Transcriber's Note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.

Books by

EDITH O'SHAUGHNESSY

A DIPLOMAT'S WIFE IN MEXICO. Illustrated.

DIPLOMATIC DAYS. Illustrated.

HARPER & BROTHERS. NEW YORK
[Established 1817]

HILLSIDE HOUSES AND CHURCH TOWERS IN THE ZAPATISTA COUNTRY

Photograph by Ravell

DIPLOMATIC DAYS

BY
EDITH O'SHAUGHNESSY
[MRS. NELSON O'SHAUGHNESSY]
AUTHOR OF
A Diplomat's Wife in Mexico

ILLUSTRATED

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON

Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published November, 1917

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

FOREWORD

The letters which form this volume were written in a period of delightful leisure, when I was receiving my first impressions of Mexico. The might and beauty of the great Spanish civilization, set in a frame of exceeding natural loveliness, kindled new enthusiasms, and to it all was added the spectacle of that most passionately personal of human games, Mexican politics.

Though I was standing on its threshold, I had little prescience of the national tragedy which later I was to enter into completely, beyond the feeling of mysterious possibilities of calamity in that rich, beautiful, and coveted land.

I saw as in a glass darkly dim forms whose outlines I could not distinguish, and I heard as from a distance the confused cries of a people about to undergo a supreme national crisis, where the greatest delicacy and reserve were necessary on the part of the neighboring nations.

Since then all has happened to Mexico that can happen to a land and permit of its still existing. Even as individuals bear, they know not how, the unbearable, so has Mexico endured.

It is not easy for those who witnessed her great years of prosperity and peace to be reconciled to the years of chaos which have followed, unable as they are to distinguish any good that has resulted to compensate for the misery undergone.

All theories have been crushed to atoms by the tragic avalanche of facts, and above it the voice of the prophet has been heard, "Let that which is to die, die; that which is to be lost, lose itself; and of them that remain, let them devour one another"—until the time comes for new things.

Edith Coues O'Shaughnessy.

Paris, September, 1917.

DIPLOMATIC DAYS

DIPLOMATIC DAYS

I

First impressions of the tropics—Exotic neighbors on shipboard—Havana—Picturesque Mayan stevedores—Vera Cruz—The journey up to Mexico City

Off the Florida Keys,
On board the Monterey, May 1, 1911.

Precious mother: From the moment of arrival at the docks I began to have a suspicion of the tropics, which, however, with everything else, was in abeyance as we rounded Cape Hatteras. During that period an unhappy lot of passengers spent the hours more or less recumbent.

We left New York on a day beautiful and sunny overhead, but uncertain and white-capped underneath, and I don't want to repeat Cape Hatteras in any near future. However, sea evils are quickly forgotten, and I am "taking notice" again.

When we got down to the docks strange equatorial-looking boxes were being unloaded, and there were unfamiliar odors proceeding from crates of fruits, with spiky green things poking out, and something aromatic and suggestive about them. Unfamiliar people more highly colored and less clear-cut than I am accustomed to were gesticulating and running about and talking in Spanish, with quantities of strange-looking luggage, countless children, and a great deal of very light-yellow shoe.

It was twelve o'clock as we left. N. had our steamer chairs arranged, and we went down to lunch to the sound of the loudest gong that ever invited me to refresh. The comedor (dining-room) had its menu printed in English and Spanish, and, of course, I lapped up the Spanish names with my lunch, which gave a charm and a relish to the otherwise uninteresting food. Table decorations in the shape of paper palms were rather disillusioning. The merest scrap of any growing exotic thing would have satisfied me, though N. said I was probably expecting to find the comedor smothered in jasmine and mimosa, with orchids clinging to the walls. Well, perhaps I was. You know I am romantic.

I am now ensconced on deck. Low, yellow stretches in the distances are the "Keys," and I am beginning to feel a slow firing of the imagination as we slip into these soft, bright waters—into the Caribbean. Our old Lamartine quotation comes to mind, "Ainsi toujours poussés vers de nouveaux rivages," etc.

A Mérida family occupies the state-room nearest mine—five children, mother, father, and a beetling-browed Indian maid. I stumble over details of their luggage every time I go out of my cabin—a pea-green valise, a chair for one of the younger children, a large rocking-horse, a great, round, black-and-white cardboard box from some hat-shop in Fourteenth Street—they don't seem to mind what they carry.

Their parrot I had removed early in the game; none of them ever went near it to give it food or water, though they had gone to the immense bother of traveling with it. It was evidently pleased to be going back to where it had come from, and its liveliest times were between 4 and 6 A.M. and 2 and 4 P.M.

They have an awful little boy they shriek at, called Jenofonte (in toying with my dictionary I see it is Zenophon in English). He "hunts" with a quiet, bright-eyed little sister called Jesusita, whom I have several times found in my state-room investigating things. It seemed at first like having them all in with me. The state-rooms have only the thinnest partitions, with about a foot of nothing at the top for ventilation.

The steward tells me they get off at Progreso. "Papacito" is a wealthy henequen planter. "Mamacita" boarded the ship wearing huge diamond ear-rings and molded into the tightest checked tailor-suit you ever saw. This morning she is perfectly comfortable in a lace-trimmed, faded lavender wrapper—doubtless inspired by the warm air. I can see her in sack and petticoat on the plantation.

The boat is full of children, and how they squabble! The various parents come up and talk in loud, harsh voices, and gesticulate and scream what seem maledictions on one another, and one thinks there is going to be a terrible row, when suddenly everybody walks off with everybody else as pleasant as you please, and it is all over till the next time.

More or less sophisticated literature was sent me for the voyage by various well-wishers. To-day I have been reading Les Dieux ont Soif, but with a feeling that this is not a setting for Anatole France, and that I would do better to wait in spite of all the cleverness. He can't compete with this sea-preface to the Mexican book I am to read.

I have an exotic neighbor in the chair next mine who attracted me the first day out by her steamer rugs, which seemed to be white lace bedspreads with wadded linings, now not as fresh as they were before we all disappeared during the rounding of Cape Hatteras. I have only been wont to travel in directions where steamer rugs are steamer rugs. I was further interested by the pillows embroidered with large pink-and-blue swallows and the word in Italian, Tornero, reminding me of the things one used to buy at Sorrento or Naples or in the Via Sistina.

A large, fierce-mustached, chinless man sits by her—husband, manager, protector, or devourer, I know not. She is an Argentine dancer going to do a "turn" in Havana, a good soul with a naturally honest look out of her sloe-black eyes and the most lovely lines from waist to feet; for the rest getting top-heavy. I imagine she is "letting herself go," as large boxes of chocolates and candied fruits are always by her side, which she presses on Elim every time he appears. He is sitting by me and says to tell you that he has you zucker-lieb.

He runs the deck from morning till night, and I think his little alabaster legs are taking on a brownish tinge. It is getting very warm, but there is always one side of the boat where a breeze is to be had. He has been divested of most of his clothing, and is wearing a little pale-blue linen suit, short above his sweet, white knees. He looks like the fairest lily among all these dark blossoms.

Later.

Between six and seven o'clock the sea was a marvelous mauve and blue; myriads of little white-winged flying-fish were springing out of the water; over us was a green-and-orange sky in which a pale crescent moon was shining. Tell Elliott these wondrous seas seem to belong to him. My thoughts enfolded him tenderly as a soft darkness fell.

Early to-morrow morning, about 6.30, we get into Havana. The Jacksons cabled us before we left New York to lunch with them at the Legation.

The Monterey has been taking strange, unrelated assortments of passengers to Mexico for decades, and her only resemblance to the big ocean liners is that she floats. The cabins have hard, narrow berths with a still harder shelf of a sofa, and when I add that a bit of cloth was tied round the stopper of my basin to prevent the water from running out, you will quite understand. I used half of my bottle of listerine on the stopper, and then removed the cloth, with the result that I have to be quick about my ablutions. But when one is running into a blue-and-mauve sea with a rainbow-colored sky above, it does not matter; one is bathed in a gorgeous iridescence. The captain tells me that on the last trip they ran into a hurricane, with the water suddenly slopping and washing about in the famous comedor, everybody wet and trying to stand on chairs and tables, screaming and saying prayers.

May 3d.
Between Havana and Progreso.

Yesterday we had a pleasant day with the Jacksons. You know they are always handsomely established, and we found them in a very beautiful old Spanish house opposite an old church with a pink belfry, and a tall palm pressed against it—the sort of silhouette I had dreamed of and hoped for. My eyes received it gratefully as we drove up to the door.

Once in the house, dim, cool, large spaces enveloped us, and Mrs. Jackson, very dainty in the freshest and filmiest of white dresses, received us. We had not met since the old Berlin days. Mr. Jackson, also in immaculate white, was coming down the broad stone stairway from the chancery as we got there.

They showed us the interesting house, a type fast disappearing, alas! Mostly they are being turned into cigarette-factories or being torn down to make room for entirely unsuitable buildings, such as are in vogue in the temperate zone. Large suites of rooms are built between a wide outer veranda and a large inner corridor giving on a courtyard. During the season of rains, it appears, the water rushes down the broad stairway, and the furniture in the huge, window-paneless rooms is piled up in the middle. Nobody keeps books or engravings in Havana, on account of the dampness. There is not a first edition on the island. Even shoes and slippers left in the closets get a green mold in no time. Mr. Jackson says they have a lot of work at the Legation, and everything in Havana costs the eyes of the head.

An hour or so after lunch, with its "Auld Lang Syne" flavor spiced with our hot, tropical inquiries, we took a drive along the deserted Malecón, the entire population evidently at the business of the siesta. But Havana should always be seen, indescribably beautiful, from a ship entering the port in the pearly morn, as I saw it.

About four o'clock, when we were driving to the landing, the town began to wake up. There was much coming and going of a many-colored population, with the dark note dominating, and much whistling and humming, and many knowing-looking, pretty, flashing-eyed, very young girls were walking about. We had been refreshed with one of the national beverages—shredded pineapple in powdered ice—most delicious, before leaving the Legation. It helped us over the blaze of water to the Monterey.

After getting back I walked about the deck, watching the beautiful little harbor filled with all sorts and conditions of ships, hailing from the four winds of the earth. The Kronprinzessin Cecilie, with the new German minister to Mexico aboard, was just going out of the harbor, and I was shown where they were busy dredging for the Maine. A part of her historic form was to be seen and "gave to think."

About six o'clock fiery clouds began to pile themselves up in the heavens with a lavishness I am unaccustomed to. One could not tell where the sun was actually setting. The whole horizon was red and pink and saffron and vermilion, and the rose-tinted Cabaña fortress and Morro Castle cut sharply into it. The waters of the harbor slowly became a magnificent purple, and as the ships began to hang their masthead lights, and the throb of coming night was over everything, we steamed out. For long after we could see the jeweled lights of the lovely isle. So far, so good.

We have a day at Progreso, and we are planning to go ashore to visit Mérida, the famous old capital of Yucatan, and evidently most interesting. The accounts in Terry's Guide are quite alluring. It was founded on the remains of the ancient Mayan city, and has a celebrated cathedral built by one of the men who came over with Cortés, and still filled with good old things. The description of Montejo's house, with its door flanked on each side by the stone figure of a Spanish knight with his feet on the head of a Mayan Indian, shows what that conqueror thought of the situation.

Captain Smith, very rotund and quite blasé about the thrills of passengers, who has not been ashore at Mérida for three decades, though he passes by many times a year, recommended us to stay on the boat, saying Mérida was always "hotter than Tophet," too hot to see anything. "I know," he added. "I have seen 'them' go and seen 'them' return."

Some spectacled German travelers quite enlivened the deck to-day. When they first hove in sight I thought they were professors or scientific men of some sort, each having a large, flat valise under his arm. The valises, according to the modest yet piercing glance I cast, proved, however, to be filled with underpinnings for the female form divine, that they are going to introduce into Yucatan—coarse embroidery and lace-trimmed articles, with machine-stitching you could see the length of the deck, and both men simply dripped with samples. Dots, stripes, and checks, with the prices attached, seemed to be their whole existence.

Awhile ago, however, the largest and most florid one leaned against the railing under the warm starry sky, as we steamed through a phosphorescent sea, and sang Walther's "Preislied" in a beautiful tenor voice, with the purest, smoothest phrasing. The other, regretting at intervals that he had not brought his geige with him, hummed a delightful second part to Wie ist es möglich dann dass ich dich lassen kann. It was all as natural as breathing, and as close.

May 4th.
Between Progreso and Vera Cruz.

The voyage is drawing to an end. A peace which doesn't pass understanding has fallen on my part of the ship as the Mérida family and their rainbow luggage were taken off to the sound of the shrieks of the parrot, the screams of the family, and endless running back to get things.

We did not go ashore, after all, as we had planned. From the direction of Mérida came a strange heat enveloping like a garment, a heat unknown to me, and a dazzling glaze of light, which seemed to bore holes through the eyes. Later on at sunset, red as blood, there was a spongy crimson ambiency about each figure on deck.

All day we watched the spotlessly clean Mayan stevedores unloading the cargo on to the lighters. It was an effect of brown skin and white or pale-pink or green garments, which I suppose had been some coarser color to begin with. They are Mayan Indians with a big civilization behind them. I remembered dimly those beautiful illustrated reports—I think from the Smithsonian—that I used to look at in the Washington house curled up in an arm-chair. It affected me to see these remnants of a past race arrive for the unloading of our steamer so clean, so fresh-smelling. All day long they have been crying "Abajo!" and "Arriba!" as the heavy load swung down or the iron claws swung up. The little boats and lighters of all kinds have pious names—La Concepción Inmaculada, Asunción (the grimiest and smallest of all was La Transfiguración)—instead of the Katies and Susies and Dolphins of another clime.

Later.

We were thankful we had not ventured into the Mérida furnace. Some stout Germans who left in the morning active, rosy, fat, and inquiring, came back languid, lead-colored, flabby, and silent. What happened to the two who debarked to introduce coarse undergarments and fine singing into Yucatan I shall never know.

I thought of Elliott, when the darkish women in pink dresses, with a blue veil or two and jewelry and many children, got on the boat to go from Progreso to Vera Cruz. It must have been the sort he used to see in Haiti. I have just written Aunt Laura, to post at Vera Cruz, that she may know we are en route to the land of the cactus. Events have succeeded one another so quickly these past few months that I am dazed. Only the thread of love and sorrow and high adventure that holds life together keeps me steady.

Yesterday Elim said, in the same tone he would have used feeding the swans and the deer in any one of the accustomed international parks, "Now I am going to feed the sharks." He was hoping they would show some interest in the bits of bread he threw at them. These wondrous blue waters are simply infested with the ravening creatures, and any one who fell overboard would not need to fear drowning. Since we left Havana it has been all color, no contours, no masses, even, except the gorgeous sunset clouds, and they have presented themselves with unimaginable pomp and circumstance. I have never seen such a waste of color.

The German son-in-law of Senator Newlands, whom you saw in Berlin, is on board, also a count and countess—I think the same ones that mixed the tomato catsup in the bath-tub of the Washington house that the clergy provided for them when they came from Rome seeking fortune. An unidentified youth, terzo incommodo or commodo, for all I know, is with them; the returning families and German commercial travelers make up the rest.

To-day, though the sea is smooth to the eye, there is a long, slow ground-swell, and this blanket of heat further relieves one of all strenuosity. I begin to understand lots of things. Campeche Bay is a far cry from the Ritz-Carlton—but what would life be without its far cries?

Friday 5th.
Nearing Vera Cruz.

Very hot, though early this morning there was a drenching rain, a deluge. The heavens simply opened, and everything, for an hour, was running with a great sound of water. Now the sun is out, a strange, pricking, nerve-disturbing sun.

THE REVOLUTIONARY CAMP, MAY 5, 1911
(In front, Francisco I. Madero; behind him, José Marcia Suarez; next him, Gustavo Madero. In khaki at left front, Abram Gonsalez. All are dead)

I have a deep thrill of excitement when I think of the Mexico in revolution that we are nearing, steaming so quickly to the center of it all. The victories, the defeats, the glories, the abasements, vanishings, and destructions we may witness, all that troubled magnetic unknown awaiting us! In looking over the newspaper in Mrs. Jackson's cool, dim, vast boudoir we saw that the Madero revolution is taking on great proportions. Old things and new wrestling for supremacy, "and the heavens above them all."

The — are going on to Mexico City to "chercher fortune." He is the brother of the tomato catsup bathtub episode, as I gathered, when he spoke of a brother having been in Washington. He quite frankly tells people that he himself has had bad luck, as on the way to Mexico he had stopped at Monte Carlo, and of the hundred thousand francs raised to begin life again in the tropics he had lost eighty thousand at the tables. Very sad!

We land at Vera Cruz about noon, according to Captain Smith, and can take a night train (thirteen hours) up to Mexico City. I had some thought of persuading N. to wait over, that we might make the famous journey by daylight. But the train leaves at 6 A.M., which would mean a night in Vera Cruz, and what I hear about the hotels is not confidence-inspiring. I have a feeling of being completely at the mercy of the unknown and the only partially controllable—unknown microbes, unknown humanities, unknown everything; and there is the blue-eyed boy, so we will probably let the scenery enjoy itself.

Later, 3 p.m.
Sitting on deck in Vera Cruz harbor.

To-day is a great national holiday, the 5th of May (when the French were defeated at Puebla), and things are not moving quickly, at any rate not in our direction. The health officials have not materialized. Somebody said it was a bad time to arrive, anyway, as they would be taking their afternoon naps.

The only other visitor from foreign parts in the harbor is the Kronprinzessin Cecilie lying against the white glaze of shore. An old Spanish fortress, San Juan Ulua, is near us—now used as a prison and most dreadful, I am told. But I keep thinking how, through the centuries, the vast, shining wealth of Mexico poured into Europe from this port.

Later.

The polite, vestless but not coatless health officials have found us "clean," and we are now waiting for the next set—I think it is the port authorities—to finish their naps.

On the docks so near, but apparently so far, is lying or sitting a dark-faced, peaked-hatted, white-trousered race with one tall, white-skinned, white-clad figure standing out—our consul, evidently come to meet us. Captain Smith told me that in the old days navigators got into Vera Cruz by the picturesque means of steering so that the tower of the Church of San Francisco covered the tower of the cathedral.

I was standing by him (it was his ninety-ninth entrance into Vera Cruz harbor) just as we passed the lone palms on the flat, sandy island, and he heaved a sigh of relief. In addition to the sandy islands and the lonely palms were blackened ribs of various ships that did not get into port. These things and the blur of heat confusing the outlines of the city into a mass of white, pink, and green, with a hint of a lustrous mountain form on a far horizon, are what I see as we sit here ready to step ashore into the unknown.

Mexico City, May 6th, noon.
Hôtel de Genève, a stone's-throw from the Embassy.

We got in early, at 7.30, and I did not feel, driving through the broad streets with their wash of Indian color, as one often does entering strange cities in the early morning: "Why, oh, why have I come? What am I doing here?"

There seemed abundant justification, if one could only get at it; some personal pointing of the finger of a generally impersonal fate. It's all very strange to both the psychical and physical being. N. went early to present himself to the ambassador. We had purposely not telegraphed our arrival. Elim is out with Gabrielle, and I am rather limp and listless after the sleepless night, which was an unforgetable rising up, up, up, with a ringing in the ears, through an exotic, potential sort of darkness.

My last word was from the boat, posted at the consulate. Mr. Canada, our calm, sensible, silver-haired, blue-eyed consul, welcomed us at Vera Cruz, piloted us quickly through the furnace of the customs, across an equally hot interval of sand and cobblestone to the dim, cool consulate, where a strong, unexpected breeze was blowing in at the sea-windows.

Then ensued a great telegraphing to and fro to know if the line, the only one rumored to be intact to Mexico City, were really open and safe. Other encouraging rumors, such as the cutting of the water and light supplies of Mexico City by the revolutionaries, were rife. But, not fancying a marooning in Vera Cruz, we decided "If it were done, 'twere well 'twere done quickly."

Half an hour before the train started, with babe, baggage, and maid safely on board, we took a little turn about the streets. A blessed blue darkness was falling, all that glaze of heat was gone, and the note of color proved to be little low, pink houses with a great deal of green shutter and balcony. We went as far as the Plaza, drawn by the sound of some really snappy music. Indians, mantilla-covered, white-clad women, little children in various stages of undress, and a foreigner or two smoking, were sitting or walking about in the palm-planted square, and under some arcades people were eating and drinking. The domed and belfried cathedral was only a dark mass against the sky, but all the same I deeply knew that it was the tropics, the Spanish tropics. Thus has many a one debarked in a tropical port, and there is nothing at all extraordinary about it, except one's own feeling.

As the train moved out of the station every man had his revolver or his rifle ready at hand, and there was a great wiping and clicking and loading going on. The colored porter and a young man reading the Literary Digest gave, however, home notes of security.

It wasn't one of those nights when you "lie down to pleasant dreams." As I put my head out of the window at one of the dark stops the scent of some sickeningly sweet unknown flower fell like a veil over my face. There was a hollow sound of the testing of the wheels. Torches and lanterns cut the darkness, so that I got suggestions of unfamiliar silhouettes, as a peaked hat or a flap of a cape or a bayonet caught the light. Soldiers were guarding the bridges and trestle-works, which seemed endless.

As the first dim light began to come in at my window I drew up the curtain and looked out on a scene so beautiful, so unexpected, that I could have wept. The two great volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, were high, rose-colored, serene, ineffably beautiful against the sky, still a pale tint of bleu de nuit. I felt all the alarms and uncertainties of the darkness slip away. Elim was rolled up like a little ball at the foot of the berth, nothing of his head showing but a shock of yellow hair. We were safely on the heights.

Dim, bluish fields of the unfamiliar maguey were planted in regular rows. Even as I looked out they began to take on a rich, brownish-pink tone, the little Indian huts along the way became rose-colored, everything began to glow. The two peaks, which had had no place in my consciousness since I wrestled with their names at school, were masses of flame-color against a sky of palest, whitest blue. At the little stations an occasional red-blanketed, peaked-hatted Indian appeared. It was the Mexico of dreams.

II

First visit to the Embassy—Adjusting oneself to a height of eight thousand feet in the tropics—Calle Humboldt—Mexican servants—Diplomatic dinners—Progress of Maderista forces.

May 7, 1911.

Yesterday proved very full, though I had thought to engage it, as far as the outer world was concerned, by a single visit to the Embassy. N. came home to lunch with the announcement that it was Mrs. Wilson's day, so I went back with him, thinking to greet her for a moment only, but she insisted on my returning for the afternoon reception, and was most cordial and welcoming.

I came home, tried to rest, and didn't, and, finally pulling my outer self together with the help of the big, black Alphonsine hat, sallied forth at five o'clock to see the general lay of the Mexican land. I found various autos drawn up before the Embassy door, and Mrs. Wilson, very gracious and attractive-looking in a heliotrope dress, was receiving many callers in her handsome, flower-filled drawing-room. Various diplomatic people were presented, but mostly, as it happened, from or about the equator.

I met, however, a charming young Mexican—Del Campo, I think his name is—from the Foreign Office. His English was so choice and delightful that I asked how it came about. He explained that he had an Irish mother and had been en poste in London. Toward the end the ambassador came in, very cordial, and asking why in the world we hadn't telegraphed that we were coming up on the night train, so that we might be properly met; but I told him one couldn't be "properly met" at 7 A.M.

An agreeable, clever man, Stephen Bonsal, who has been correspondent at various crises for various newspapers in various parts of the world, came in late. He is down here to watch the progress of the revolution from the very good perspective afforded by Mexico City. After every one but Mr. Bonsal had gone there was an interesting conversation about the potentialities of the Mexican situation.

The ambassador is a great admirer of Diaz, and fears the unknown awaiting us.

In the evening we dined with the first secretary, Mr. Dearing, a delightful man of good judgment, with dark, clever eyes, who says he has in view just the house for us. I am glad to find him here.

It's all rather a blur of fatigue, however, and this morning not much better. I am conscious all the time of an effort to adjust the body to an unaccustomed air-pressure, a different ambiency. After all, it is nearly eight thousand feet in the tropics. This hotel "leaves to be desired" from every point of view, and we must make other arrangements at the earliest opportunity.

Later.

Various reporters have been here wanting details of our "previous condition of servitude," and bothering us for our photographs, which we have not got.

Mr. Weitzel, special secretary, sent from Washington to "help out" pending N.'s arrival, has been to lunch, and I am going out to drive with Mrs. Wilson in a few minutes.

Was it not tragic—one of those tricky, inexplicable, unnatural arrangements of fate—that Aunt Laura, up from Tehuantepec on business, should have been leaving one station as we got in at the other? It would have seemed to the human understanding the preordained moment to span the decades between this day and that long-ago parting in my childhood.

Later.

Just home from a delightful drive about Chapultepec Park with Mrs. Wilson. It is entered through a broad, eucalyptus-planted avenue with fine monuments and vistas, leading into the beautiful, poetic grounds, with the far-famed castle of Chapultepec standing on a hill in the midst, about which grow countless varieties of exotic tree and flower. As we drove about she told me of the wonderful fiesta there at the time of the Centenary, when the park was hung with thousands of electric lights, of the dignity and state of Don Porfirio, and of Doña Carmen's wonderful white Paris gown and her strings of pearls and diamonds, and flashing through it all her gracious smile as she received the great of the earth, gathered from the four winds.

But there seemed something of a fairy tale about it all, with a revolutionary army in the north headed straight for us, brought together by an unknown dreamer of the dream of equality, a sort of prophet and apostle.

May 8th.

I have already sent off two letters, but this goes via the pouch to Washington. I am not formulating anything about Mexico. I feel myself simply a receptacle for impressions not yet crystallized.

I am now going to look at the house Dearing spoke of. This hotel, though quite new, is already rickety and proves itself more primitive at each turn. The doors in every room are placed just where you don't expect them; either you can't shut them or they won't open. The hot water runs cold, and the cold hot. We are up a huge number of stairs, the first step placed at right angles as you go out of the door; and I seem to be living in a world of luggage. The pleasant rooms can only be got at through the undesirable ones. The food to me is interesting with its American veneer over unclassified substances, but would never do for Elim.

This afternoon I made official calls with Mrs. Wilson—just a leaving of cards, and in the evening we dine with Dearing and Weitzel, who, now that N. has arrived, is returning immediately to Washington. The weather is beautiful, but the dark and splendid clouds that yesterday "gathered round the setting sun" are, they tell me, the forerunners of the rainy season.

May 9, 1911.

Instead of dining with Mr. Weitzel we all had a very pleasant dinner at the Embassy last night. Everything exceedingly well done. A Belgian maître d'hôtel has brought his Brussels ways with him, and it might have been a pleasant dinner anywhere. The Embassy is very handsomely equipped throughout with the furnishings of Mr. Wilson's Brussels Legation, and the rooms are all large and high-ceilinged and generally ambassadorial-looking. Mr. Wilson has a very complex situation well in hand, but says he has ample reason to fear that if Diaz goes it will be an embarking on unknown seas in a rudderless ship. Personally I have not got any of the points of the compass yet, but something seems brewing in all directions.

Later.

We took the charming dwelling I spoke of yesterday—not too large, and thoroughly furnished by comfortably living, cultured people—42 Calle Humboldt. The name of the street itself is in the proper Mexican note. I want to keep the house, which is built in the dignified, solid way of half a century ago, on the basis of the former masters, so I looked over the accounts, which in themselves give a picture of Mexican life.

The servants get fifteen cents a day for their food, consisting largely of frijoles, and their everlasting pulque, which my nose is no longer a stranger to, and their wages range from seven to nine dollars a month. There is a dear little flower-planted corridor—pink geraniums and calla-lilies—running around the four sides of the patio, on which all the rooms open, and there is a second brick veranda, with various shrubs and flowers and oleander-trees, out beyond the dining-room, where Elim can play in the flooding sun. Four of the servants have been many years with the Americans to whom the house belongs, Mrs. Seeger and her daughter departing only last week on the Ward Line Merida.

The house has never been rented before. Its only drawback is that it is in the center of the town, though it is at the end of the street near the broad Paseo. The Embassy is some distance out, in one of the new "Colonias." We can move in immediately. Everything is in apple-pie order. I have seen two smiling, black-dressed, white-collared, white-aproned maids, who said they wouldn't stay if I got a butler. It sounds so promising that I certainly won't introduce any possibly disturbing element into this paradise.

42 Calle Humboldt.

I am sitting here quietly in the charming little library waiting for the maître de maison, whom we have just missed; a few final arrangements are to be made. There are many bookcases filled with really good books, easy-chairs, writing-desks, and all sheltered from this beautiful but cruel light by awnings at the windows of court and street—everything comfortable and comme il faut. The rooms have the high ceilings of this part of the world, and in the drawing-room, which gives into the library, are more books, and furniture that will be pleasant to live with.

Mrs. S., fearing possible destructions of a very probable revolution, took with her all her really good portable things, I understand. Collections of fans, paintings on bronze, some old pictures, valuable bric-à-brac—in short, the gleanings of years. I am thankful, of course, not to have the responsibility of anybody's special treasures.

The rooms are all enfilade, with the open corridor running around the inside of the patio, and all, except two big corner rooms giving on the street, open onto it. Just opposite is the Ministry of Finance, and at the head of the street in the big Plaza is the Foreign Office. There is an artesian well at the back, but the water must be boiled and filtered. I understand one must keep one's eye on the filtering and boiling, which seems superfluous to the Aztec. Nothing is spoken except Spanish, which pleases me, as it will break me in immediately. The servants are a cook, the two nice maids, two washer-women, and a little half-priced maid called a galopina. As you will judge by the name, she does all the running, and doubtless the kitchen work nobody else will do.

I am most fortunate not to have to try my novice hand on getting a household together in this land of unknown equations. Just to step into a well-ordered household is a piece of good luck. I have already seen a corner I shall make mine, a sofa near a bookcase and reading-lamp, and an old, low, square table which I shall put beside it for books and flowers, and where the tea will be brought.

May 10th.

A word in haste by the pouch. Don't believe all you see in the newspapers, and especially don't let the Paris Herald make you panicky. We are well, and to-morrow we move into the pleasant home. In case there are riots we can sport not only one oak, but two, as there is a double set of doors to the large vestibule leading into the courtyard, and we are up one flight, in what the Italians would call the piano nobile. Nothing above but a flat, convenient, accessible roof. I am told the roof is a great feature of Latin-American life, especially in revolutionary days.

I write at length about the disposition of the house because I know you will like to hear; not because there is one chance in a thousand of the siege so much talked about, though it seems in the note to order large supplies from the American grocery-stores, and people are having their doors and window-shutters strengthened. The fighting on the frontier has nothing, as yet, to do with us.

May 12th.

All peaceful here in Mexico City. Diaz and Madero are supposed to come to some sort of terms. The well-seasoned inhabitants who know the people and conditions feel there is no cause for personal anxieties, though, of course, there are always alarmists. One minister, whose posts during a long career have been Guatemala, Siam, and Mexico, talks wildly, and has stocked his house for a siege. He lets the water run into his tub at night for fear the water-supply will be cut off, and has had iron bars put across his shutters.

Yesterday, when we got to the house, there was not a sign of any of the servants. It appeared completely deserted, and might have been a Mayan ruin so far as signs of life were concerned. After an hour of thinking their delicacy, or whatever it was, had gone far enough, I investigated the back quarters, and they all appeared smiling and ready. As I understand it, there was some Spanish-Indian idea about not intruding at first; but I wanted to get settled!

I was out this morning, getting a few necessary additions to the house, though everything is here, even to some linen and silver. The departing Belgian secretary is having a sale, and I met there several of the colleagues looking over his household gods.

Last night we were again at the Embassy for dinner, and the cook returned me some of the morning house money—fifty cents or so—that had not been used. I was so surprised that I took it. They seem a pleasant, peaceful, gentle, ungrasping sort of people.

The house is open day and night—we live a practically outdoor life. To get to the really charming dining-room with its yellow walls, rare old engravings in old dark, inlaid frames, its cabinets with bits of Napoleon, Maximilian, and other old china, we have to go out under "the inverted bowl" of an unimagined shining blueness and around the corridor. It certainly poetizes the hour of refreshment. The climate is indescribably beautiful to look at, but it is all too high. Few foreigners can stand it à la longue. The patio was flooded with moonlight when I went to bed, and flooded with sun when I woke up. I praised Allah.

The dinner of twelve at the Embassy last night was very pleasant. President Taft's announcement that there would be no intervention made every one feel easy again. Rumors had been rife in town as to possible decisions in Washington. I sat between the ambassador and an American, Mr. McLaren, an intime of Madero, in whose house he lay concealed last autumn when he was in danger of arrest.

I was most interested in hearing, at first hand, about Madero. Mr. McLaren, a clever lawyer with a long experience of Mexico, says he is inspired, illuminated, selfless, with but one idea, the regeneration of Mexico. He seems to have no doubt of Madero's being able to work out the Mexican situation along high, broad lines, and thinks he will surely be here, in the city, through force or the abdication of Diaz, within a month or two.

Mr. Wilson, on the contrary, told me again he saw with dread the overthrow of the Diaz régime. Though the President is eighty-three, with many of the infirmities and obstinacies of old age, he also preserves many of the qualities that made him great, and Mr. Wilson said that he personally, in all his dealings with him, never found him lacking in understanding or energy.

I reminded myself of La Fontaine's fable, Entre deux Âges, with the difference, however, that instead of having no hair left, I had no opinions left, when we rose from dinner. We drove home in an open motor under a thickly starred and gorgeous heaven; but the unfamiliar constellations gave me sudden nostalgia.

Later.

Last night the Ward Line Merida sank. The wife and daughter of Mr. Seeger were on her. After five hours of anguish and uncertainty, in complete darkness, bereft of every personal belonging, the passengers were transferred to the United Fruit Company steamer that ran into them. The news has just come in. It makes 42 Calle Humboldt seem very safe. To think that as we were returning to its security from the pleasant dinner at the Embassy the disaster was taking place!

FRANCISCO I. MADERO
(From a photograph taken in 1911)

I look about this comfortable home and think how sheltered a spot had been forsaken but a short week ago, of the treasures chosen from walls and cabinets to be out of possible revolutionary harm, and now all is lying at the bottom of the sea, off Cape Hatteras, and we, strangers, are safe in the shelter of this home. "Who shall escape his fate?" I keep saying to myself.

May 13th.

On the 10th Juarez was captured with its commanding officer, General Navarro, by Orozco and Giuseppe Garibaldi, who is down here following out the family traditions. I am writing in the comfortable little library, doors opening everywhere on to the flower-planted corridor. I have been reading Creelman's Life of Diaz, and three volumes of Prescott are waiting on my little table. Suddenly I find I am hungry with a great hunger for the printed page and the old objective and impersonal habits of thought. In Vienna the personal, with its "grand seigneur" contour, seemed to replace quite sufficiently for the time any objective views of life. A woman who reads there is likely to be mal vue, which for some reason does not at all do away with the insistent seductions of Viennese life.

Yours from the Dolder received, and the sight of the envelope showing the familiar Zürich lake and hills made me realize the mountains and seas that separate us. Elim went to sleep with the envelope under his pillow. The beautiful park nearest us, the "Alameda," of which I inclose a post-card, is unfortunately haunted by Indians, picturesque, hungry, dirty. If it is true, as transcendental souls say, that beauty is food, I need not worry about them, but it does not make the place very tempting for Elim's airings. He will have to be driven up to Chapultepec Park.

We are to be presented to the President and his wife this week, and are looking forward to meeting the maker of modern Mexico and his charming consort. They are in their large house near the Palacio, but generally at this season have moved to Chapultepec.

May 16th.

Yesterday Madero and Carbajal, who is the peace envoy of Diaz, whatever that may mean, went into conference at Juarez to consider the proposals of the Diaz government. Everything here is in a melting condition, and how it will crystallize the fates alone know.

Various "innocent" bystanders were killed or injured at Douglas in the early days of the revolution. Some still more innocent, looking neither to the right nor to the left, also got hurt, as, for instance, the lady leaning over the wash-tub with her back to the land of the cactus. They have put in a nice little bundle of claims, and one flippant newspaper at home suggests putting the town of Douglas on wheels and moving it to a place of safety, rather than going to the expense of invading Mexico for the recovery of claims past and future.

Last night we dined at the handsome French Legation in the Calle Roma. The minister and his wife are away, and in their absence the chargé d'affaires, De Vaux, is living there with two friends, a Mr. de Vilaine, very au courant with Mexican matters, and who has large mining interests in Taxco and Colima. He showed us some interesting silver ingots from a little mill at Miramar on the Pacific coast, made up after the manner of the early Spaniards.

A young man, D'Aubigny,[1] in business here, completes a pleasant trio, and we had a very agreeable dinner. The retiring Spanish secretary, Romero, just appointed to Teheran, and his Viennese wife were also there. Romero bears testimony to race, and his long and elegant silhouette fitted into the charming rooms most harmoniously; but a tall, distinguished-looking man, whose name I did not get, ought to have been hanging, clad in a ruff and velvet doublet, in a gilt frame among the Velasquez in the Madrid museum.

The Belgian minister, Allart, who has been here during the last several years of Don Porfirio's glory, took me out. The conversation everywhere turns on the political situation, suppositions as to the abdication of Diaz, prophecies as to how and when Madero will arrive, if the city will offer resistance, and each one's little plan of campaign in case of siege.

There is a temporary narrow-gauge railroad running from the arsenal to the Buena Vista station, across the beautiful Paseo, for the expedition of men and munitions if necessary, which Allart told me appeared last March in the night soon after Limantour's return. Nobody seems to know exactly what forces are at the disposition of the Federal government. The newspapers get rich on the situation, however, and certainly it enlivens the dinners.

May 20, 1911.

The Madero forces are in possession of the ports of entry at Juarez and Agua Prieta, and can collect the customs which, as one minister said, would be spent in fancy by all, but in reality by the usual nearest few.

I saw some Mexican suffragettes the other day whom I wish their American sisters could have gazed upon. They were armed with bandoliers full of ammunition crossed over their breasts, and it did look like bullets rather than ballots among the sisterhood here.

N. has photographed the patio and corridor, and I will send you some copies as soon as possible.

Yesterday I called with Mrs. Wilson at the house of Mrs. Nuttall, of philological and archæological fame, who is away. It is the celebrated but ill-omened house[2] that Pedro de Alvarado, Cortés's beloved, hot-blooded, dashing lieutenant, built just after the Conquest, when Coyoacan was the favorite spot of the high-born and high-handed survivors. It has a most artistic façade, pink, with the pink of ages, and decorated with a lovely lozenge-shaped design.

One enters through a great carved wooden door, with an old shrine above it, into a beautiful courtyard with patches of sun and dark corners, and going up a broad flight of outside stairs one finds oneself on a wide Bougainvillea-hung veranda.

Mrs. Laughton, Mrs. Nuttall's daughter, gave us tea in a high-ceilinged, thick-walled room, filled with flowers and bric-à-brac, with a beautiful, very large, couple-of-centuries-old portrait of a nun Mrs. Nuttall had found in some convent looking down on us. As the poetry and beauty of that old civilization invaded me I thought, "This is what all of Mexico might be, and is not." Beautiful shell designs are over each door leading into rooms of romantic and unexpected proportions. Afterward we went down-stairs and passed through the courtyard, in one corner of which is an old well, overgrown with flowers, which has a history as dark as its depths. The body of Doña Catalina, the first wife of Cortés, is said by evilly disposed historians to have been thrown into it after a quarrel between herself and Cortés in the old near-by Palacio.

As we walked in the garden I felt some strange magic exhaling from it all, something possessing and almost imploring. There were such lights and shadows, such contours of cypress and eucalyptus, mingling with quince and pear trees. The old arbor in the carrefour is overgrown with white roses, and the rest of the garden is a mass of lilies of various kinds, heliotrope, and great tangles of trailing pink geranium and honeysuckle. Blue-flowered papyri were clustered about a microscopic, water-lilied lake, quite black in the late afternoon light. Around all was an old pink, vine-grown wall. It was the hortus inclusus of poets, and I perceived then in its fullness the dark, lovely imprint of Spain upon the lands she conquered. The English, German, French stamp on their colonies that I have seen is pale, effaceable, and doubtless would be lost immediately once the power is withdrawn. But this Spanish stamp has a deathless beauty, and in all the washings of all the generations it does not seem to come out or off.

I stay at home a good deal. It is so pleasant—and after so many years of the concurrences, of the displacements, the hastes and excitements of the great world, how I love this full leisure! After all, what is needed to make life interesting, I am discovering, is not action, but atmosphere, and that I have here.

The President is very ill. I am deeply disappointed that our audience has to be put off. I want to see the old régime, now decidedly tottering, in its accustomed setting. It appears he has an ulcerated tooth, and there can be no receptions, formal or informal, in the present state of affairs. Indeed, I have not seen "hide or hair" of any of the actual government. Doña Carmen, of whom I hear so many tales of goodness and tact, combined with the charming elegance of a woman of the world, seems adored by high and low, and is very Catholic. The not too drastic enforcement of the famous "Laws of Reform" is said to be due to her influence.

I have been looking into the history of Mexico since the "Independence"—to try to get some sort of a "line" on governmental psychology. So much bloodshed has always attended a change of government here.

First came men like the priest Hidalgo and Morelos, his disciple, men of burning hearts and flaming souls. Then appeared a set of what to-day we would call intellectuals: Comonfort, Lerdo, Juarez are types. The long reign of Diaz was preceded by all sorts of upheavals, in which any one who had anything to do with government lost his life.

However, all this concerned the Mexicans alone. But now, with disorders menacing huge foreign interests, a new element of discord and complication comes in. As the generations renew themselves with certainty and promptness, in the end the blow to things industrial is the most serious; and don't think me heartless for stating this simple, cruel truth. Diaz seems at last pushed to the wall, and, of course, with him many foreign interests, which I understand are vital to the life of the country. He has had much wisdom, but the gods seem to have withheld knowledge of the very practical recommendation of one of the old philosophers about succumbing in time. He is supposed, however, to have promised his resignation, if his conscience lets him. He fears anarchy, and, of course, he knows his people very, very well.

Even I, stranger and alien, have a sort of feeling that if this revolution proves successful the "liberties" of the Mexican people will, as usual, get lost in the mêlée. Giuseppe Garibaldi is said to have received the sword from old General Navarro, when he gave it up at Juarez. Can courtesy to foreigners be carried further? The Boston Evening Transcript had an amusing bit, particularly so to me, saying the difficulty of finding out what is happening in Mexico is that of telling which are the names of the generals and which those of the towns.

May 22d.

I am at home to-morrow, Tuesday, for the first time, to whomever it may concern, taking the day every other week, as seems the custom here. Besides getting settled I have begun laying siege to the Spanish language with my dictionary and my special system; I must learn to read it immediately. An old copy of De Solis is what I am "at" now, Historia de la Conquista de Mexico, printed in Amsterdam, beautifully bound in red leather with gold tooling, dedicated al Serenísimo Señor Maximiliano Emanuel Duque de las Dos Bavieras. I gloated over its title-page, and its "chaste and elegant style" makes easy reading.

The natural changes are so beautiful here. The day gives way to night without any twilight, but instead there is a sort of richly colored lining to the first darkness that has a suggestive, indescribable charm and mystery. When Mrs. Wilson and I drove home from the Casa de Alvarado yesterday a mass of amethystine shadows closed about us and all the world, and then in a moment it seemed to be night; but as I got out of the motor I found the darkness was rich in the same way some very old, glinting brocade would be rich.

III

Mexico in full revolution—Diaz's resignation wrung from him—Memories of the "King in Exile"—President de la Barra sworn in—Social happenings—Plan de San Luis Potosí.

May 23d.

My first "Tuesday" was accompanied by a drenching rain, but the colleagues mostly showed up, noblesse oblige, each giving some rather disquieting items about the political situation, according to his special angle.

Mrs. Wilson, who always does what it is "up" to her to do, of course came. We are the only nation here having an embassy. All the others have legations or agencies of some sort, or have turned their affairs over to the most related friendly nation on the spot. It puts the Embassy in a position of continual supremacy as far as rank and importance go.

Mr. de Soto, the "Velasquez" of the French Legation dinner, came in late. He had spent last winter in Rome with the Duke and Duchess d'Arcos. The duke was Spanish minister here years ago. We talked of distant Roman friends. He has often been to Marie K.'s beautiful house. I shall enjoy seeing something of him. He knows Mexico in all its phases, and I find myself eager to turn the pages of this wonderful new chapter, which I feel should be written on maguey, not on mere paper.

May 24th, midnight.

Mexico is in full revolution, or, rather, in what seems the normal act of getting rid of the executive. At five-thirty I walked back to the Embassy with Mrs. Wilson, from the Japanese Legation near by, where we had been dallying with the German and Belgian ministers on Madame Horigutchi's day.

The butler, watching at the door, rushed out to the gate when he saw us, in the greatest excitement, passing old Francisco, the Embassy gendarme, to say that five thousand people were making a demonstration in front of the Diaz house in the Calle de Cadena just back of the palace, and that there was going to be trouble.

My one and instant thought was to get back to Calle Humboldt, to Elim, the falling of an empire being quite a side issue. Just then the ambassador drove up in his motor, having come by a roundabout way from Diaz's house, where he had been making inquiries as to the President's health. He had just escaped being caught up in the mob.

I jumped into the motor, and he told Alonzo to take me home as quickly as possible. The growling, rumbling sound of a far-off mob is a disquieting thing, and I was trembling for my boy as I drove along. We had the thick doors of the courtyard entrance (the vestibule, or zaguán, as they call it) closed and barred, all the front shutters fastened, and soon were as snug as possible. Too snug to suit me, for, once my infant was safely barricaded, I felt the spirit of adventure rising.

N., who had been on an errand at the Foreign Office, where he heard the news, came running across the Paseo, thankful to find us all safely housed, with the further information that mitrailleuses had been placed on the palace roof, and that the police had fired on the crowd in the great square, who were shouting, "Death to Diaz!" many being killed and wounded.

Later on, about nine o'clock, with Dearing and Arnold, who were dining with us, we sallied forth to go to the theater as we had planned. A drenching, torrential rain had come on. The streets along our route were completely deserted, the rain having dispersed the mob more efficaciously than the cannon. There were not more than a dozen people in the whole theater, "El Principal." The only inconvenience I had on that eventful night was being seated in front of three of our own compatriots, whose peculiar form of blasphemy got so on my nerves that I had us all change our seats before we could even try to listen to a farce on the order of "Pagliacci," without the killing.

As we came out there were no cabs to be had, not even a disreputable coche rojo, and we walked home down the Avenida San Francisco and the broad Avenida Juarez under umbrellas. The town had a general look and feeling of having been through something. All was barred and silent except a few broken shop-windows, whose owners had not been quick enough about their shutters. In the windows of one of the tea-rooms were piles of untouched cakes and candies. One had only to put one's hand out to get them.

Farther along, huddled up on the steps of the gaudy Spanish exhibition building, were two tiny Indian boys not more than five or six years old, so sound asleep that their little hands refused to close over the pennies we tried to give them. We finally put the money, not in their pockets (they did not have enough clothes on to have pockets), but behind their little backs. They have probably been cold every night of their lives, so damp stone steps and a rainy street could not prevent their slumbers.

MADERO AND OROZCO IN 1911—MADERO AT THE LEFT

Well, Madero is coming to change it all, to heal the antique sores of Mexico. "Ojalá" (God grant), as I have discovered they are always saying when they aren't saying, "Quién sabe?" I must put out my light. It has been an exciting day. Even if you have not been fired on yourself, it's nervously disturbing to know that near-by people have been.

Ascension Day.

This morning the mob was shot down at the top of our street in the broad Plaza de la Reforma, between the Foreign Office and the statue of the Iron Horse. I felt myself not an innocent bystander, but a foolish one, as to the sound of quick-firing guns and screams I stepped out on the balcony and saw the mob running in all directions, some dropping as the guns placed by the statue turned with a horrible, regular slowness across the street.

N. had rushed home from the Embassy by a side way, hearing that our street was the scene of action. I felt we ought to do something besides remaining behind closed doors when that agony was being enacted; but I was told by N. and Mr. Seeger, who came up from his office below to see how things were going, that Americans in general and the Embassy in particular should keep out of the trouble. In fact, it wasn't our funeral. Police-attended stretcher-bearers appeared on the scene a little later, and the streets were cleared of dead and wounded.

N. sent a note to Limantour, to the Ministry of Finance, when things were at their hottest, thinking it might possibly suit his needs to be within our extra-territorial walls for a few hours. He sent back the most appreciative of notes, saying, however, that he had no alarm.

A day or two ago, standing at the window, I saw him come out of the ministry. There is a clean-cutness about him and his Gallic origin is written all over him in an unmistakable elegance. He is considered by friend and foe alike to be absolutely incorruptible, and the only thing I have ever heard even whispered against him is that he is rich. However, the Romans that made the roads doubtless got rich, but they made the roads, which is what mattered to the Romans. On all sides are evidences of his taste as well as of his ability, for, besides creating modern financial Mexico and placing her on her golden feet, he laid out the park, he designed the uniforms of the mounted guards there, beautified many of the streets, and in a hundred ways helped to make Mexico City what it now is. The Paseo, the beautiful avenue leading for several kilometers from the "Iron Horse" to the park, was laid out during Maximilian's time, and was known as the Calzada del Emperador; and the beautiful eucalyptus-trees that adorn it were planted by order of Carlota—tempi passati.

May 25th, later.

All quiet again in the shade of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl. To-day at 4.30 Diaz's resignation was finally wrung from him.

There are picturesque tales of Doña Carmen standing, black-robed, by his side as he signed away his glory and power, and perhaps that of Mexico as well. A vast throng waited all day for the news before the closed doors of the Chamber of Deputies; but the mob is again simply a peaceful-appearing crowd, singing the national anthem and crying, "Viva Madero!" interspersed with an occasional "Viva De la Barra!"

I must dress for dinner at Hye de Glunek's, the Austrian chargé—the only invitation any one has accepted or given since some days. Mrs. W., who is always very kind, lends us the Embassy auto. One of the incidents yesterday was the looting of the pawnshops. I am afraid the Paris Herald will have blood-curdling accounts of the goings-on, and I will send a cable to you, hoping it will get through. In the midst of life we are no more in death here than elsewhere, and it is all extraordinarily interesting.

May 26th.

The streets were completely deserted last night as we drove home from the very excellent dinner at Hye's, at which the German and Belgian ministers, the French chargé, the Spanish minister and his pretty daughter, the Romeros, et al., assisted. One sees no Mexicans of any political shade abroad these days, and the change of government has been effected mildly rather than otherwise, if one looks back over Mexican history. A few hundreds killed and wounded, a very few thousands of dollars damage done to property in town, and the great and long and glorious Diaz régime is a thing of the past. Mexico is to tread untrodden paths.

Robles Dominguez, who is Madero's representative here, has been dashing about the streets on a big black horse accompanied by his followers, all wearing the national colors on their hats, promising in the name of Madero everything on earth to the people gathered at the various points where he speaks. In many places the tramcars leading to the different suburbs were taken possession of by the mob, who rode free, to carry the good news "from Ghent to Aix." The cars everywhere were simply plastered with them.

Señor de la Barra was sworn in as President of the republic in the afternoon. No anti-American riots, which were at one time feared, though the ambassador and his staff had the pleasant experience of being hissed as they went to the Cámara for the ceremony. From the little balcony of the drawing-room I could see De la Barra quite plainly as he came down the Paseo, bowing on all sides, grave, but amiable and dignified, in the presidential coach, and across his breast the green-and-white-and-red sash of his high office.

Glittering, blue-uniformed outriders with polished silver helmets preceded him, and the crowd was rending the air with "Viva De la Barra!" I saw De la Barra with my physical eye, but I was thinking of the great old Indian, the maker and molder of Mexico, who was wont to go down the broad avenue in that same coach to the sound of vivas, and wondering would they see his like again. I am sending you a post-card photograph of Maximilian in uniform, and Carlota in a blue dress with many pearls, which is not really so beside the point. Diaz helped to close that epoch. We now witness the closing of the Diaz epoch.[3]

May 27th.

Though the mob turned into the tamest thing possible in mobs, and the revolution into the tamest thing possible in revolutions, I keep thinking how both did their work and how never again will Diaz drive up the beautiful Paseo, receiving the plaudits of the people. The town is busy preparing for the reception of Madero and for the elections. General Reyes is still feared by the new party. Madero said to one of our newspaper correspondents the other day that the only unfavorable thing in the Cabinet was the admission of General Reyes as Minister of War, and that the members of the Cabinet and governors of states would be selected later by himself and De la Barra. It looks as if in the apportioning out of the plums the first seeds of discord will be sown in the new political garden.

Yesterday we went motoring with Mr. S. and Dearing over the great, beautiful hills to the west. Something like Italy and yet not at all like it in the feeling of light and color. For the first time I looked down on the city from a great height, seemingly on a level with the hills that hold the cup-like valley, and I saw again in all their beauty the two shining volcanoes flanked by the matchless hills. There was an immense exhilaration in the fitting of the mind to such a remote and gorgeous horizon, and suddenly I found it did not matter if it were peopled or not; it seemed quite complete, even humanly. There was a wonderful lightness about the air. Little puffs that one could not call wind came and brushed our faces with a brilliant yet feathery feeling. The Ajusco hills with their suggestions of brigands (I have not been thinking much of brigands since the tales of Raisuli and Perducaris and Miss Annie Stone) gave a "human" touch to the whole.

In going out of the city we passed through Tacubaya, a very attractive suburb with handsome houses hidden in great gardens, and an old palace of some archbishop; but the most interesting thing about it was the Indian market, spread out on the steep, cobblestoned highway. There was just enough room for the motor to pass between the mats on which were spread their wares. Great piles of pottery, bright rolls of cotton, were laid on squares of cloth, or little mats made of rushes, and there were infinitesimal groupings of eatables of various kinds, little piles of five nuts, or three oranges, or little heaps of melon-seed, or beans.

Indians, picturesque beyond description, were bending, selling, buying, just as they have done since prehistoric days. It was the brightest bit of color I have ever seen, with the thread of Indian life that it was strung on. The Indians compose themselves into beautiful pictures everywhere, and further on the road was full of pottery-makers, bent beneath their huge loads, basket-makers, sandal-makers, women and children equally laden, going with their quick Aztec trot to their journey's end.

All was quiet in the little villages through which we passed. I wonder if they know something has happened to their Mexico?

May 29th.

In the revolutionary lull we have all been vaccinated, and I have been looking into the drinking-water question quite exhaustively.

I felt rather discouraged when the doctor suggested boiling even the mineral water, Tehuacan, from a place near Orizaba. In general the microbe question keeps foreigners busy, and more alarmed if they have children than the sound of artillery. One has to learn to live here. The food leaves much to be desired, and if we were delicate or gourmets, there would be a great deal of difficulty ahead.

Friday Mr. and Mrs. Wilson and the Embassy staff come for dinner, the first time I will have had any one except those dropping in informally. I don't know how it will turn out. There is a nice American range in the kitchen, but the cook, it seems, prefers the classic brasero, and a turkey wing to fan the coals. It is not as primitive as it sounds, however, for the brasero is a tiled affair and has holes on the top for saucepans. They say the American stove would make even the saints too hot. How they produce the nice roasts or bake with the thing is a mystery to me.

However, the whole cooking business is beyond me, though I have put an embargo on riñones (kidneys). Every time there is a halt in remarks about the menu, Teresa suggests riñones, which I despise with my whole soul. I am not enthused by organs, anyway, as food. I would put an embargo on cabrito (kid), but stewed it's objectively one of the best dishes she prepares, and I would eat it under another name. A certain sopa de frijoles would be nice anywhere, and with slices of lemon and hard-boiled egg in it is really delicious, and recalls vaguely the thick mock-turtle soup of my native land. There is a "near" apricot, called chabacano, ripe at this season, but it's only "near," and there are quantities of small, fragrant strawberries.

At Hye de Glunek's I ate, for the first time, the very fine mango, in its perfection. The eating recalls stories of the original fountain-pen and the bath-tub, but the fruit is delicious, even the first time you eat it, with a slightly turpentiny, very clean taste, and cascades of juice. There is a way of sticking a single-pronged fork into one end, while you peel it with a knife, and then proceeding, which makes its consumption possible in public.

MEXICAN WOMEN SELLING TORTILLAS
Photograph by Ravell

To-day we lunched with the British chargé in his temporary quarters, as the new Legation, which is going to be a delightful dwelling, built with some regard for latitude and longitude and altitude, is not yet ready for occupation. Hohler came to Mexico from Constantinople, and wherever he goes collects works of art. In his apartment were all sorts of quite beautiful, Oriental bric-à-brac and hangings, which, somehow, did not seem as Oriental here as they would in other places. Simon, the newly arrived French Inspecteur des Finances of the Banco National, with a brilliant Balkan record behind him, was also there with his wife. They are "enjoying" the Hôtel de Genève, while awaiting the arrival of their Lares and Penates, stalled somewhere between Vera Cruz and Mexico City, and Madam S.'s maid is already down with typhoid fever.

Yesterday, when N. boarded the tram, a smartly dressed, handsome Frenchwoman had just got on with neither Mexican money nor vocabulary. He came to her assistance, and they felt quite like long-separated friends on discovering "who was who" at the luncheon. In the center of the table was a lovely silver bowl of old Mexican artisanship, filled with unfamiliar, theatrical-looking fruits. I compromised on a granadita, which is like a pomegranate in color and taste, but small and oblong in shape. Of course the "old hands" were trying to enlighten the new-comers, but it was rather the blind leading the blind. Nobody can tell what the gigantic political changes will lead to, or what this new wine of fraternity and equality, fermenting in the oldest of bottles, will do to their heads. A gentle joke as we got up from the table, about the pictures in last week's Semana Ilustrada (showing insurrectos burning bridges), to the effect that the national sport might soon prove to be la promenade, if artless, was more to the point.

There is a good deal of talk here about something called the "Plan de San Luis Potosí," apparently the building stones of a new Mexico. It's the manifesto Madero made at that town in the early stages of his revolution, a rather personal and arbitrary political document, in which he declares himself the mouthpiece of the nation's will, and pronounces the last election of Don Porfirio illegal. It was, as far as I can see—which is not, of course, very far—like all his other "elections." Madero finished by saying that the republic being without a legitimate government, he assumes the provisional presidency. It's so simple it may succeed, and the Diaz government left a comfortable sum in the treasury to begin operations with, some sixty-five millions.

May 31st.

The "official" family dinner went off all right, so I am having the ambassador and Mrs. Wilson, Von Hintze, Hye, the Austrian chargé, and De Vaux to dinner on Sunday—eight in all. This is the limit, not of the table and the dining-room, but possibly of the handmaidens. Leclerq, who is departing for Brussels and the Foreign Office, has given me the use, till I have made other arrangements, of his table-silver. I do, indeed, sigh for the silver and linen in Vienna.

Madame de la Barra receives the Corps Diplomatique on Saturday afternoon. It will be her inaugural reception as first lady in the land, and, indeed, the first complete tableau of the chers collègues that I will have seen since our arrival. I suppose I will get a glimpse, at least, of some of the up-to-now invisible Mexican statesmen.

Life goes on here quietly, as far as I am personally concerned, but underneath it all there is the unmistakable beat and throb of changing governments, the passing of the old order, the beginning of the new, with all its potentialities. It is a many-colored background. I am sending an illustrated paper of the shooting done by the mob in my street, La Semana Ilustrada, which is printed at the other end of Calle Humboldt, as is also La Prensa, a newspaper belonging to Francisco Bulnes, the cleverest of the publicists here, and a star among the intellectuals. I am between the making of history and its annals.

The Courrier du Mexique and the Mexican Herald I read daily. The Courrier du Mexique et de l'Europe (Ancien Trait d'Union) was founded in 1849, and has survived many vicissitudes and many governments. Its files would make strange reading, with their succession of political hails and farewells—or rather farewells and hails.

Gabrielle is doing very well, though she is suffering from Heimweh for Vienna. The Austrian chargé sends me accumulations of the Neue Freie Presse to sweeten what she calls "diese Mexico." The Indian maids are almost too good to be true. There's a dusting and a sweeping going on that would satisfy a better housewife than myself.

I am quite in love with my street—it has so much for the eye, so much to intrigue the imagination. As I told you, just opposite is the Finance Ministry. Endless motors belonging to the old and new régime and the intermediate, the Trait d'Union régime, fraternize in front of it. Diagonally across is the home of Diaz's son, Porfirio, who seems to have neither the talents nor the ambitions of his father. The house is a very Mexican-looking affair, though not after the good old models. It is a reddish pink, with superfluous cupolas and bay windows, all lined with pale blue. Great vines of the magenta-colored Bougainvillea, "the glory of Mexico," hanging everywhere, further enliven it. The tiny triangular garden also has various obstreperous and violent-colored botanical specimens.

A little farther down the street, however, is the real gem, for there I perceived, in passing, storied Spanish-American life being enacted. It's a low one-storied house with heavily grated windows, only a couple of feet up from the street. Behind that grating I actually saw a pink-robed señorita sitting, with a flower in her hair and a letter, which I knew must have been a love letter, in her hand, all just as it ought to be, as far as local color is concerned.

The other night, hearing the sound of music, I stepped out on the balcony. Behold! there were the outlines of some kind of Romeo playing the mandolin, in front of that window. It's so complete, so ridiculously like what it ought to be, you will think I have added something, but you don't have to add anything here; it's always all there. That end of the street is where the offices of La Prensa and of La Semana Ilustrada are, and the little newsboys (papeleros) bring things quite up to date when they dash past crying out new editions.

The other end of the street, which is short, gives on the Plaza de la Reforma, where the new, handsome Foreign Office is, and the beautiful equestrian statue of Charles the Fourth of Spain, which Humboldt said could only be compared to that of Marcus Aurelius on the Campidoglio. There are two or three handsome houses belonging to Mexicans between me and the Plaza. The Suinagás', whose daughter is married to a French diplomat, and the Saldivars', next the Finance Ministry, are other houses in the good old style of several generations ago. In former days the streets were familiarly spoken of as calles de Dios (streets of God); pious, picturesque, but probably not resembling those of our eternal abiding-place!

NELSON O'SHAUGHNESSY
(Secretary of the American Embassy, Mexico, 1911-1912)

PAUL LEFAIVRE
(French Minister to Mexico, 1911)

FRANCISCO LEON DE LA BARRA
(President ad interim of the Mexican Republic between Diaz and Madero)

IV

First reception at Chapultepec Castle—First bull-fight—A typical Mexican earthquake—Madero's triumphal march through Mexico City—Three days of adoration

June 4th.

Yesterday we went to the De la Barras' first reception, a tea neither formal nor informal, at beautiful Chapultepec, lifted high up on the historic hill overlooking the city and the beauteous valley, in its gorgeous setting of mountains and volcanoes.

There is a pretty grotto-like modern entrance at the foot of the hill which takes visitors to the elevator, a shaft pierced in the rock, and from the darkness one steps suddenly on to the enchantment of the terraces with their matchless view. There is a winding road which takes longer, ending at the great iron gateway of the military school, and one must cross the broad terrace, where the cadets are walking about or drilling.

Madame de la Barra, herself a widow, the sister of the President's first wife, has only been married a few months, and is smiling, fair, and un-Mexican-looking, of Swiss descent. She was daintily dressed in some sort of beige chiffon with pearls about her neck, and had easy, pleasant manners.

There was no chance for conversation. The whole Diaz set, with very few exceptions, has vanished, not into thin air, but into retirement or Europe, and society will have to be reorganized from new elements. These new elements did not seem at first view to be very malleable. A circle of iron, in the shape of ladies—old, middle-aged, and young—kept formed about Madame de la B., and I was wedged in, for quite a while, between a granddaughter of Juarez wearing, among other things, a huge and, it appears, historic emerald pendant, and a young, inquiring-looking woman. I mean inquiring for these climes, where external phenomena only remotely give rise to speculation. She was in a décolleté mauve passementerie-trimmed gown, with a train—what we would call an evening dress. The experienced foreign diplomats mostly kept outside the circle.

Mr. de la B. was moving about the beautiful flower-planted terraces, smiling, suave, homme du monde, as well as President of Mexico, but the skein from which he is to knit the national destinies is somewhat tangled. He and Mr. Wilson were colleagues in Brussels. Now the turn of the wheel has made him President, and Mr. Wilson ambassador.

Some of the well-seasoned foreigners were predicting immediate difficulties in the disbanding of the revolutionary forces, which seem to be composed of those who don't want to be disbanded, those who want to be disbanded immediately, and those who want to be bandits.

I must say I found it all very interesting—a little gem of a picture of life in Mexico. As a sudden darkness rose up from the valley, rather than fell from the sky, one of the volcanoes gone suddenly blue, the other still aflame, the gathering melted away.

June 6th.

Yesterday, Pentecost Sunday, I went to Mass in the cathedral where Maximilian and Carlota were crowned, and Iturbide and his consort. It is a large, ornate structure, though the lowish roof, earthquake height, I suppose, takes away from the effect of the interior. Three huge altars and a choir also combine to spoil the perspective, but it is imposing and the outside is a lovely grayish pink. It is built on the site of the great Aztec temple, over countless images and remains of the teocali (temple), which the conquerors demolished as soon as they got their breath, after the taking of the city.

I found it full of a multicolored crowd. The Indians were most in evidence, but there were all sorts and conditions of people. Despite what is said to the contrary, the Church has an enormous influence on life here—on institutions, habits, and customs. The convents, monasteries, and seminaries were suppressed in 1859, and no one since has been allowed to leave money or property to the Church by will, but here as elsewhere there is no way to prevent the Church from getting rich. With a constantly renewing collection of individuals having no personal wants, concerned largely with the promises of another life, the aggregate of their activities through the ages will always be enormous in the way of mathematical progression; and I don't see in a free world why they haven't as much right to spend their money and energies that way as in the usual spending for personal and mundane aims.

In the afternoon we went to the bull-fight; it was De la Barra's first appearance at one as President of the republic, and a great occasion. The vast crowd was very enthusiastic. We saw every color of garment, every shade of face, every shape of hat, under the blue, blue sky. We de la haute, or, for that matter, anybody who can pay the price, sit in the shady side of the ring. The sunny half is occupied by dazzled, smiling Indians.

The President was greeted by the magnificently played national air, and the stirring of the great concourse as it rose, and the vivas, had a something impressive. A moment or two after, the entrada took place.

Some beloved matador, whose name I don't know, was greeted with cheers that rivaled those offered to the President. He had on a gorgeous blue-and-gold cloak, resting on one shoulder, the body of the cloak caught up and held with the left hand on the left hip, leaving the right arm free. He was followed by other less-resplendent individuals (the men of his cuadrilla), and soon the ball really opened by the dashing out of the door of a splendid dark bull.

I hid my eyes at the goring of the horses, poor old Rosinantes that they were, ready for the grave, and other high-lights of the occasion. The President gave many purses. It was a very expensive afternoon, doubtless, but it will increase his political popularity. The gaily-dressed toreros would go up to the box after their special "coups," and, with uncovered heads, hold out their hats, and he would lean forward and present the purses. At one time the arena was covered by hats of all sizes and descriptions thrown by enthusiasts, and returned to them by the various bull-fighters. As you will suspect, however, "bull-fight me no bull-fights." It isn't one of those things that it will please me some day to have done, according to the Latin poet. I would like to sponge it out of memory.

The dinner here this evening was not a success. Perhaps the scent of the bull-fight hung around me still or perhaps the personal elements did not combine chemically. The dinner itself was all right. There is a delicious, fat-breasted quail (codorniz) to be had at this season. The conversation was of prophecies concerning the 7th, when Madero, the "Messiah," the "Bridegroom of Mexico," whom he is to lead into paths of peace and plenty, is to enter the city. I kept quoting:

"One man, with a dream at pleasure,

Shall go forth and conquer a crown."

June 7th.

This morning, at 4.30, the town was shaken by a tremendous earthquake. I was awakened by the violent swaying of the house, so violent that as I jumped up I could not keep on my feet. There was a sound as of a great wind at sea, and on all sides the breaking of china and the falling of pictures. Elim, who was fortunately sleeping in my room, awakened and clung to me, asking, "What is the matter with the ship?" N. was calling from his room and trying to open the door.

My first thought was that we were in some dreadful, mysterious storm, not of earthquake. When things had quieted down a little, and I could get to the window, I looked out. The streets were full of people in their night garments, in the most complete demoralization, some on their knees, others under the lintels of the doors. There was a groaning and a calling on God, accompanied by a still very sensible movement of the roof-line. Servants finally appeared, white and terror-stricken, with long, black hair floating down their backs and their shoulders, hunched up under their rebozos.

I was sorry for the damage done to the S.s' nice things—by shipwreck and earthquake. Our house is a good old house, strongly built in a firm quadrangle; yet the shape of my room at one moment was not square, but diamond-shaped!

Later.

I have just come back from a look about town. I saw the wrecked barracks in the Puente de Alvarado. Sixty soldiers were buried under the debris, and the ambulanciers were bringing out the silent, plaster-covered forms as we passed. A big warehouse at one of the railways was completely wrecked, but there was no loss of life as the employees, of course, were not there at that hour. Everywhere were great ruts and splits in the streets, which looked, in places, as if they had been plowed up.

We took a turn through the Avenida San Francisco, gaily flagged like all the streets through which Madero is to pass. All Mexico seemed afield, despite the fact that we may have another "quake" at any moment. At the corner of the historic Church of La Profesa great crowds were gathered, looking up at the ancient dome and nave, rent in several places. Police were standing in front of the carved doors, in the Calle de Motolinia, to prevent the foolish, as well as the pious, from entering. It is very much out of plumb, anyway, having suffered from other earthquakes in other centuries, when, I suppose, the same sort of crowd gathered about it.

Everybody had a sickly, surprised, pale look, and many, it appears, suffer acute nervous attacks after such an experience. It is the biggest earthquake they have had here in several generations. Mexico City being built on boggy, spongy land is what alone has preserved it from complete destruction on various occasions.

Some speak of Madero's being heralded in by this convulsion of nature as a bad augury: others see in it a sign from heaven. I say, qui vivra, verra.

Madero was supposed to reach Mexico City at ten o'clock, and begin his triumphal march from the station through the great thoroughfares, down the Paseo, the Avenida Juarez, the Avenida San Francisco, to the palace; but it is now 2 P.M. and he has not yet come. As the day wears on the earthquake begins to be interpreted solely as a manifestation of Divine Providence in his favor. No soldiery out. This, I am told, is to show the mob that they are trusted by their champion and savior. It strikes me as a bit too trusting; if any excitement does arise among the mob, already unsteadied by the earthquake shock, how will these people be controlled?

Evening.

At three o'clock Madero passed down the Paseo. Our enthusiasm had somewhat abated after the long wait, but we stood up in a motor in front of our door, and could see the immense concourse acclaiming him. There was a great noise of vivas, mingling with shouts of all kinds, tramping of feet, and blowing of motor horns.

I could just get a glimpse of a pale, dark-bearded man bowing to the right and left. I kept repeating to myself: "Qui l'a fait roi? qui l'a couronné?—la victoire."

It appears that his departure from his ancestral home in Parras, and the journey down, have been one of the most remarkable personal experiences in all history. There were three days of continual plaudits and adoration, such as only the Roman emperors knew (or perhaps Roosevelt when he went through Europe).

People came from far and near, in all sorts of conveyances or on foot, just to see him, to hear his voice, even to touch his garments for help and healing. It appears he had a wonderful old grandfather, Evaristo, founder of what promises to be a dynasty, who died just before we came to Mexico, and who, it is said, had misgivings about the strange turn of the family fortunes.

Well, it is a curious experience to see a people at the moment of what they are convinced is their salvation, to see the man they hail as "Messiah" enter their Jerusalem. I can think of no lesser simile. The only thing they didn't shout was "Hosanna." The roofs were black with people along his route. Many threw flowers and green branches as he passed. As for the equestrian statue of Charles IV., in the Plaza, it was alive with people, who clung all over it, climbing to the top, sitting on Charles's head, hanging to his horse's tail.

Madero could make no speech on his arrival here—loss of voice and sick headache, I see by the evening newspaper. The journey and this climax of his entry into the capital doubtlessly overwhelmed his mortality. The crowd, however, was too intent upon its own experiences to feel any lack. The "redeemer" was with them and his mere presence seems to have been sufficient.

June 8th.

It is after dinner; N. has gone back to the chancery. All doors and windows are open, and a cool, thin, dry night breeze, most lovely, is blowing in.

I sent a Mexican Herald about the temblor and the entry of Madero. The streets are not yet quiet, though the vivas for Madero have somewhat died down.

Even that crowd had its physical limits. I can't understand why, when the streets are burst open, great rifts everywhere, especially in the neighborhood of the Embassy, that there not a vase or a photograph was upset, though some heavy bookcases filled with books, in the basement, were thrown to the ground.

I am reading The Relations of Bernal Diaz, companion and chronicler of the Cortés expedition. It is quite the most romantic, realistic bit of literature I ever got hold of, and has, here on the spot, a double-distilled charm. I was interrupted for a day by the arrival of that other conqueror.

June 9th.

Knowing how anxious you would be, I cabled on the 7th; now comes your cable asking for news and an announcement from the cable office here that my cable has been returned. It appears the employee just omitted Zürich; the address, Waldhaus, he explained in the note, he thought would be enough—the effect of the earthquake on his brain, I suppose.

It appears the New York newspapers said Mexico City was nearly destroyed. You must have been on the qui vive for two days. If the earthquake had been up to the newspaper account, you would doubtless not have heard.

People holding property here are not worrying about natural phenomena. The ever-increasing banditry all over the country, murders of people on isolated haciendas, and general dislocation of business and lawlessness are what worry them. A swift sliding down into the old pre-Diaz brigandage is feared. The slopes are so attractive to the dissatisfied and uncontrolled. Facilis est descensus.

Madero has publicly announced that he will encourage American investments, but that he will oppose all trusts and unjust concessions. It sounds almost too reasonable to be true. He made these statements from some place in the north when he promised to liberate all political prisoners and all prisoners of war. This revolution in Mexico has been full of contrasts, to say the least. Has any one ever seen such an anomaly as we witnessed here? The heads of a solid, recognized government turning over their offices to a relatively few armed opponents. I put it all on Anno Domini, not because so-called democratic principles have suddenly won a miraculous victory. The old dictator's hand was weakened by the stronger hand of time—and a "man with a dream at pleasure," etc.