coffee and long for even ham and eggs, with heavenly thoughts of hot cakes and butter. Fifty-six more noons to eat boiled cheese, meat stuffed with chili (red pepper), fish boiled in chili, with the fins, head, eyes, and tail still adhering, dolce (dessert) of fried pumpkin sprinkled with chili; fifty-six more suppers to eat the same bill of fare set up cold; fifty-six more evenings to wonder why pulgras and chinches were ever invented. By the way, if it were not for their musical names they would surely be unendurable. There is a great deal in a name, after all, and if I had to call them fleas and bedbugs I should take the next train for the States. Well, I have fifty-six more nights to spend in an iron-bottomed bed and then I shall cross the Rio Grande, and try once again the pests which inflict mortals there.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
GUADALUPE AND ITS ROMANTIC LEGEND.
We went up to the Zocalo to take a car for Guadalupe. All the street cars start from this center, and on some lines trains of three to ten in number are made up, so that they may be able to resist the bandits who sometimes attack them—at least, so the corporation claims. We determined to try a second-class car, in order to find out what they were like. Our party seated ourselves and watched the crowd as they came surging in. Two big fellows, dressed in buckskin suits and wearing broad sombreros, who sat opposite, never removed their gaze from us. A pretty little girl and an old man who sported a hat about two inches high in the brim, deposited themselves on one side of us, and a black, dried-up old fellow occupied the other.
When the car was about filled, a woman with a baby in her arms, followed by her mother and husband, came in; the women sat down facing us, while the husband, who wore a linen suit—pretty dirty, too—and carried a large purple woolen serape, of which he seemed very proud, wedged himself in between us and the piece of parchment on our left side.
We were inclined to resent this close contact, and were beginning to regret we had not taken the other car, where the people are a shade cleaner, when a lot of Indian women, with babies and bundles, crowded in, and, with a sudden rush which knocked the standing ones on to the laps of the others, we were off at a 2:40 gait. The women sat down on the floor of the car, except one who was dressed a little better than the others. She came up to the dirty Indian by my side and told him to get up. He was about to do so as an utterance of thanks escaped our lips, when his mother-in-law and wife commanded him to sit down again.
This he did in all humbleness, but the woman in black commanded him to rise, as he had no money to pay his fare. His mother-in-law's ire was up, however, and she ordered him to display his wealth. He took out a handkerchief, untied the corner and displayed one silver dollar and some small change; then the old lady dived into the bosom of her dress, and untying a similar handkerchief, displayed her worldly all. The woman in black was convinced she had struck the wrong man, so she sat down on the floor and related her side of the story to the people in her end of the car, while the mother-in-law dealt out the same dose at the other end. The conductor came in, and, straddling over the women on the floor, sold the tickets for six and a half cents. Another conductor followed to collect the same, and soon we reached our destination.