MEXICO
CITY
OLIVE
University of California Berkeley
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Mexico City
An Idler's Note-Book
Mexico City
An Idler's Note-Book
j
BY
OLIVE PERCIVAL
Herbert S. Stone and Company
Eldridge Court, Chicago
MDCCCCI
COPYRIGHT, IQOI, BY
HERBERT S. STONE & CO
A number of these sketches
originally appeared in
THE lyOS ANGELES TIMES.
TO
MR. G. C. HOLLOWAY
IN MEMORY OF A FRIENDSHIP
OF THE WORK-A-DAY WORLD
FOREWORD
Such a lot of people have spent
the day in Mexico and * have then
written books about it.
My pre-determination was to be
original. But now that I am come
back, I too would lay down a little
wreath not of stiff, magnificent facts
and information merely of tender
words of appreciation and an inti-
mate, if forceless, sympathy for some
of those strange phases of Life in
the Land of the Noontide Calm.
OLIVE PERCIVAL.
Los Angeles, California,
January i, 1901.
CONTENTS
PAGE
FIRST IMPRESSIONS i
IN THE STREETS OF THE CITY . . 27
THE ALAMEDA AND CHAPULTEPEC . . 49
To THE FLOATING GARDENS OF TENOCHTI-
TLAN 71
EARLY MASS AND THE FLOWER MARKET 93
AT A MEXICAN COUNTRY-HOUSE . .119
A STREET RAMBLE 153
PERSONAL AND REMINISCENT . . . 175
First Impressions
An Idler's Note-Book
MEXICO CITY
%0
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
I knew very well how the old, old
City of Mexico was going to impress
me.
There would be splendid churches,
with long, glittering religious proces-
sions. There would be acres of cen-
tury-old palaces, with musicianers by
the palm-shaded fountains and loung-
ers in purple and silver. Every front
3
4 Mexico City
yard would be an enchanting tangle
of aloes and cactus and orchids and
chocolate trees.
In every balcony there was sure
to be a pretty maiden, with a fan
and a mantilla and a big comb of
real shell in her blue-black hair.
In the street below, a masculine
affinity.
He, I dreamed, would be tall and
lightning - eyed, with a sugar-loaf
hat, a zarape, a cigarette he might
have his guitar.
And there would be duennas some-
where and monks in gray and bull-
fighters in scarlet and tinsel. There
would be gayly-costumed poor people
not many, and all light-hearted, I
hoped. They would, I presumed, be
drinking goblets of foamy chocolate
An Idler's Note-Book 5
or weaving garlands of flowers with
which to decorate their water-jars.
There might be a few gorgeous brig-
ands, with embroidered jackets and
silver spurs a-jangle. And (who
could tell?) there might be a polit-
ical revolution!
Of course I could not be quite
sure of everything, although my
hopes were reasonably modern; and,
as a latter-day pilgrim, I really
must expect one or two refining dis-
appointments. Yet there was one
thing of which I was entirely confi-
dent. I knew that my first view of
all those dazzling, enrapturing land-
scape arrangements would be under
the bluest-blue sky and in a blind-
ing white sunshine.
Therefore, as we rushed through
6 Mexico City
blue -green fields of pulque - plants,
dotted thickly with pre-historic ruins
and with ancient churches newly
whitewashed and with sky-blue rain-
pools, I preparatively twirled a pair
of black eye-glasses.
But alack - a - day ! travelers en-
counter all the unusual bits of
weather, and we landed in Mexico
City (which for long years I had
loved even as I had adored the
ancient and wonderful city of Bagh-
dad) in company with a rain-storm.
Now this was disheartening, it
was nearly tragic. I had saved
particular and high degrees of en-
thusiasm for that one first moment
and, as a legitimate redress, I de-
sired to postpone my first impres-
sions until another day. But Fate
An Idler's Note-Book 7
was unrelenting. The little clip of
her merciless old shears sounded
unwarrantably spiteful. I wanted to
call aloud.
Nevertheless, as we drove up into
the city (with our cabman crying,
"Sh! sh! sh!" to the horses, as
though they were hens), the beauti-
ful law of compensation was every-
where in evidence. The crooked old
streets were veritable pictures.
Not dazzlingly Oriental, to be
sure, as they ought to have been,
but of the French Impressionist
School, all muddy grays and browns,
with streaks of purple shadow and
splashes of dull pink and yellow.
Some of the by-ways, where drain-
age was an impossibility, were very
good bits of Venice without the
8 Mexico City
gondolas; in the courts of many of
the houses were little lagoons; and
any one of the palatial old convent
buildings, facing or backing upon
those narrow and gloomy streets,
would have been quite good enough
for a doge or a Desdemona.
The narrow sidewalks were cov-
ered with a fine, even pudding of
bad -smelling mud; the street-car
mules and drivers were plastered
with it and persistently avoided the
sympathetic eye. The mules seemed
particularly self-conscious.
But all at once there was no rain
not one drop a glorious Mexican
sun was shining and the little lakes
in the inner courts of the houses
were mirrors with charming reflec-
tions. The sun lit up the mossy
An Idler's Note-Book 9
V
tiles of the splendid old church
domes; it made beautiful shadows
in the deep doorways and under the
balconies of the yellow and pink
stucco houses; it brought out the
fragrance of the strange flowers in
the courts, brilliant glimpses of
which were permitted through medie-
val entrances, as the carriage poked
along. Everything was so delight-
fully clean and fresh and beautiful
everything except the Mexic smell.
The theatric streets were crowded
with people, but oh ! such astonish-
ingly poor creatures and sorrow-
ful eyed! They were unspeakably
depressing. And where could they
all be going?
It was not a feast-day, it was too
early for a bull -fight; I was certain
io Mexico City
there had been a fire or a parade
possibly a big free -silver rally. But
in due time it was discovered that
the congested condition of those
streets was normal that it took
Sunday markets and certain of the
feast-days to bring out the real
crowds of Mexico!
On the muddied sidewalk, with
their bare feet in the gutter, here
an there sat a family of well-to-do
peons clothed all in white and eat-
ing a combination breakfast and
supper of tortillas with chili-sauce
from a wonderful pottery dish. To
a newly-arrived gringo, that pottery
dish and the light in the eyes of
the brown little children were in-
deed fascinating.
Driving slowly along and staring
An Idler's Note-Book n
out in a dazed way bordering on
the state of enchantment, I was
restored to acute consciousness by
the sight of a poor little peon stag-
gering along the slippery cobbles
with a perfectly immense American
trunk on his back.
The wretched little son of Issa-
char, it was ascertained, carried
dreadful trunks like that from the
depot of the Mexican Central to
the hotel, a distance of about one
mile and a half, and up two flights,
for exactly twenty-five cents, Mex.
Oh! it was horribly unjust, it was
outrageous and I was at once and
for the first time intensely inter-
ested in socialism, labor-unions, an-
archy! For if that little beast of
burden with an immortal soul should
12 Mexico City
slip and fall, he would be crushed,
horribly crushed. And all for an
amount not exceeding twelve pieces
of copper.
I sat aghast such a very little
peon and such a very big trunk! I
trembled, and was chill with anxiety.
I yearned for relative human justice.
I Oh! may the saints of his parish
forgive me! That trunk ; was my
very own.
At last, the carriage stopped in
front of the hotel.
It was a new one on May the
Fifth Street, dating only from the
time of the Emperor Maximilian
and named for a great and brave
man, Comonfort. He dealt the death-
blow to the church as a governing
power in the State. (That sounds
An Idler ' s Note-Book 1 3
so much more feasible than is war-
rantable. It becomes irksome, I am
sure, even to a great man like Com-
onfort, to live in the midst of as-
sassins known and unknown.) Of
course it was to be regretted that
this hotel was not a century or
two old, like most of the others
and that it had not been a palace
or a convent of the inquisition. But
then, it was near the great cathe-
dral and the famous old plaza; it
was not far from the alameda, and
every immediate prospect therefrom
was lavish in the matter of mossy
church-domes and towers. Ah! on
the other side of that portal with
the big iron knocker in that bal-
conied yet somber -looking building,
would I find my first home in
H Mexico City
Mexico! Was I to be poisoned in
my chocolatl? _Or stabbed under the
left shoulder - blade some moonless
evening, as I walked along the cor-
ridor?
There wasn't any riot of tropical
plants in the patio it was bare and
clean. That was a distinct disap-
pointment. But, it was explained,
f
an esteemed patron of the establish-
ment (An American, to be sure)
had, after an argument extending
over a number of years, induced
the management to dispense with
the garden of plants in the court
and its mosquitoes. This explana-
tion should have pacified me; I
should have generously refused to
cultivate the deep regret that I did
not precede that particular reform
An Idler's Note-Book 15
and the general introduction of
electric lights and telegrams and
bicycles. And especially since I got
there ahead of telephones and auto-
mobiles !
But, I penitently confess, I always
regretted that patio. It was so tidy
and unrom antic.
The furniture was old and Frenchy
some of it may once have be-
longed to Carlotta herself, but no
one seemed certain about that. And
then there were actually two old
brass candlesticks on the writing-
desk. I at once realized that every-
thing was to be perfectly ideal.
No gas, no lamps, no electric -but-
tons just a long, green bell-cord
with a tassel, such as there used
to be in all the dear old English
16 Mexico City
novels. Think of the romantic thrill
to be experienced, when I should
find it necessary to "ring for can-
dles" just as the terribly haughty
Lady Clarinda did, or the rector's
gentle daughter!
My admiration was extreme for
those little old candlesticks and
their short, fat tapers. It was a
pleasure of many sentiments to
write letters by their soft and yel-
low light to persons up in the
prosaic States. Such are rare mo-
ments; you lose perfectly your iden-
tity you are an enthusiastic com-
posite of ever so many Revolutionary
granddames and early- English and
ante-bellum heroines.
But, oh! the moral battle I did
fight during my few weeks' associa-
An Idler's Note-Book 17
tion with those old candlesticks! I
can lift up my head, I can even
speak of them calmly now for I
really didn't steal them. They are
down there yet, presuming that the
next American tourist did not carry
them off as souvenirs.
Never, until I knew the old ad-
ministrador, did I suspect the capac-
ity for even a latent esteem for a
hotel-clerk; nor had I dreamed that
the American-made linen duster was
especially designed by an aesthetic
fate to be worn constantly by a
big, Romanesque Mexican. His slow,
sad smile was a fascination Mr.
Henry Miller himself could not have
improved on that. Nor on his beau-
tiful, baritone and almost rever-
ential, "Buenos dias, senorita."
1 8 Mexico City
The administrador y on the occa-
sion when I stepped fearfully toward
the key-board in the office, did not
think to embarass me with any of
the long and occult remarks not
included in my handbook of the
Spanish language. There was merely
the regulation greeting of the coun-
try, with innumerable stately bows
and lordly edicts to the vassals in
waiting to clear the way to follow
after with my umbrella, my camera
and the few armfuls of old Mexican
junk, whose possession made my
heart sing for joy, but at which
they, poor things, looked almost with
scorn.
And then there was such an inter-
esting chambermaid. His name was
Mariano, and he was a beautiful
An Idler's Note-Book 19
character; but he was so extremely
plain in the matter of features that
it saddened one to gaze upon him,
if a refuter of some of Mr. Dar-
win's theories.
My one great ambition in Mexico
was not to get an audience with
Diaz, the uncrowned emperor, but
to have the memory of Mariano's
face' perpetuated in a door-knocker
to bring back to the States. I never
expect to see a Japanese grotesque
with a visage half so fascinating in
its ugliness. To be sure, I spoke
the language (learned it going down
on the train), and so I was the one
regularly chosen to find fault and
to order the breakfast, which was
brought in from a restaurant by
the little mozo. He would, in re-
2O Mexico City
sponse to a jerk on that romantic
bell-cord, rush in with a humble,
mournful, "Buenop dias, senorita," and
stand awkwardly with his little toil-
worn hands at position rest. It
was noticed that he always rushed
out politely screening a wide smile
that exploded into unmistakable gig-
gles a trifle uncomplimentary to my
Spanish, which may have resembled
but remotely the pure Castilian.
Very likely, I should have hurled
one of the candlesticks at Mariano's
head, but Americans are stupid
about servants.
May the most generous of the
saints reward the patient little drudge
may Mariano live many years when
his enemies are dead!
He broke hand-mirrors, he giggled
An Idler's Note-Book 21
(but quite involuntarily) at my col-
lection of old key-plates and door-
keys; but he never stole a thing,
not even the reddest of neckties.
The azotea, or flat roof, of the
hotel, reached by the darkest and
shakiest corkscrew stairwa^ (I
searched in vain for a trap-door and
a secret panel), was the place to
spend a moonlight evening.
Just the place to wrap up in a
Spanish cloak, exactly nine yards
wide, and to listen to the low thrum
of a guitar and the singing of gay
old ballads of love and war. (And
one there was who deemed it fit and
proper that an American in the
present year of grace should sug-
gest occasional refrains of "Ha! ha!
ha! Yankee Doodle Dandy !")
22 Mexico City
And then, as you thought how
many old Spanish lords and ladies
were dead and turned to clay all
around you, how agreeably sad and
effective in the quiet night were
44 The Spanish Cavalier " and "La
Paloma" and "In Old Madrid."
But, if your American pride was
particularly rampant and you chose
to be less sentimental and to take
a mental leap back to only 1846-47,
you sang the high-keyed songs your
grandmother sang, when your grand-
father came marching home from
Cerro Gordo. And, possibly, another
the strangely fashionable ditty of
to-day whose title has been trans-
lated into the polite phrasing of
the country, as "It Will Be Very
Warm in the City This Evening."
An Idler's Note-Book 23
Then, too, leaning over the para-
pet, the azotea is just the place for
dreaming of those old, old days
when Cortes marched along the
causeways, the Aztecs tossing down
flowers from just such a roof.
That phase of the dream is less
disquieting than the next when,
down upon the heads of those amaz-
ing adventurers, the same Aztecs
hurled stones and blazing arrows.
Oh! thrilling and very romantic is
the history of the ancient city of
Tenochtitlan ! What tiresome, unfor-
givable iconoclasts are they who
would destroy our faith in the story
of the conquest according to Pres-
cott.
Where those twin towers of the
old Cathedral rise in the moonlight
24 Mexico City
once stood the great pyramid and
temple to Mexitl, the war-god of
the Aztecs, daily bespattered with
human blood. I am near enough
to have heard the wild chant of
the red-handed priests and the shriek
of the victim; as his quivering heart
was skillfully torn from his breast,
an offering to a hideous stone image.
I am almost near enough to have
heard Cortes haranguing his discon-
tented men, or poor Montezuma ad-
dressing his nobles from the parapet
of his palace-prison. Ah! on this
little azotea, one could dream a
whole star-lit night away and never
slumber.
What one does hear is the clatter
of the cabs over the cobbles below
and the occasional shout of some
An Idler's Note-Book 25
high-hatted Jehu, muffled in his
zarape. Then, from near-by bar-
racks, come "Taps" and "Lights
Out."
In the Streets of the City
IN THE STREETS OF THE
CITY
An expression of thanks is really
due Mr. Hernando Cortes for hav-
ing established in Mexico a certain
valuable precedent.
Whenever it was insinuated that
he could not do such and such a
thing, or whenever it was pre-
sumptuously stated that he must not
go to a certain place, that praise-
worthy and industrious gentleman
straightway did that thing and made
a bee-line for that point.
So, when an American resident of
Mexico City told me in an ominous
sort of way that I must not go on
29
3O Mexico City
the street without a chaperone or a
gentleman escort and when he an-
nounced that I could not go alone
to The Thieves' Market district, I
in my heart muttered several per-
verse things. Also I remembered
my Prescott and finally sallied forth
alone.
What girl of the nineteenth cen-
tury, with the dignity of America
in her keeping, is going to conform
to an old unwritten law of some
other country and one never framed
for her kind? And, too, when her
time is limited? Foolhardiness is
not exactly commendable, even in a
Yankee; but Mexico is the best
policed city on the continent, and I
had no pockets for years and years
past, I had had no pockets. What
A Street Scene
An Idler's Note-Book 31
was there to fear? It is only the
disdainful foreigner with nose aloft
who finds the disagreeables.
Sometimes chaperones insist upon
frittering away immensely valuable
time in easy chairs in the hotel
parlor. But had I journeyed to
Mexico for the one excitement of
counting and recounting dreary fig-
ures in the wall -hanging? Was my
acquaintance with one of the en-
chanting cities of the world to be
limited to a balcony view and an
occasional ' * personally conducted' '
promenade?
Alas! I had discovered disadvan-
tages in masculine escorts. Not all
of them are satisfactorily civil when
you are pleased to stop short and
stare at things not in the guide-
32 Mexico City
book, the stupid guide-book; or when
you desire to scrape acquaintance
with some dirty little beggar or an
interesting old dulce-woman.
Such painful revelations in a strange
land finally induced me to defend
and to sympathize with myself.
Yet, with all the bravery of my
argument and my convictions, I
usually left the hotel on my soli-
tary tramps quite unceremoniously.
But my returnings therefrom were
openly triumphant unkidnapped, un-
pickpocketed and laden with price-
less memorabilia in the way of old
handwrought iron and blue crockery
and brass candlesticks and rosaries
with big, pendant medals.
That radiant hour was not the
proper one to confess that many
An Idler's Note-Book 33
times I got lost in those streets
that changed their names every
block and that the policemen's direc-
tions were in Spanish far too rapid
to be of assistance to one of my
understanding and pride.
There would have been no justice
in complaining that I was much
stared at by the inhabitants, for I
stared so much longer at them; and
then, too, they were always good
enough to explain to each other
that I, a strange being, was an
American, and that explains much
in Mexico. I was discreet, being in
the minority I admired openly, but
I veiled any astonishment at things
unconventional from my little point
of view. Once, once only, in my
solitary ramblings, I found just
34 Mexico City
cause for alarm, and that was when,
in a wretched street and on the
narrowest of pavements, I unexpect-
edly met a beggar. He was evil-
looking and drunk with pulque.
But lo! he immediately flattened
himself against the building, with
a polite, "Pass on, young lady,"
and did not push me into the
horrid mud-puddle of the street as
I had so greatly feared.
No one was ever rude, and many
were friendly. I never repented my
imitation of the Cortes method of
seeing the country.
And so it came to pass that I
lodged under a roof and generally
ate expensive food but I forgot the
pattern of the wall-hanging and I
lived in the streets of the city.
An Idler's Note-Book 35
Not so very far away from the
glittering shops of San Francisco
Street, and very near the famous
Alameda and Paseo de la Reforma,
you will find the city's poor. Not
all of them, but enough and in con-
ditions so deplorable that a person
of keen sympathies speculates as to
the possibility of ever smiling again
in this life while the memory of
that poverty shall endure.
It is the hideous variety that
knows no hope.
But it is a pleasure to walk with-
out haste and to study the build-
ings as, in the day when they were
new, men builded so well. I stand
and look long and rapturously.
They are principally old convents,
gloomy and damp, converted into
36 Mexico City
tiny shops and over-crowded tene-
ments; the walls soft grays and yel-
lows, with deep windows irregularly
placed and of varied forms. Then
there are always little surprises, a
niche high up near the cornice with
an old weather-worn statue, or a
unique door-knocker or balcony-rail,
or a bit of splendid ornament over a
window sometimes two richly-carved
doors, fit for an Old- World palace.
Yes, one block in perspective of
any of those narrow, old streets
would drive an artist paint mad.
The poor Slave of the Camera
merely wails and loathes himself
and his art.
All this is the effective back-
ground for certain picturesque types
of humanity. Humanity in rags is
An Idler's Note-Book 37
so extremely picturesque. It is fre-
quently hungry and sullen, too.
Very likely, one would not pity the
poor of Mexico City so much, were
they inclined to be a trifle social-
istic; but in their eyes you see only
the unresented suffering of centuries,
a hopelessness not to be forgotten.
When you walk delightedly in
some magnificent garden, such as a
millionaire Spaniard knew how to
beautify and maintain; when you are
supping at some grand old villa at
Tacubaya; when you are marveling
at the splendor of the interior deco-
rations of a dozen near-by churches;
then unpleasing flashes of recol-
lection will obtrude themselves, and
you are sure to have an uncomfort-
able moment or two, if you trouble
38 Mexico City
to contrast the magnificence and the
misery of Mexico City.
There on the pavement sits a vil-
lage woman rolling a cigarette. Nine
brass rings with settings of glass
decorate just four of her slim, brown
fingers.
But was it so very, very long ago
that, to many of us, all that was
magnificent and desirable in the
way of jewels was represented by a
prize-box ring, with its bit of ruby
or sapphire glass on top? The years
have improved our taste in Art, but
they have taken away the superb
content of childhood. So there is
no depreciation in our smile for the
Aztec woman with the charming
rings and the little girl's heart.
An Idler's Note-Book 39
Her half-naked son, under an tim-
brella-like hat, stands behind her
and timidly clutches her gown. They
have lugged a stock of pottery to
market, four water- jugs and a small
basket of glazed green and brown
mugs. For some of their things they
may get twelve cents maybe only
five. Prices in Mexican markets are
quite as uncertain as the favor of a
politician.
One young man, of perhaps eleven,
thinks it ridiculous to photograph
old worm-eaten doors and balconies.
He gives a little whoop to attract
my attention, takes off his hat with
a "See me, young lady," and charit-
ably allows me to get his likeness.
He is of the generation that will
40 Mexico City
favor gringoes and their cameras
and their railroads.
High - hatted country gentlemen,
barefooted, with bell-shaped trousers
fitting like a mousquetaire .glove,
and with gorgeous zarapes over their
shoulders, file past. A quiet, serious
procession until they get into one of
those little shops where, back of
the counter, you see such a fasci-
nating array of blue and white
bowls, and where the sour smell is
superlative. That's a pulqueria, a
Mexican saloon.
The fat old senora sitting in that
pink doorway is a dulce-seller, her
last patron was that soft-eyed, very
brown girl in a chemise and ragged
An Idler's Note-Book 41
petticoat only. Every one eats dukes
(sweets) in Mexico, so I recklessly
squander three cents with the lady.
It is my nineteenth experiment in
the Mexican duke line, few of which
I regret none of which I confess
to my fastidious friend of the Amer-
ican Colony. The native crystallizes
nearly everything edible. Crystal-
lized squash and sweet potato are
offered to you in long, clear bars
resembling in appearance a high
grade of glycerine soap. Then there
are sweets made of milk and of
pecan nuts and of cocoanut and of
tuna-juice and of spices of every-
thing nice except chocolate which
is a disappointment, after reading
such a lot of books about the Aztecs
and their choclatl,
42 Mexico City
I desire to file a protest some-
where when, in the most unexpected
old corner I discover a very pictur-
esque native selling American chew-
ing-gum and nile-green gum-drops.
How immeasurably sad are such in-
novations! Why doesn't he sell pines
or alligator pears? Or opals and
corals? Why does he grin and pause,
expectant, for a Yankee's look of
approval?
Women with babies tied on their
backs with their rebozos stop and
gossip vivaciously.
The babies are thin and sad-eyed
little things, pitiably silent. Nega-
tively, you learn to be glad that
Aztec families are small, that the
death-rate in Mexico City is second
to Constantinople only.
An Idler's Note-Book 43
It is delightful to see two grown-
up men meet and embrace after the
fashion of the country. They rush
melodramatically into each other's
arms, each throws his right arm
around the other and delightedly
pats him on the left shoulder-blade,
while he kisses him enthusiastically
on both cheeks. It is worth being
nearly run down by a cab, witness-
ing this custom de la pais; it is really
difficult to refrain from applause.
The lottery-ticket venders, old and
young, male and female, are ubiqui-
tous and persistent. Lotteries in
Mexico are government institutions,
and eminently respectable. But I
virtuously save my coppers for ex-
44 Mexico City
periments in ices and dulces and
limonadas.
How can I believe in lotteries
and raffles, when I always draw
blanks?
Then there are men with flat
baskets of fruit on their heads, push-
ing through the crowds and shriek-
ing as though in an agony, their
tenor voices thick with tears. What
a relief to learn they are only cry-
ing, " Grapes! grapes!"
That slim, brown woman in white
cotton chemise, neutral petticoat and
blue rebozo closely drawn, looks as
though her proper background would
be a sphinx and a pyramid, with a
camel and a palm-tree. She is very
An Idler's Note-Book 45
Egyptianesque. But, instead of a
water-jar on her head, she has a
pulque-jug in her hand, and her
destination is the pulqueria under
the sign of The Pearly Portal.
There in the gutter stands a
young man of about fifteen, eating
a taco (which is a fried turn -over,
filled with chopped, highly-seasoned
meats I once purchashed one in a
briefly seductive cook-shop) and chat-
ting with a pretty little girl, of
perhaps twelve, with a baby on her
hip. The little girl is his wife, ac-
cording to another ancient unwrit-
ten law of Mexico, and that baby
is his son and heir. It makes my
conscience heavy to stop within range
of their affectionate chatter and to
46 Mexico City
photograph her with that pretty
love-light in her young eyes. How
happy they are yet are they both
bare -footed and but moderately clean;
and his dinner of one taco she car-
ries to him in the street! Is happi-
ness accidental?
It is not edifying to stop and
gape at the poverty of these people
in the tenements huddled together
in one small, dark room damp and
unventilated, bare of all furnishings
except a tortilla-board, a charcoal-
dish and some pottery jugs and
bowls. How can they keep warm,
or well, or clean or good? Youths,
maidens, men, women, old people,
babies, diseased and otherwise.
Privacy in the home and morality
An Idler's Note-Book 47
as revealed to us are, perforce,
unknown. They do not theorize,
their lives know so many tragedies
in the struggle for primitive crea-
ture-comforts. Ah! one feels con-
strained to write them all down in
a big "book of pity and of death."
Such, alas! is the present state of
many of the children of the mighty
Montezuma's warriors! A brave,
patient, capable people in their
own land and hopeless!
The Alameda and Chapultepec
THE ALAMEDA AND CHAPUL-
TEPEC
I had always listened with un-
certain patience and no enthusiasm
to the extravagant praises of other
people regarding The Alameda of
Mexico City.
Undoubtedly, in its way, The
Alameda was a charming little
park, but we had parks at home in
the United States, and I had seen
most of the big ones. I knew it
was unsafe to walk even at high
noon through The Alameda, for fear
of robbers and kidnappers, who
would hold you for ransom send-
ing slices of your ears to insure
52 Mexico City
expedition on the part of your
friends. But that was twenty-five
years ago there were no bandits
there now. Why should I rhapsodize?
That was before I had explored
The Alameda and had walked
through that delightsome place from
corner to corner. Afterward, when-
ever it looked like rain and my
friends became concerned about me,
they went direct to The Alameda.
The guide-book will tell you that
it is a park of about forty acres, and
that the grandees of Mexico walk
and drive there when the band
plays. All of which is as dry as
dust to one who confesses to the
spell of Mexic enchantment that
binds even an unwilling American,
the moment the musicianers begin
An Idler's Note-Book 53
to pipe under that turquoise sky and
in the tender gloom of the mighty
trees that arch high, high above
you in The Alameda.
I suppose there were wonderfully
rare plants in the tropical tangle
along those broad, curving walks;
I suppose all those fountains cost
mines of money; I suppose some
of those people were the multi-mil-
lionaires of Mexico.
But of course I did not notice
such things hardly flower-boys and
dulce-women until the music stopped.
Mexican music in Mexico is so
seductive, so full of subtle, minor
harmonies; you feel impelled to
weep your life away to the strains
of it.
Wagner tires sublimity always
54 Mexico City
brings weariness, and the flawless
beauty of your favorite sonatas and
nocturnes sometimes cloys. It really
is, as Lamartine has said, pathos
alone that is infallible in art.
But of course you don't cry fine
poetic frenzies are not so expressed
nowadays; it would look merely like
hysteria. So, under the awning of
the principal promenade, you sit up
very straight indeed (as an American
girl should, in a country where most
of the women are round-shouldered) ;
and, with that enravishing music in
your ears, you stare disappointedly
at the fashionable world of Mexico
in Paris and Vienna hats and gowns.
The foreign ministers and the Amer-
ican Colony also kindly pass in re-
view before you.
An Idler's Note-Book 55
One of your companions knows
them all and gives you the reasons
accepted by an interested public for
the permanent residence in Mexico
of some of the Colony.
But very soon, all this procession
with its setting of tropic plants and
trees, with the green gloom thereof
for a lime-light and the Mexican
band for an orchestra resolves itself
into just one of those big spectac-
ular dramas: a troop of clever
mummers, a little dash of society
business, expensively staged, weari-
some and a sorrowful lot of trage-
dians yearning to play light comedy.
You do not throw your ten-cent
bouquet of exquisite roses and for-
get-me-nots into the midst of them,
for the music ceases suddenly, and
56 Mexico City
you are speedily restored to an
every-day frame of mind.
Then you begin to notice things
in a rational way.
The poor people, too, were in
evidence there in The Alameda
they are always with you in Mexico.
They stood in silent groups, far
from the parade of fashion, and
listened solemnly to the music.
The men, in trousers and blouses
of white cotton, with shabby, high-
crowned hats and with their small
feet in pitiable excuses for sandals,
were the impressively calm and
dignified figures of all that crowd.
But, alack -a-day! the zarapes over
their shoulders were not the richly-
colored, hand-woven little blankets I
had hoped to get by the dozen.
An Idler's Note-Book 57
They were generally American fac-
tory productions, quite too lively in
coloring for even a sleigh-robe; as
table or couch covers, they were
simply impossible one could never
live in the same house with such
color combinations.
Oh! if all the aniline dyes in the
world were only at the bottom of
the polar sea!
The prettiest drive in Mexico City
is out to Chapultepec Hill. The
road leading thereto, bordered with
trees and opening at the end of
The Alameda, was built by the
order of Carlotta; once it was called
The Mad Woman's as well as The
Empress' Drive. And that wasn't
so very long ago, yet to-day it is
58 Mexico City
known only as the Paseo de la
Reforma, one of the beautiful drives
of the world.
At the beginning of the Paseo is
a big old bronze statue of Charles
IV, once said to be one of the
two finest equestrian statues; so I
tried to like it. But the tail of the
horse is too long and it mars the
effect from three sides -and then
the figure itself flatters Charles (I
never did like him) so unreason-
ably. That portrait of his in the
National Museum may have mo-
mentarily disturbed the self-com-
placency of his majesty. Whoever
he was, the painter was a daring
realist.
At the end of the Paseo is the
solitary hill the royal hill of Cha-
An Idler's Note-Book 59
pultepec, with a castle and a palace
for a crown. Montezuma's most
splendid residence was there at
least we chose to believe that it
was and there before him had lived
his magnificent ancestors, maybe.
In that day, the waters of Lake
Tezcuco plashed at the base of the
hill, but the lake has rippled away
forever, and to-day soldiers of the
Mexican republic stand there on
guard.
The road winds and winds up
the hill, between ancient and mighty
trees, with a delightsome under-
growth of ferns and vines and
many sorts of unfamiliar greenery.
It was easy to remember Montezuma
and Maximilian in the gloom of
those cypresses, bearded with Span-
60 Mexico City
ish moss, and to ponder on the
events of the past five or six hun-
dred years, witnessed by those rocks
and by those gnarled old trees.
But it wasn't cheerful. It made
me much gayer, comparatively, to
look straight up that steep, steep
hillside and to think how brave
Scott's men were to even attempt
to climb it that morning in Septem-
ber, '47. But of course they got to
the top, a little historical fact that
I recall with proper satisfaction on
several occasions while in Mexico.
The President of the Mexican re-
public (one of the mighty men of
the last century-end) was then at
the Palace of Chapultepec. This was
a very great inconvenience to us,
but no one else seemed to mind,
An Idler's Note-Book 61
and so we had to be magnanimous
and make a pretence of being con-
tent with seeing the old castle, now
a military college.
I had seen the Maximilian silver
in the museum and all the other
relics I had hoped to see the very
rooms of the palace where poor
Carlotta had lived that famous chap-
ter of her sadly unique life. But I
didn't.
Our permit to see Chapultepec, a
tiny card from the National Palace
and bedight with yards and yards
of military red tape, was in the
course of time delivered into the
hands of a young and good-looking
lieutenant of artillery who could,
we joyously discovered, speak intel-
ligible English to four ladies at once.
62 Mexico City
He showed us through scientific-
smelling class-rooms and through
mess-rooms and dormitories and
armories and gymnasia.
It was all very progressive and
very dull.
By the time we reached the
library, it was lined to the frieze
with books bound in russia of the
bravest scarlet, we were glad to
rest. It is just possible that regu-
lar sight-seeing is as fatiguing as
shopping or scrubbing or golf.
So, quite unmindful of the Jehu
and his hire on the other side of
the big gates, we were listlessly
looking at ambitious drawings by
Mexican cadets and military books
with colored pictures in them when,
with no premonition whatever, we
An Idler's Note-Book 63
made the important discovery that
our guide and lieutenant, a Spanish-
Mexican, could joke in English. In
idiomatic English! To be sure, we
had to pay strict attention and we
had to laugh encouragingly during
all the pauses; but, ethnologically,
it was extremely interesting.
After a time our prodigy got down
the list to that tiresome joke about
the standing army of the United
States of America. Fancy having
to listen to that alleged joke under
the roof of Chapultepec Castle and
in the year 1899! And to the state-
ment that Americans were just a
lot of prize-fighters and football-
players !
It was a dreadful shock to one
just from the States and posted
64 Mexico City
on war-news up to within a fort-
night.
But then it had been catalogued
as a joke and was an old favorite
in high circles in Europe; there-
fore I promptly laughed faintly.
In Mexico it isn't lady-like to con-
tradict so I merely requested the
Lieutenant to admit that we put
up a pretty good game; when I felt
stronger I ventured to inquire if
there had been a really good bull-
fight in town lately. And then we
all laughed and the tension lessened.
Then we looked at more picture-
books, and we made fun of the
French and of the Germans, and we
became very good international
friends indeed. Out in the court-
yard, at the foot of a statue I per-
An Idler's Note-Book 65
sisted in believing was a little
compliment to George Washington,
the lieutenant favored us with an
example of the American volunteer
at drill.
It wasn't so particularly funny
but we laughed politely; for didn't
we know that once upon a time
General Winfield Scott took a few
volunteers quite as awkward on a
tour through Mexico? And they
really did nicely.
Had the lieutenant ever heard
about that? Or about a ship called
"The Maine"? And a Yankee by
the name of "Dewey"?
The panorama of the great Val-
ley of Mexico, as seen from Cha-
pultepec Hill, is said to be the fin-
est in the world. It may be; but,
66 Mexico City
minus its associative charm, I could
name two landscapes in Southern
California as worthy rivals. We
stood there near the parapet and
looked away away and thought of
many things, including the advis-
ability of our lingering until twi-
light in some shady by-path that
we might meet the ghost of Marina.
I didn't think much about Slonte-
zuma or Maximilian; I dreamed
dreams about Carlotta and her jewels
and her balls and her fetes. How
magnificent her dinner-table must
have looked, decked in all that silver
now in the museum. Poor Car-
lotta! The wife of a barefooted
peon was happier; she was just a
queen, with wealth and power and
a crown of sorrow.
An Idler's Note-Book 67
And then I wondered what Juarez
gave Seward for breakfast that time
when he was the guest of the new
Mexican republic. I hope his cho-
colate was not as thick as mud with
sugar and cinnamon.
At the big gates of the castle,
at the beginning of a charming
flower-garden blue with myosotis,
we said our farewells to the lieu-
tenant. He had spoken our own
language; he had, in an unexpected
fashion, broken the monotony of
sight-seeing. We were particularly
and forever obliged to him. Then
as we began to back out at the
gates, still bowing and exchanging
compliments and regrets, he gave
unto each of us as a remembrancer
68 Mexico City
a lovely brass button of the artil-
lery. Who would have dreamed of
finding such a thoughtful and strictly
up-to-date soldier in old Chapulte-
pec Castle, Mexico?
It is said (and it is going to take
long years to live down the repu-
tation) that American tourists take
flower-gardens, or paving-stones, or
wall-decorations anything not chained
as souvenirs. Perhaps that is why
the lieutenant and his subaltern,
with lifted caps, stood at the gates
and watched us until a turn in the
road hid the carriage.
He made an effective picture, with
that castle and palace and so much
history behind him.
How did he ever dare to be light-
hearted?
An Idler's Note-Book 69
Days of peace, long life to our
acquaintance of a little summer hour!
And long live the Mexican Army!
To the Floating Gardens of
Tenochtitlan
TO THE FLOATING GARDENS
OF TENOCHTITLAN
Of course they don't float now-
aday it was very disappointing. Is
there one thing left for the modern
pilgrim to discover, aside from the
fact that he arrived on this spin-
ning planet quite too late to see
anything worth while?
Everywhere the guide and the
guide-book and the oldest inhabitant
conspire against your enthusiasm,
gloomily assuring you that this and
that are hardly worth looking at
now; they are not what they once
were. No, indeed! You come too
late!
73
74 Mexico City
It is discouraging, but it is not
worth wrangling about.
The better way is to assume the
look apologetic, and, while the little
fox of vexation gnaws and gnaws,
to show everybody how amiable and
how appreciative of trifles such an
unreasonably tardy traveler can be.
Try the other plan be supercilious
or become a party to their depre-
ciation, disparaging all you see and
bragging about what you have seen
elsewhere, and you will promptly
meet with disaster.
He is unworthy the cockled hat,
the pilgrim shoon, who cannot smile
and look enthusiastic in all lan-
guages ; he should travel only through
the medium of books, by his own
little fireside.
An Idler's Note-Book 75
So we sweetly gave ear to the
regulation lament and apology for
the weather, the time of year and
the era itself, and, discovering that
in this instance we were only a few
hundred years and exactly seven
months too late, we resignedly agreed
to squander an afternoon in seeing
the Floating Gardens that had ceased
to float, and sundry other things,
presumably not in the least worth
while.
Our boatman is, oh! such a sad-
eyed, suddenly-smiling boy of about
thirteen; our boat sufficiently prim-
itive to delight the most unreason-
able of antiquarians. Now I can
tell a bark from a brig, and a brig
from a brigantine (that is, if it is
at the end of the summer and the
76 Mexico City
coach has been patient), yet I can-
not demonstrate the difference be-
tween a gondola and this Aztec
canoe; neither can I make plain the
resemblance, yet there is a resem-
blance.
And the very same thing in boats,
be it known, was in vogue long be-
fore the Aztec oracles mentioned
the Conquerors.
It is very beautiful to look along
this narrow ribbon of water, bro-
caded with the wavy reflection of
the tall, slim trees along the banks.
But there are moments of anxiety.
You have no craving for death in
foreign parts and in a canal yet
that very fate seems inevitable, the
stream is so crowded with market-
An Idler's Note-Book 77
boats and pleasure-boats and house-
boats all gliding silently and very
swiftly down with the current to
the city. The boatmen stand in
front, unconcerned, immovable; it is
not until the last instant that our
little man gives a skillful lateral
push with his pole and annihilation
is averted.
It isn't lovely, but it is necessary
to flatten one's self on the bottom
of the boat when we come to these
low, stone bridges, the like of which
I haven't seen for years and then
inside an old drawing-book. The
boy propels us under by pushing
scientifically on the mossy stones of
the arch with the soles of his bare
feet, as he lies on the flat of his
back in the bottom of the boat.
78 Mexico City
Everything under the Mexican
sun pertaining to the Viga Canal
is distractingly picturesque. I think
of all the clever paintings I have
seen of Venice and Holland and
China and wonder why, as an in-
spiration, the Viga is not equal to
any of them.
Here comes a pleasure-boat of
young men and maidens, gay with
the Mexican colors, for only two
days have passed since the birthday
of President Diaz. They stop their
song to laugh at the prospect of
crashing into our humble, undeco-
rated little craft and I hastily re-
view the rules for resuscitation after
drowning. On they come, nearer,
nearer and more swiftly; but the
boatmen of the Viga are really to
SUNLIGHT AND SHADOW
An Idler's Note-Book 79
be relied upon at the last fraction
of the last minute. So another col-
lision is averted.
Oh! if I wink just once some
detail of the constantly changing
picture is sure to be lost. If I
look at that long, narrow vegetable-
boat it must be a hundred feet
long piled with such dreadfully
commonplace but delightfully colored
things as cabbages and radishes and
pumpkin-blossoms and beets and let-
tuce, I am sure to miss the picture
of that snowy-robed woman walking
along the bank with a water-jug on
her head; or of those two bare-
footed, laughing young lovers, saunter-
ing along on the other bank, hand
in hand, and stopping occasionally for
him to kiss her smooth, brown cheeks.
8o Mexico City ,
Very probably, the great Cortes
looked upon all these things when,
as Montezuma's unwelcome and un-
snubbable guest, he rode along this
causeway, noting with astonishment
the animation of the Viga. It was
an old, old waterway even then.
Possibly the great canal of China
is no older.
We are following in the wake of
some empty flower-boats returning
from the city markets. The bare-
footed, high-hatted men are pushing
the big, clumsy things upstream,
shouting occasionally to acquaint-
ances taking a holiday along the
banks. It's beautiful to see these
peons evince an individuality, and
somehow it's surprising.
A little hamlet of pink and white
An Idler's Note-Book 81
stucco houses, charmingly mirrored
in the sluggish gray water, then
our boat glides along through a
tangle of water- weeds and past a
fringe of willows, right into a swarm
of little bathers.
Their clothes must be on the bank
somewhere, but, unmindful, they
stand in the shallow water and
frankly stare at us just as the
cherubs in the art gallery did.
Down in Mexico one so frequently
chances upon animate bronzes bereft
of drapery and pedestal and cata-
logue number. I recall a certain
admirable piece, not an antique, that
was discovered one afternoon in a
dim street of an out-of-the-way vil-
lage. I did not overtake him, but
in that little back was shown in-
82 Mexico City
comparable grace of movement. And,
too, such beauty of form and model-
ing! Ah, yes! it was quite plain
from that unknown piece of Mexican
bronze that even Donatello himself
could be surpassed.
We stop at some tiny villages to
see the old churches and a sad,
lichen-spotted chapel. What inde-
fatigable church-builders those early
Spaniards were! Did it make them
easier of conscience? They of this
generation have been good, they
have not removed the ancient land-
marks which their forefathers did
set, but alas! many of them they
have defaced with whitewash, an
accursed sky-blue whitewash! It is
dreadful but pitiable.
At Santa Anita we take a canoe
An Idler's Note-Book 83
for the Floating Gardens. Gondolas
and Spanish galleons and Chinese
junks and birch-bark canoes are all
perfectly delightful to dream about,
but one should know intimately the
canoe of these chinampas. Such a
dear little boat, such a trim, slim
little arrow of a boat about two
feet by eighteen, I think; and then
there are two statuesque boatmen,
zaraped, high-hatted and barefooted,
to stand at either end and push us
about the Gardens.
Dear! dear! It will never do to
confess disappointment at finding the
famous old Floating Gardens of
Tenochtitlan to be mere plats of
green, with flowers and trees and
vegetables, and just separated by
strips of water like irrigation-ditches
84 Mexico City
and along which our little boat is
pushed !
Of course I hadn't expected the
Gardens to float, but I had expected
them to be top-heavy with gorgeous
tropical flowers and thickets of
palm-trees and clumps of tree-ferns
with parrots in them.
Or maybe just a cactus, with an
eagle aloft and a snake a very,
very little one!
I am not content with pulling
daisies and the lilac-colored "lily of
the country/' as we squeeze in be-
tween the little old gardens many
of them, alas! planted to horrid
cabbages. I am not content, even
when one of the boatmen lands and
picks bits of crimson and pink which
verily prove to be wild poppies.
An Idler's Note-Book 85
My shattered illusions might mag-
nanimously be forgotten did he heap
the canoe with those exquisite silken
things. But he brings only a care-
less handful.
Then the other boatman noncha-
lantly pulls a lily-bud with a yard
of stem. He turns his back, he
touches it with his magic brown
fingers, and presto! he holds before
us a beautiful, beautiful necklace
like unto one of clear jade beads
with an ivory lily-bud for a pen-
dant.
On gala-days hundreds and hun-
dreds of years ago, so reads the
story, the maids of Aztec Land
bound wreaths of poppies about
their dark tresses and, around their
necks, they wore wonderful neck-
86 Mexico City
laces exactly like this one our boat-
man has made so cleverly. Oh! is
it to be mine? I am mute with
apprehension as he silently hands it
to the Chief Escort ; my heart refuses
to beat until the Chaperone has de-
clined to wear the slimy thing
then I am proud to rescue it from
the bottom of the boat and to drop
it ecstatically over my head and
about my neck. The famous emer-
alds of Cortes could make me no
happier.
Now am I enabled to shake off
the mental malaria and to see ap-
preciatively the beauty of these ro-
mantic old chinampas, as we push
in and about them until the sun
sets.
Some one confesses a thirst, so
An Idler's Note-Book 87
we land and pulque is brought to
us in charming, highly-glazed brown
pots. There are bold strokes of red
and orange on the western sky, and
against it are silhouetted the tall
and slender water-beeches. It is the
tranquil hour of day, the hour for
serious meditation, so I sit apart
and wonder about many things be-
yond the sunset.
And why on earth I (the daughter
of a line of sturdy pie-eaters) can-
not manage to drink pretty, pink
pulque! But I can't! I can't! Even
when I nearly forget its odor.
Then I begin a desperate flirta-
tion with a dear little maiden of
four. She lives in a hut of rushes
on the edge of the stream, and her
dark eyes are deep and trustful and
88 Mexico City
her gurgle of laughter is very en
joy able music.
We walk on, past primitive houses
and primitive man. The girls of the
village are grouped effectively in
the plazuelas. So extremely pictur-
esque are they, with their costumes
differing only in color, that one
presently believes the chorus of an
opera has strayed hither.
Nothing seems real, due of course
to the magic necklace. Not even
the supper we have in a bower, in
front of one of the little rush huts,
and where a barefooted lady (attired
in a blue skirt and a white chemise,
with a very pink neck-fixing) serves
us pulque and pink, sweet tomales.
Likewise little bunches of minnows,
wrapped in cornhusks and roasted in
An Idler's Note-Book 89
the ashes and served cold very cold
indeed. The Chief Escort politely
expresses a preference for warm
minnows, and is sweetly assured by
the hostess that hot fish is injurious.
Then two musicians come and
bow themselves into our bower and
play the most dreamy, melancholy
things on the harpo and bandolin.
And then all the relatives and friends
and neighbors of our hostess softly
come and wedge themselves in and
about the arbor; and a very, very
big Mexican, with a high look and
his face shadowed by an enormous
hat (he must be the swell of the
village) comes and silently blockades
the flowery doorway.
No one speaks, not even when
the musicians rest ; there is no sound
90 Mexico City
but the distant cry of the boatmen
and of children at play in the twi-
light. A white moon comes up and
sheds a theatric sort of light, and
the sorrowful-eyed musicianers play
soft, strange airs that enable one to
see and think most extraordinary
things.
But very abruptly the spell ended.
I did not lose the magic necklace,
neither did I break it; thus it hap-
pened.
In a moment most shockingly ab-
stracted, it seems I made use of
such a phrase as, "Good night, boat-
man," and very properly the ex-
ceeding great wrath of the Chief
Escort was straightway upon me and
I was obliged to at once wake up
An Idler's Note-Book 91
and to identify myself with the nine-
teenth century. It would have been
in unquestioned good taste, had I
merely sworn at the man I would
have been a high-bred lady, I would.
But to have addressed him, a boat-
man, civilly Caramba!
I promptly hated the Chief Es-
cort, and I counted forty-three times
very inaccurately. And I was busy
for a long time after that, thanking
God for having been born an Amer-
ican with a contempt for such a
thing as caste.
But it was such a rude and such
an inartistic awakening! And the
spirit of the Aztec princesses had
permanently fled; I could not, on
the long, long way back into the
city, conjure up the consciousness
92 Mexico City
of even one ordinary Indian maid
with a poppy wreath on her head.
And then it began to rain drearily,
and I was homesick!
Oh! such little bits of things make
or mar a day, or a life. I have
forgiven the Chief Escort, but I
shall forget to forget.
In the heat and light of the can-
dles the magic necklace quickly
faded, and I hung it, mourning, on
a peg above the writing-desk. It
was a charming and a refined fancy
of some pagan aesthete wandering
about the Floating Gardens in the
long ago. It was an heirloom of
the ages. And as such I prized it.
Early Mass and the Flower Market
EARLY MASS AND THE
FLOWER MARKET
Life, we are told, is full of griev-
ous hardships. I chanced upon one
of them down in Mexico.
Getting up before day and dress-
ing "by yellow candle-light" reads
sweetly Stevenson's child probably
enjoyed it; but the reality in a
cellar-like hotel, before the mozo
and the chocolate -maker are up, is
no motive for a lyric. It consti-
tutes the hardship referred to. So,
while the Chaperone snores rhyth-
mically (confident that when she
does choose to awake, the mozo with
95
96 Mexico City
her chocolate will be at the door;
while night hangs upon my eyes
and I am in the very middle of
an interesting dream), I dress and
stealthily hurry forth through the
echoing corridors of the hotel into
the raw, gray day. For I am going
to early mass in the old cathedral,
afterward to the flower mar-
ket.
To be sure, I could go at another
and a more rational hour, but then
I would not see the dulce-girls and
the street-sweeper and the pickpocket
and the cutthroat nor any of their
friends. I shall not know them all,
I fear, but they are sure to be
there at early mass; I shall see the
submerged two-thirds of Mexico at
their devotions.
An Idler's Note-Book 97
It will be different, very different,
from that ceremony of yesterday in
the San Domingo Cathedral. (What
if that aristocratic old fane could
be induced to tell what it knows
about the Inquisition for the Re-
pression of Heresy?) Mrs. Diaz was
there all the Spanish-Mexican na-
bobs were there, in silk attire and
ablaze with gems.
It was very beautiful. The walls
of the cathedral were hung with
ruby silk-velvet, from the rich gild-
ing of the frieze to the wainscot
line; candles twinkled on a score
of altars and blazed in constella-
tions overhead; the rich vestments
of the priests were heavy with gold
embroidery; the images were crowned
and hedged about with regular hot-
98 Mexico City
house flowers; and the music was
an inspiration to high thinking for
a week.
But perfect ceremonies like that
are for the edification of Mexico's
rich and mighty and for friends of
the American Consul-General ; the
hungry poor do not need such beau-
tiful theatrics they are content to
slip into the church and hurriedly
say their little prayer alone.
Such a gray and dreary morning!
The chill and the damp penetrate
like stilettos no one in sight, not
even a lottery-ticket vender.
Ah! there goes a barefooted la-
borer in dirty white cottons; his
zarape is so badly worn and he
looks frozen but he does not shiver.
He wears his entire wardrobe, and
An Idler's Note-Book 99
it would not make him warm to
shiver or to grumble. (I can philos-
ophize at this cheerless, matutinal
hour, but my teeth will chatter
traitorously.) He hurries along, with
a haughty air and a handful of cold
tortillas. He, too, is going to very
early mass.
We enter in at the splendidly-
carved doors of the Sagrario, the
big seventeenth-century chapel once
used only for marriages, christenings
and funerals, and from which the
crucifix and holy-water were carried
to the dying in a wonderful gilded
chariot; at its approach even a vice-
roy had to kneel perhaps in the
mud. Of course you do not see the
Procession of the Holy Wafer in
these days, and this magnificent old
ioo Mexico City
church is now the property of the
Mexican government.
The style of the Sagrario may be
architecturally vicious it is a trifle
heavy with ornament. But Time has
done much in his inimitable way;
he has subdued the gold of the
marvelously-wrought carvings within,
which when new must have quite
blinded the eye of him who looked.
I am not too soon already, in
the faint light of the early morn-
ing, the bare floor of the great
chapel is dark with kneeling wor-
shipers.
My laboring-man carefully places
his tortillas and his hat on the floor
and kneels afar off. Near him is a
black-robed woman telling her beads
in a fashion most picturesquely de-
An Idler's Note-Book 101
vout; with her face shadowed that
way by her rebozo, her head is a
very good likeness of the Stabat
Mater.
Ah! there are some young friends
of mine dulce-girls every one.
They are very pretty in their faded
pinks and blues, and their charm-
ing little smiles of recognition al-
most induce me to believe that the
sun is up and a-shining outside.
These figures prostrate before that
dusty old side-altar seem to have a
common grief ; the man wears mourn-
ing.
A lottery-woman bows her head
down to the cold pavement. Her
tickets make a big bulge in her
blue rebozo. Maybe she prays for
good luck this day.
IO2 Mexico City
Leaning near one of the big stone
pillars is a barefooted Indian; his
white cotton blouse is horrid with
blood-stains, yet he is no murderer
only a butcher-boy. He fidgets
with his shabby hat; he certainly
has a woe, but who will comfort
him?
A charming young lady in black
bows low to the principal altar and
glides out, drawing closely her head-
covering. She is as sweetly and
fragilely beautiful as a Bougereau
virgin.
I tiptoe past a pottery merchant
whose wares are forgotten on the
pavement at his side; past a sleepy
boy with a tray of magenta tunas;
and past a sorrowful-faced old woman
with two baskets of yellow pumpkin
An Idler's Note-Book 103
blossoms. People will buy them and
boil them for "greens."
Then I pick my way through
kneeling groups of stern-faced men,
wrapped to the chin in their zarapes,
their unreadable eyes on the priests;
they might be images in tinted bisque
so motionless are they against that
cold white background. Oo-oo-oo! I
do not like to look at them! They
do not pray they just gaze straight
ahead, in such an intense and in-
comprehensible way. The poor things
look really very wicked!
For a moment I rest at the end
of an ancient wooden settee and by
the side of a blind old beggar. His
poor body is misshapen with age
and with rheumatism, but his un-
beautiful face is illumined with love
iO4 Mexico City
and faith, as he listens to the serv-
ice. He, alone, in all that throng,
looks thoroughly happy and hope-
ful.
Then, through rows of women tell-
ing their beads, but with their eyes
following me curiously, I pass by
the side-altar (where a young priest
is reading the service from an old
book delightfully rubricated) and into
the cathedral proper.
At its entrance I stand humbly,
very humbly, and look down the
nave up into the dome. Gloomy
and magnificent, vast, sublime! The
echo of a footfall seems a profana-
tion.
I suddenly realize that I am pray-
ing.
And there is the famed high-altar
Aii Idler's Note-Book 105
and the marvelous choir-rail with
its superb candelabra, not yet melted
down by the Mexican government.
Despoiled again and again and again,
yet this old cathedral founded by
Cortes is still splendid with paint-
ings and rare marbles; it is still
beautiful with the gleam of silver
and gold and fine brass and pol-
ished onyx. For it was the costli-
est church ever built on the western
continent.
But such magnificence I can ap-
preciate only in an infantile way at
such an early hour I will find the
Murillo and come again in the after-
noon.
What, I wonder, is the disquiet-
ing sin of that ragged little man
kneeling so abjectly at the great
io6 Mexico City
Altar of Pardon! What a restless
eye and bad mouth!
Our Blessed Lady of Guadalupe
appears to be the best-beloved; the
candles on her altars seem always
to be lighted and the railing hung
with the freshest flowers. Over at
her hillside shrine in Guadalupe
where, in the third vision, she ap-
peared to the Indian, the walls are
covered with the most curious imagin-
able little paintings, representing all
sorts of catastrophes which were
happily averted, through her influ-
ence, from the individuals who grate-
fully hung up those votive memorials.
The beggars who ask alms in the
name of the Virgin of Guadalupe
may well be a sanguine lot.
Under one of these side-altars,
An Idler's Note-Book 107
they say, are buried the heads of
many Mexican patriots, and some-
where in one of these side-chapels
reposes the Emperor Iturbide. Under
this lofty roof and with much glit-
tering pomp, those fated two, Maxi-
milian and Carlotta, were crowned
with crowns that brought such brief
power and so much grief.
Just outside the door of the sac-
risty stands a splendidly-carved old
confessional, quite guiltless of var-
nish and curiously worm-eaten. My
admiration is noted by the old
sacristan. He comes and he bows
and with a princely wave of the
hand, he gives me permission to
inspect the sacristy of the great
cathedral, which I find behind two
more seventeenth-century doors, won-
io8 Mexico City
derfully carved. I shudder as I pass
in, lest the brown, satiny wood of
those dear old doors soon be " re-
stored" by applications of "fillers"
and paints and varnish.
The tiny altar-boys, in cheerful
scarlet robes, are buzzing about, and
an old, old priest (such a fine and
gentle face !) is making himself ready
for the next mass and with a de-
liberation absolutely restful. The
three chat softly and affectionately.
My presence is unnoted and I
wander about, staring at the amazing
paintings spread over the walls and
ceiling (and which I hope some day
to have forgotten), trying vainly not
to covet the splendid old mahogany
chests of drawers extending around
the great room. How ideal in their
Street Sweeper
An Idler's Note-Book 109
simplicity are the brass pulls thereof,
and, too, how eloquent of their ancient
origin !
I very well know that all those
drawers are crammed with folded
vestments and altar-cloths heavy with
gold and silver thread and beautiful
with splashes of old posies such as
never grew in any earthly garden.
I further realize that I shall never
own even a patch of all those bro-
cades that I shall probably never
even see one of those altar-cloths.
But with as resigned as possible a
countenance, I thank the pleasant
little sacristan for the pleasure of
having seen the dreadful paintings
(why should he suspect the chests
of drawers are worth Iqoking at?)
and hurry out into the nave of the
no Mexico City
dim old cathedral, echoing now with
the footfalls of many newly-arrived
worshipers. They look a more cheer-
ful lot doubtless they have all break-
fasted. But where is that Murillo?
I cannot detect the old master
among so many of his talented pupils
and then it is so very dark in
the little alcoves. I search in vain
up and down both those great aisles.
Why don't they have it placarded?
And, oh! if I could only again lo-
cate the man with all those lovely
tortillas!
But it's now for the Flower Mar-
ket, in the very shadow of the
Cathedral on the west and fringed
about with parrot-venders and straw-
berry-women.
An Idler's Note-Book in
The flower-boys are just effectively
spreading their really gigantic wreaths
of daisies and pansies and arrang-
ing in bunches great masses of blue
and yellow and red. And such
quantities of white flowers, too
enough for the bridal of all the
earth.
These modern Aztecs show a
fine appreciation of color and who
would have expected it, in the
remnant of a race so long enslaved
and down-trodden! Many of the
flowers are packed in the stiff, con-
ventional French fashion very pretty
indeed on a Dresden plate or a wall-
hanging and which these imitative
people probably learned in Carlotta's
time. But they have their own pretty
little tricks. Rosebuds, as you wait,
U2 Mexico City
are made into full-blown roses; they
paint the gardenia, likewise the water-
lily, a charming cerise red; and I
suspect they throw perfume on their
violets.
Oh! only a wooden image could
resist all these impassioned entreat-
ies, these sweet blandishments of
tone and glance of the Mexican
flower-seller. A French milliner would
be stricken dumb with envy.
An animate statue of bronze in
white cottons (not too white) begs
you so mellifluously, so tragically,
to buy a gardenia set daintily about
with myosotis and fringed with vio-
lets. You glance twice at the little
fellow, so he becomes a persistent
shadow; you must buy then, or run
away.
An Idler's Note-Book 113
44 What value?" "Ten cents, young
lady." But you turn to the old
woman with the cherry-colored lilies
and, with a comic little grimace, the
dramatic flower - boy immediately
thrusts the ten-cent gardenia into
your hand for three cents.
Your heart may be beating wildly,
but you assume indifference and get
that armful of forget-me-nots for
eighteen cents.
If you enthuse openly over those
flawless American Beauties, the ex-
orbitant price of eight cents each
will be yours to pay.
Oh! if things in Mexico were
strictly one price only, what a heaven
it would be for the enthusiast! As
it is, you learn to deceive and dis-
semble and dissimulate you return
114 Mexico City
to the States with that New Eng-
land conscience of yours in a per-
fectly unrecognizable condition, if
you bring it back at all.
What a sweet bewilderment to
sight and smell is this flower mar-
ket! And was there ever a more en-
ravishing perfume than the composite
of violets and gardenias and Mexican
strawberries? You are certainly in-
toxicated, and you buy in the most
reckless gringo fashion. All the
flower boys have discovered you
now, and they rush at you and
thrust dazzling nosegays into your
eyes and under your nose and quite
deafen you with their entreaties to
buy.
But you manage to center your
admiration (the apparent waning of
An Idler's Note-Book 1 1 5
which influences the market-price)
upon a cluster of superb orchids.
4 * Lady! lady! fifty cents. " You
lift your eyebrows in counterfeit
amazement.
41 Beautiful aroma, twenty-five cents,
young lady! twenty-five cents!" You
shrug your shoulders.
<4 Eighteen cents! eighteen cents!
eighteen cents! little lady!"
But their picturesqueness, their
caressing tones" and honorific dimin-
utives and their bargains do not
annihilate the fact that some loose
change must be saved for to-day's
pottery and dulces.
Nevertheless, I consider with seri-
ousness the purchase of one of their
giant wreaths of daisies, with a big
cluster of gardenias and white roses
n6 Mexico City
nodding at the top; it is only two
dollars, Mex. The trouble is, it is
quite too grand to present to an in-
dividual in the private walks of life,
even in Mexico; Teddy Roosevelt
lives at such an inconvenient dis-
tance ; I have no friend in the Amer-
ican cemetery.
But then I love daisies quite as
much as Eric Mackay ever could,
and there really might be a won-
derful pleasure in the possession of
a garland of flowers about four feet
in diameter! There might be a
but no! I simply cannot afford to
squander the price of so many lovely
water-bottles or of that big, persim-
mon-colored crucifix down in the
Thieves' Market, on my room deco-
rations.
An Idler's Note-Book 117
Therefore do I sigh, turning away
mine eyes slowly and remembering
Lot's wife.
Then, dragging myself away from
those gorgeous heaps of flowers
flaunting in the dark-blue shadow of
the market and compelling myself
past even the soft -voiced strawberry-
women I betake myself and my
floral burdens out into the pale, early
sunshine and back to the hotel.
That was the memorable morning
I ate even the thick slab of indiffer-
ent sweet-cake that, in Mexico, comes
to you with your morning chocolate
under the beguiling name of pan
Inglfr.
At a Mexican Country-House
AT A MEXICAN COUNTRY-
HOUSE
The day before, under the blazing
sun of Teotihuacan, I had climbed
the Pyramid of the Sun and the
Pyramid of the Moon; that day,
breakfastless, I had gone to the
Merced Market and the famously
beautiful old church of La Santisima ;
I had afterward tramped, quite lunch-
eonless, all over and around the hill-
side shrines of Our Blessed Lady at
Guadalupe, and had accumulated in
her market-places a mozo-load of
pottery for friends in the States.
These simple facts produced not
merely an under-languaged enthusi-
asm but a mighty hunger and an
122 Mexico City
inordinate longing for a rest-cure.
The hunger, I can now see, was
foreordained. Not, indeed, that I
might look with rapture and enforced
resignation upon a Mexican banquet
but that one gringo might sit down
and eat thereof and arise triumphant
with digestion not permanently im-
paired.
It was in the late afternoon of
that busy, that dreadfully happy
day, that I reached the hotel and
was told that the special car for the
S minister's ball left the Zocalo
within one little hour. I was dis-
mayed. There was no margin for a
siesta nor for a pilgrimage to a
restaurant there was hardly time
for a bath and a bromo-seltzer. It
was a very unlovely moment.
An Idler's Note-Book 123
\
We crammed some of our fixings
into a party-bag, we made perfectly
frantic haste and we succeeded in
just missing that car Especial. But
ere we had slain ourselves, before
we were even well started in lam-
entations, our generous American
friend (he remained cosily at home
and read a musty book by Bernal
Diaz) donated the trifling sum of
twenty dollars for our car-fare, and
we four were soon jolting along
toward the country-house of the S
minister, in a private street-car of
our very own.
It was raining when we reached
the village of our destination, an
ancient and picturesque one, about
fifteen miles out from the capital
city. The cobbled and grass-grown
124 Mexico City
streets wound artistically between
high stone walls, over which drooped
branches of strange trees, dripping
in the noiseless rain.
We were not so very, very merry
as we groped along. The great dark-
ness and the silence seemed ominous.
There were big lanterns (three, to
be accurate, and swinging from mas-
sive iron brackets above the entrances
to secluded villas) that threw pale
yellow rays down the black and
glistening streets; but they created
fantastic shadows and only momen-
tarily dispelled the fear of lurking
brigands in long cloaks, with gleam-
ing daggers. Those two dark, mut-
tering figures just in advance of us
were they prisoners and assassins?
The setting of the scene was not
An Idler's Note-Book 125
reassuring. And the narrow street
twisted on and on and away into
the darkness and without any sounds
of revelry, without any Japanese
lanterns. We were very dull and
very, very tired. Could we reason-
ably expect to discover a party any-
where along that ancient B. C. -look-
ing street?
But at last and before our gowns
were quite crushed and limp, we
arrived. This fact, evolved so tedi-
ously (perhaps years had really
passed since we left the lights of
the Zocalo!) was announced through
the medium of a big iron knocker.
Journeying by rail and by stage-
coach and by canoe and by mule
are unique experiences, but it is the
arrival that in Mexico is so partic-
126 Mexico City
ularly charming. The dogs and the
servants (they live in the rooms
next to the big entrance) are all so
frankly glad to see you and the
host and his family hurry to assure
you, over and over, not of your
welcome merely but of your owner-
ship of everything in sight. Then
the maids and their children and
their grandchildren all look after
your comfort in such an enthusiastic
and such a gratifying way. And
then they all stand around admiringly.
Your identity may have shrunken
pitifully on the journey, but the
Mexican welcome is a compensa-
tion for all the trials and weari-
nesses, and you gradually expand
and radiate sufficiently for a person-
age two times as eminent.
At a. Mexican Country-house
An Idler's Note-Book 127
We were too late for the dinner
and the amateur theatrics that pre-
ceded the ball, but (and I thanked
my stars!) we were in good time
for the supper.
Ah me! Thirty hours, I solilo-
quized, and Fate had given me but
two little red bananas, some mere
dots of pink sweet-cakes (the girl
mixed the dough in a queer bowl
and baked them over a tiny char-
coal fire, while I stood and ad-
mired) and a mouthful of chalybeate
water over at the sacred well of
Our Lady plus two bromo-seltzers
while dressing for the ball.
This would have been niggardly,
had it not been positively munificent.
The nasty chalybeate water made it
munificent as, taken internally, one
128 Mexico City
drop of that liquid is equivalent to
a sight-draft on the future for an-
other trip to Mexico. But, perverse-
ly enough, this consoling fact was
not revealed to me until a fortnight
had elapsed.
So, when the procession formed
for the supper-rooms on the other
side of the big patio, and a Mex-
ican young man in powdered wig
and eighteenth century regimentals
(he had been helping dance a min-
uet) entreated me to honor him
with my company thither, I could
have danced or have wept with de-
light. But I only smiled and tried
not to look ravenous.
This country place of the S
minister's was thoroughly charming,
even on a black night and in a
An Idler's Note-Book 129
dreary rain. Two centuries and more
ago it was the property of a Span-
ish marquis, the gentleman who
planned the pleasure-garden which,
on that wet and moonless evening of
the ball, we were not permitted to see.
Of course the villa rambled in the
approved Mexic style all around four
sides of the patio, or paved inner
court, beautified with rare trees and
flowers and festoonings of delicate
vines. And a stroll along the cor-
ridor on two sides of the big patio
brought us to the supper-rooms,
which were lofty, Frenchified apart-
ments, softly lighted with candles
and echoing with merry small-talk
in several languages.
The long table, with its cande-
labra, its superb roses, its disquieting
130 Mexico City
array of tall bottles and unfamiliar
viands and, too, with all those un-
American faces opposite, seemed like
nothing but a French print. Noth-
ing seemed distinctly real, as I sank
into my chair, except my very in-
dividual hunger.
At my right was a Mexican gen-
tleman whose English unaided by
an interpreter was limited to an
interrogative "No" and a variety
of bows; next him was the hostess
she spoke everything modern ex-
cept English, she detested English.
Plainly, the Fates had decreed that
I should eat and be silent.
But on my left there was discov-
ered a Spanish lady who knew six
good American adjectives and two
nouns; and, as I could boast scores
An Idler's Note-Book 131
of Spanish adjectives and exclama-
tives, together with a few nouns
and a verb or two, we became
greatly attached to each other dur-
ing the progress of that feast. Even
if I did, in my anxiety to be at
home in Spanish, confusedly garnish
it with school-girl German and kin-
dergarten French, it all passed for
high English. (I have sighed for a
phonographic record of the conver-
sation; it would successfully divert
me, and mine enemies, even on the
longest, dreariest day. )
Chemically speaking, a Mexican
party-supper is supposed to be equal
to the sum total of several stupen-
dous things the first rarebit of the
boarding-school miss, plus amateur
pineapple fritters and hot pie for
132 Mexico City
breakfast, plus tripe and wedding-
cake for supper. It would seriously
upset the digestion of a cassowary,
certainly of any gringo that ever
came to the republic unless pre-
ceded by something like a thirty-
hour fast. There were, I distinctly
remember, twelve sorts of meat,
eight dulces, one salad and many,
many wines not one of the dukes
was an old acquaintance.
But I lost count of the other ex-
periments. Many of them, though
spiced and decorated very mysteri-
ously, I bravely essayed and re-
gretted not that evening. And I
privately congratulated myself on my
accumulated hunger without it, I
might have been considered provin-
cial and supercilious.
An Idler's Note-Book 133
My Spanish neighbor was properly
charmed with an American who could
eat appreciatively of her favorite
dishes. (Our taste in jokes may
have been seriously different.) And
I kept thinking of the Moor who,
in my Third Reader, ate a peach
with a stranger and therefore re-
mained his true friend, even when
he learned his only son had been
killed by him. This was irrelevant,
but it interested me.
The menu was quite elaborate
enough, yet, after a little while, I
forgot my manners and whispered
to a maid for a glass of water.
Alas! the lordly host heard of
my heresy in some way and promptly
came to learn whether I were ill or
his wines not pleasing. My prefer-
134 Mexico City
ence for distilled water (and of
which in that great establishment
there was less than one quart) was,
in Mexico, quite incomprehensible.
So I divined I had disgraced my-
self and my godmother and had
annoyed a royal variety of host.
And I was immediately penitent
and in the simplest English, but
he did not understand.
I never knew what my Spanish
neighbor said in my defence she
said so much and with so graceful
a vehemence, patting my hand the
while. But I am sure that what
she said was kind. And the legend
of the Moor and the man and the
peach again recurred to me.
At last, through a great American
diplomat and linguist, an elaborate
An Idler's Note-Book 135
explanation that satisfactorily ex-
plained was effected, and later, when
making our adieus, I was cordially
included in an invitation to dine
with the minister and his family on
the very next Sunday.
We left the ball early, very early
in the morning but most of the
others remained to breakfast in the
garden. It was only on leaving
that I was made to understand that
adieus, with handshakes, must not
be stinted at a Mexican party but
made to each guest, while all the
others frankly stare.
It will be quite impossible to forget
that long white and gold room with
the blaze of lights at each end, the cor-
ners deep and black with chaperones.
But those nice ladies with the
136 Mexico City
bright eyes and the soft voices they
did not embrace me after the fash-
ion of the stage-parent and swiftly
kiss me on cheeks and forehead
that was my first appearance. I
was very sorry. It was such a
pretty and dramatic ceremony. The
floor near the native musicians was
bright with young men and maid-
ens, embarrassingly observant and
who would, I very well knew, con-
strue any mistake of mine as a na-
tional, not an individual, blunder.
Oh! why should I say goodbye to
any of them? Why shouldn't I turn
and flee?
The next time, for I have vowed
the vow, I shall certainly remain to
breakfast aye! to luncheon, to din-
ner! Then shall I honorably escape
An Idler's Note-Book 137
an excess of farewells in the first
person.
Very unfortunately, the Sunday
dinner invitation had to be re-
gretted. But later on there came
an entire day in this country home,
with the minister's charming but
non- English speaking wife and his
merry daughters.
They were very pretty women and
daintily bred they usually wore silken
Vienna-made frocks and each im-
pressed us as an ideal hostess. Yet,
inconsistently enough, they made no
mention whatever of any progressive
game or guessing contest, with cut-
glass and sterling silver prizes. It
was quite ridiculous, to be sure!
How could we consider ourselves
*
138 Mexico City
properly entertained? But Mexican
society is still shockingly primitive
they simply do not know how to
get bored.
Immediately on our arrival that
day (after the dogs had barked and
after we had passed in grand re-
view before three generations of
servants), we had wine and French
cakes in the salon and a distress-
ingly long pow-wow in Spanish and
oh! so elaborate, so mellifluous, that
the mere thought of the dialect of
Posey County and the Bowery was
a positive refreshment.
Then there was an hour or more
of Schumann and Grieg and Chopin
(but no " rag-time") interpreted by
a native daughter of the republic
just back from her finishing-school in
An Idler's Note-Book 139
Germany. And after that we were
given an opportunity to admire some
boarding-school drawings and hand-
paintings and bits of needle-work.
But most of that delightful day
was spent in the green twilight of
the dear old garden, a pleasure-
garden of exceptional beauty planned
by a Spanish nobleman of taste and
wealth two hundred years before.
It was old and shady and sweet-
smelling, it was not too trim; it
was But a description of its ar-
tistic values would be quite impossible.
There were about forty acres in
the high-walled inclosure and, along
the broad walks and under the
great, strange trees that arched high
above, were enchanting tangles of
dreadfully rare shrubs and flowers.
140 Mexico City
At the far end were the ruined
baths the mossy arches draped with
rose-vines; and then there were
grottoes and fountains with summer-
houses and a bowling-alley. And, at
the intersection of several shady paths,
there was a shrine of Our Lady
of Guadalupe. It was a lovely, moss-
grown ruin and suggestive of a very
great deal of poetry. Yet I found I
would have preferred a sun-dial.
It seemed a sin to chatter unde^
those mighty trees and in that great
and meaningful stillness. And the
tender green gloom, the great and
eloquent peace inspired such a lofty
sort of abstraction, then finally a
pleasing melancholy.
Our hostess, as in due time she
led the way to the dining-room of
An Idler's Note-Book 141
the villa, made a long speech in
Spanish supplemented by her daugh-
ters in a sprightly chorus of French
and German and English. I was
personally obliged for the English
(when you get as far as irregular
verbs, all the other languages are
such a bore!) and pained extremely
to learn that the cook-lady of the
household, having attended a fiesta
in the city, was already several
days behind schedule time. They
did not wait luncheon for her, which
was wisdom.
This was not an isolated case.
We chanced upon a number of rich
unfortunates whose maid-servants and
man-servants frequently mixed po-
tions with their pulque that made
them forgetful of common little
142 Mexico City
things like Time and Duty. If one
has vast sympathy for the down-
trodden and distressed, and is skilled
in the ethics of consolation, she
certainly should abide in Mexico and
give ear to the jeremiads of the
Mexican housewife with a house
swarming with servants. She is
not needed here in the States
where one can if necessary live
peacefully at study-clubs and recep-
tions and matinees, feeding at a
restaurant and taking refuge at
night in a flat or a private hotel.
If I were a Mexican lady I would
pray to the Virgin of Guadalupe
all the way up the Street of Degra-
dation to send me an accomplished
cook, one who eschewed bull-fights
and fiestas and family funerals. If
An Idler's Note-Book 143
she didn't come, I would in my
despair either plunge from the
cathedral tower or buy a cook-book.
The mantilla of the minister's
chief cook had fallen temporarily
upon young sub-cooks of habits more
certain but reputedly less talent; and
the gentle hostess, who understood
that Americans generally lunched
on fried pork and ice-water and
buckwheat-cakes, did fear that her
guests would find nothing suited to
their tastes. But she looked encour-
aged after the third course.
So the luncheon we had that day
was of necessity extremely simple.
There were really but eight courses
and we sat at table hardly an hour
and a half.
144 Mexico City
Down there not even the peons
have to bother about the circling
flight of time and the simple lunch-
eons or breakfasts (they are a com-
posite of French, Spanish, Italian
and native cooking) sometimes make
a Yankee apprehensively yearn for
plain bread and cheese and apple-
sauce. Or a digestive apparatus run
by electricity.
In spite of the dreaming in that
poetic garden on the other side of
the patio it must be recorded the
gringo portion of that luncheon dis-
appeared in a manner quite dis-
heartening to a lazy cook. But then
we were always disgracefully hungry
in Mexico hungry as peons, and
our appetites could not be twisted
into compliments to any cook-lady.
An Idler's Note-Book 145
Here, for the curious, is set down
a true and faithful copy of the
menu from my notes, which were
scribbled that evening when we had
returned to the hotel, in a deluge
of rain our umbrella a parasol of
white silk and chiffon!
Rice Soup.
Spiced Rice.
Sardines. Eggs scrambled with tomatoes.
Mutton Chops.
Summer- squash chopped and fried with chilis
and tomatoes.
Roast Pork.
Boiled Potatoes. French Bread.
Fried Brussels Sprouts, green Chili sauce.
Frijoles.
Dulces. French Cakes.
Three Wines. Beer.
Two bottles of Distilled Water.
146 Mexico City
Extremely simple, yet I encour-
agingly sent my profound regards to
the little sub-cooks when the frijoles
were taken away; but, with an abso-
lutely fine consideration, I withheld
the private opinion that promotions
in the kitchen were in order and
the return of the chief cook a mat-
ter of merited indifference. For I
discerned that the fastidious young
ladies of the household could not
be induced to eat of the pottage
prepared by the humble amateurs
and they had never heard of cook-
ing-schools and chafing-dish clubs.
Then, sauntering about in the
patio, we discovered an ancient stone
staircase, which we climbed half
timidly only to find ourselves on a
charming azotea, shaded by the tops
An Idler's Note-Book 147
of the patio-trees. Then we strolled
out into the dreamy old garden
again, to a summer-house near the
big fountain, and there we had fruit
and coffee and listened to the legends
of hidden treasure and ghosts.
I much preferred the ghosts, with
the old bowling-alley and ruined
summer-house for a background. If
that vine-clad old place was not
really haunted, it was merely be-
cause Mexican ghosts lacked the
proper artistic perception.
The cool, violet-scented air tossed
gently the greenery which rioted
along the mossy, yellow wall of the
garden and the shadows slowly grew
longer and longer. The old villa
gleamed and shimmered like a pearl
through the trees. Every one was
148 Mexico City
in a placid, gracious mood and in
harmony with the spirit of the gar-
den.
Was it really a dream, an en-
chantment? Would I wake up else-
where and be compelled to look
always upon terra-cotta houses, each
boasting thirteen styles of architec-
ture and flanked by nasturtiums and
magenta petunias?
Then was I saddened.
But after a little while, as I was
stirring my coffee and grudgingly
paying conversational tribute, I dis-
covered there was an illusion to en-
joy. I kept very still, and, in the
green gloom of the distant paths, I
began to espy wraiths of certain
beautiful ladies and brave lords;
they once meandered over the pages
An Idler's Note-Book 149
of old Spanish romances and Italian
ballads they once lived and tragic-
ally died, most of them, in old-time
dramas.
I gazed dreamily and not too direct,
so they strolled quite near after a
time, plucking roses and jasmine
sprays; they stood at the fountain's
edge, with clasped hands and
glance exceeding tender.
The farewells, I observed, took
place at the little old blue and yel-
low shrine. (One of the tiles now
does acceptable service on my writ-
ing-desk as a paper-weight. Explan-
atively, the youngest daughter of
the household did pluck it out for
me and did wash it in the waters
of the fountain and I accepted it
greedily.)
1 50 Mexico City
Their happy laughter and their
extravagant protestations and their
reluctant farewells I distinctly saw
but heard not; for, alas! in the
sun, those fine ladies in soft bro-
cades and agleam with jewels cast
no shade. Neither did their cava-
liers, so handsome in doublet and
hose, with velvet Romeo cloaks and
plumed caps and dangling rapiers.
Ah, yes! while I had to make a
long pretence of sipping black,
syrupy coffee and while the others
were eating blue figs and merrily
punning in four languages, I dis-
tinctly beheld trooping up and down
those mossy garden-paths right be
fore us such dainty ladies and such
decorative lords of the picturesque
long ago!
An Idler's Note-Book 1 5 1
But no more shall I see them.
That venerable garden, with its
tropic vines and shrubs, with its
Sleeping-Beauty tangle of rose-trees
and t strange lilies, is modernized
now; it has been " cleaned up."
Alas! and alas! it is lighted by
electricity.
There is a sadness, a not-to-be-
assuaged sorrow about such a change.
But of my day in that old Mex-
ican garden I am resolved to cher-
ish only an unmarred recollection,
and, so long as I shall wander by
44 Time's runaway river," it is to be
one of my great and unchanging
joys a beautiful memory ineffaceable.
A Street Ramble
A STREET RAMBLE
Why is it that one never so
forcefully realizes as on the day
after a big party that this life is
not a dazzling little cluster of ec-
stacies?
That morning after the S min-
ister's really charming ball out at his
country-house, the atmosphere seemed
surcharged with unamiability and
general infelicities; for each of us
had fallen out of love with Life,
dear Life.
I myself was infinitely melancholy
and suspicioned that I was doomed
to death by hanging in the imme-
1 56 Mexico City
diate future; moreover, I was confi-
dent that no one on all the earth
or the seas cared.
It was of course the direct result
of the menu of the Mexican party-
supper, an institution that would
induce acutest melancholy in an
ostrich. One a week produces a pes-
simist; two, a misanthrope; and
three no gringo ever survives
three. But at that hour our melan-
choly eluded analysis.
Immediately after bread-and-choco-
late that morning, it was noon by
the tenor bell on the old Church
of the Profesa, and, to dispel the
mental miasma that was ours, we
all amicably agreed and heroically
upon a long tramp about the streets
of the city.
An Idler's Note-Book 157
It was on the way down to the
Alameda that we stopped to enthuse,
experimentally, over the old Porce-
lain Palace and to hear the legend
of the builder.
He was a young man, a too gay
young man, of the eighteenth cen-
tury, and he squandered all his sub-
stance in riotous living. Then, so
they tell the tale, he went to his
father for funds, but that gentleman
turned him away with a disagree-
able Spanish proverb about shocking
spendthrifts and their inability to
ever build "porcelain palaces."
And the proud young man re-
pented of his empty money-bags and
his evil ways he reformed and
speedily amassed a great fortune.
The legend is minus the method,
158 Mexico City
but pirates and brigands were the
quick-rich of that period. Then, to
prove that his father was a false
prophet, the young man built this
quaint palace of blue and white
tiles. It is one of the sights of
modern Mexico.
We next halted at the Hotel Jar-
din, which was once a convent of
the rich and terribly powerful order
of San Francisco. Their splendid
buildings once covered fifteen acres
of the city's heart, but Comonfort
cut a street through them. (No good
Catholic will walk on that street
yet, so they say.)
My purpose was a little pilgrimage
to the balcony-rail on the other side
of which part of that prose-idyl,
An Idler's Note-Book 159
"A White Umbrella in Mexico,"
was written. I picked my way be-
tween the puddles and the mossy
flower-pots of the old patio garden,
beautiful and miasmatic. I located
the balcony-rail and got a snap-shot
just as the sun dodged under a
cloud. Too late, I unearthed the
fact that I had a friend whose
friend's friend knew the present
occupant of the P. Hopkinson Smith
suite and Mr. Moon of Zacatcas!
As we processioned along a nar-
row, cobbled street, where the smell
of old pulque made one homesick
for Chinatown, we stopped to gaze in
at the den of a charcoal-seller. With
its velvet, midnight shadows, there
was no opening but the one door,
160 Mexico City
with the really delightful pottery
on the blackened walls its only
high-light, the den would certainly
have turned the brain of a Rem-
brandt. Near the doorway, bepow-
dered and begrimed with the
glittering, black dust, and sur-
rounded by sacks and baskets of
the charcoal squatted the almost
naked wife and children. They
would have been a revelation in
make-up to a burnt-cork artiste yet
only a degenerate would regard
with anything but deep, deep com-
passion such wretched human beings.
There are varieties of picturesque-
nesses, this sort made us ill and
unhappy.
Then we determinedly tramped
An Idler's Note-Book 161
around and around in the beautiful
greenwood called the Alameda, past
the place where not so very long
ago they burned all the heretics.
And then along the Paseo as far
as the glorieta of the statue of
Guatemozin, the last emperor of the
Aztecs. Regardless of nationality,
one's heart beats high with pride
at the memory of the spirit, the
courage of this ancient hero. The
statue, reared by the descendants
of his enemies, is a noble one, and
the bas-relief panel representing the
torture by fire of the royal captive
justly entitled to one-third of an
afternoon.
It is not surprising that the Con-
queror did not rest well at night;
Gautemozin's farewell, for one thing,
1 62 Mexico City
must have etched itself in his brain.
And such little etchings murder sleep.
Retracing our steps, we were fre-
quently besieged by young beggar-
ladies, the descendants perhaps of
some of the old caciques. Who
knows? And who possessed of a
copper would resist the entreaty of
the soft, mournful eyes, the low
music of the appeal?
"Little lady, for the love of Sacred
Mary, give me a cent, a little cent!*'
"Give me a cent, for the love of
God, young lady! Young lady!'*
Alas! the velvet of the little voice
wears away with maturity.
That was the afternoon I discov-
ered the most charming house in
Mexico City. It was hardly big
An Idler's Note-Book 163
enough for a palace, but its dignity
and its unique beauty, tinged with
an unmistakable little air of romance
and the sadness of decay, imme-
diately won my heart.
Dainty vines had climbed from
the inner court, over the roof, to
fall in cascades of greenery over
the front which was pink and faded
to a tone most delightsome.
There were, alas! no senoritas in
any of the balconies nor at any of
the grated French windows, but there
was an impressive porttro on guard
at the front doorway through which
a couple of furniture vans could
swagger without accident.
The mighty doors were heavily
panelled and studded with iron and,
in the years gone by, may well
164 Mexico City
have added to the owner's mental
peace, when robbers and assassins
knocked and whenever there hap-
pened to be a political revolution.
Through the passageway there
was a glimpse of the patio-garden,
with its jungle of bananas and
palms, its fountain and two haughty
peacocks mincing along the tiled
walk.
Over the street entrance swung
an immense lantern, from a charm-
ingly wrought iron bracket ; of course
it had not been lighted in perhaps
twenty years it was dimmed and
corroded delightfully.
And then, on one side of the
big, mediaeval-looking doors, was the
best old knocker it has ever been
my wretched lot to covet. It was
An Idler's Note-Book 165
never the least trouble to walk five
blocks out of the way, even in mud
and in rain, to see that knocker.
We tramped gloomily along the
pavements of the Main Causeway,
passed the very spot of Alvarado's
Leap and the Church of the Martyrs,
with its time-scarred tablet, a me-
morial to those who fell to a ter-
rible death on that sad night so
long ago.
We muse pessimistically on the
fate of all nations and many indi-
viduals; for we could perceive that
the whole world was very wretched
and that there was joy in nothing.
We waved our hand at a yellow
street-car driver, tooting a mournful
1 66 Mexico City
tin horn, and with him we journeyed
out to Popotla.
There we viewed the poor old
rag of a cypress-tree under which,
one rainy night, three hundred and
eighty years ago, Mr. Hernando
Cortes spent a very bad half hour.
By the time we reached the his-
toric spot, a fine and melancholy
rain had very appropriately set in.
We could the more fully sympathize
with the great general.
But it took us only a scant ten
minutes.
After a time, the rain had ceased
in order to display a gorgeously
crimsoned west, we found ourselves
in the gloomy little national ceme-
tery near the Alameda.
An Idler's Note-Book 167
The care-taker, who had fought
with the great Juarez, accompanied
us about and proudly discoursed on
certain of the illustrious dead. Most
of them departed this life by special
request.
This was my first Mexican ceme-
tery. It was very different from
the little burying-ground on the hill-
side in my native village, but it was
no less suggestive of the Great Peace
of Death, the Complete Consolation.
The high wall about the inclosure
was scarred and discolored by Time,
and it made a shadow quite as
mournful as the regulation cypress
or willow.
In this wall were many cells,
each one occupied for a term of
years by a dead tenant; if, at the
1 68 Mexico City
end of that time, it was cheerily
explained to us, the rent of the
narrow house is not forthcoming- in
advance, the tenant is ejected and
annihilated by the sexton. The
merry old fellow showed us the
fragments of some poor Yorick who
had that day been found in arrears;
on the morrow, he was to be un-
ceremoniously mixed forever with
the elements.
The grandees are permanently
buried.
The old sexton (I had seen him
before when he was digging the
grave of Ophelia) paused and orated
at the tombs of Saragossa, Comon-
fort, Guerrero and Maximilian's Me-
jia. But he did not break their
sleep; none of them, not one, rose
An Idler's Note-Book 169
up to bow thanks or to contradict.
The sexton lived a unique dream-
life and, considering the environ-
ment, he was strangely cheerful;
there seemed no heaviness whatever
under his mirth. He exulted in the
companionship of the mighty dead,
he lived over again each day his
martial youth and was merry.
Recalling that day when Maxi-
milian and his followers were dis-
posed of, he hopped ecstatically about
and impersonated each in turn so
cleverly that the scene was really
there before us.
The unfortunate Maximilian at his
hands received the credit of entire
calmness he silently laid his hand
upon his heart; and Miramon, who
stood in the center of the group,
170 Mexico City
nonchalantly curled his mustache.
But poor Mejia, valiant enough, so
the old man assured us, when fac-
ing an earthly danger, shook just
like a man with the palsy.
The sexton's enjoyment of the re-
hearsal of this historic tragedy and his
greatest memory was beautiful to see.
At one side and half-hidden by
the trumpery tin and bead garlands
of his adoring countrymen, was the
mausoleum of the one-time fierce
Juarez. He sleeps very quietly now,
in the dim light of the old ceme-
tery, the damp air heavy with the
scent of roses and violets. Above
the tomb is the famous marble fig-
ure of this modern Aztec hero, with
his weary head resting in the lap
of Mexico.
An Idler's Note-Book 171
We enthused over its great beauty
very satisfactorily indeed for Ameri-
cans, and so he who had proudly
marched under the banner of the
great Juarez bent his poor old back
and, with infinite care, selected for
us certain of the cut flowers at the
foot of the tomb. And of this mark
of high favor, such a particularly
fine appreciation was shown that we
were all urged to come again and
at any time. Furthermore, we might
bring our detested cameras inside
the gates!
But none of our friends ever
credited that report.
A few more short days and then
will come the low-voiced messenger
with the order for that merry little
sexton to take possession of his own
172 Mexico City
narrow house in that quiet village.
Only a little folding of his hands
to sleep, a little slumber, then in
the Unknown Country he will be
the equal of Mexico's greatest and
mightiest and the comrade of even
his revered Juarez.
May his last hour here hold only
calmness.
When the gates had clanged be-
hind us and we were once again
under the broad sky and in the
midst of the busy streets, then sud-
denly did all the sad and wretched
earth seem sweet and dear, with a
great rush our desire for life re-
turned to us we forgot the disgusts,
we remembered only our admira-
tions. In the soft dusk, with the
An Idler's Note-Book 173
the yellow street-lights appearing and
with the many sounds of a city-life
to encourage us, we no longer were
wearied pessimists we once again
were brave and cheerful.
What to us then were Death and
his great mysteries? And an old
cemetery of dead enmities and dead
loves and dead ambitions? It was
glorious to breathe in so good and
beautiful a world, and to look up
at the stars and to continue indefi-
nitely the pursuit of favorite phan-
toms.
Personal and Reminiscent
PERSONAL AND REMINISCENT
It is disconcerting to a self-respect-
ing and properly ambitious Ameri-
can to journey to a far country
and, after a sojourn of whole
weeks, to discover his inability to
perfectly understand a people, their
civilization, their aims, their inevit-
able destiny.
Treatises on America and its
numerous tribes are compiled in a
few hours by mere French and
English persons speeding across the
country and as they nonchalantly
glance from the car-windows. They
elude the comic weeklies, they get
177
178 Mexico City
put into thick books and become
standard, eventually forcing Ameri-
cans into one of the great interna-
tional societies for Mutual Deprecia-
tion.
But such brilliance failed to in-
spire me; it goaded me into a miser-
able, an envious gloom, for Mexico
was reticent with me. All her motives
and intents, every heartache and
each detail of her destiny she re-
fused to uncover beneath the little
electric glare of my intellect. I
scorned to insist and pride pre-
vented an expostulation. But I
grieved much.
And then I forgot all about it,
the dear old City of Mexico proved
so enchanting; there was on every
side such an infinity of things bliss-
An Idler's Note-Book 179
ful and dear to charm me. Why
try to understand any of them?
It was good to forget for a time
the subtleties and complexities of
an up-to-date civilization; and, ex-
cept the street-cars and the tele-
graph-pole processions, there was
nothing in all those strange, bright
streets to remind me of a sober,
work-a-day world.
Mexico is a great enchantress.
She speedily transformed me from
a dreary-thoughted slave into a fear-
less and ambitionless idler; and she
left me never a depressing memory
of my former state.
I forgot, in the tranquillity of that
metamorphosis, all dissonances and
disquietness ; I gained the courage
for present happiness; I dreamed
i8o Mexico City
and idled away the days precisely
as though life knew no bitternesses
and glooms. Nor distressingly great
activities.
Then, when I wandered joyously
about the market-places, gradually
possessing myself of such rich earthly
treasure as rainbow pottery, scraps
of altar brocades (a trifle faded and
worn, perhaps), old rosaries and
worm-eaten books (bound in parch-
ment by some Friar Jerome and yel-
lowed exquisitely by Time), even
until the little mozo could carry no
more until I myself had left neither
one copper cent nor a finger on
which to hang another rosary or
pulque- jug;
When I tiptoed into some gray
old church for a somber reverie and
An Idler ' s Note-Book 1 8 1
where the orange-colored candle-flame
revealed black-robed Fiamettas and
Catherines and Carmens confessing
their sins of the week to stern-
visaged priests, who sat motionless
as statues within the open confes-
sionals ;
When I gleefully exchanged cop-
per coin of the realm for sticky,
very pink dulces and shared them
with my devoted little friends of
the fleeting hour;
When I sat myself down on some
mossy stone bench and made myself
believe I was one of the barefooted
masses, ragged, unwashed my one
possible supper an uncertain share
in the family dish of frijoles;
When I in a "blue" carriage (with
a fat, swarthy man on the box, in
1 82 Mexico City
a dazzling zarape and a tremendous
hat of black beaver and silver pas-
sementerie) arrived at the gates,
where, in the early starlight, were
crowded the sad-faced poor to catch
a glimpse of some great fete and
as I (this was such a pleasing, royal
fancy) directed my slaves to throw
handfuls of gold among the hungry-
eyed populace;
Who was unkind and rose up
with scornful finger to disturb my
dreamings and to remind me that
in reality I was a joyless, Ameri-
can drudge, an unconsidered unit of
a utilitarian, an avaricious mass?
A representative of a purely me-
chanical civilization and of a nation
of bosses and trusts and automatic
art?
' On the Viga Canal
An Idler's Note-Book 183
Of course I was sub-conscious all
the time of my nationality and the
dreadful other things; yet, in my
little vacation-world of romancing
and make-believe, I was quite too
generous to accent any such per-
sonal superiority or good-fortune.
So, while I wandered and listened
and wondered, I really made no
pretence of understanding Mexico
nor her mode of enchantment; and
while I promptly admitted her
charms, I refused to dissect them.
Those sadly analytic people who
explain so much and who can tell
why a little child likes bright red
and why one is joyous on a day in
springtime, are a positive menace
to sanity in an age too replete with
disillusions.
184 Mexico City
It is possible to wholly forget that
life is duty, in that enchanting
dream-country commonly spoken of
as Mexico; and, with periodic bun-
dles of books and papers from the
States, to forever luxuriate in ideally
tumbled - do^wn, Italianesque villas;
where, in the middle distances, bright
beings effectively group themselves
and where good natured little maids
come at the clap of the hand, and
unclose your eyes, when you feel
equal to the fatigue of gazing out
at the noon sunlight. This, in the
golden land of the Montezumas, is
an idyl and not in the least shiftless
and disgraceful.
Ah, yes! I might have been con-
tent to have dreamed away one
life-time down in Mexico somewhere,
An Idler's Note-Book 185
but it was not practicable and alas!
dreaming does not seem to be my
destiny.
But then, as the discomfited fox
suspected that certain grapes were
sour, so am I inclined to suspect
that my permanent Mexican content
would have proved a misleading
variety. Principally because.
And then what American - bred
young woman would unprotestingly
live in a country where there are
neither matinee clubs, nor women's
parliaments, nor bicycle teas, nor
pre-Raphaelite art societies, nor golf
tournaments, nor lovely Maeterlinck
circles?
The Woman of Mexico is serenely
happy. She doesn't work all her
1 86 Mexico City
male kinfolks assure her it isn't
lady-like. She is calm, she is sweet
and she is distractingly picturesque
when she wears her very own
clothes and headgear. And she has
the good taste to avoid morbid
self-scrutiny and idle self-culture.
We of the States may gaze at our
Mexican neighbor and covet all too
vainly the serene, lily-of -the -field
leisure apparently hers forever; but,
if we are not quite too superior,
we can be terribly avenged. We
can keep the shirt-waist and sailor-
hat in vogue they are absolutely
fatal to the feminine loveliness of
Mexico, so much vaunted. One
searches wearily for the typical Mex-
ican beauty in the fashionable crowds
driving on the Paseo or shopping on
An Idler's Note-Book 187
San Francisco Street. But some
late afternoon yon discover her as
she comes from confession, in a soft,
black gown and with the black re-
bozo draped coquettishly and dis-
creetly. She flits by, self-conscious
as a school miss you catch a flash
of fine, dark eyes, and, dropping
your manners, you turn to stare
adoringly after her.
Oh, dear! she too looks around
to see the details of your gown in
the back!
The Mexican man is admirable.
Hardly as nice as Kinelm Chillingly
or any of those other grandiloquent
old prigs of course, yet still adorable.
In this era even the unreasonable
spinsters admit that there should be
1 88 Mexico City
plenty of nice men in every well-
regulated community and landscape.
They are so decorative or so useful.
The Men of Mexico are really
quite as terrible as an army with
banners, when you happen to be in
one of your sixteenth-century moods
you forget all about Walter Raleigh
and Charles Grandison. For they are
such picturesque composites of heroic
old Aztec caciques (they, I under-
stand, were very admirable) and of
daring Spanish explorers and lord-
lings and of gay and graceful French
counts and lots of such people as
you once met everywhere between
book-covers.
But then, moods vary and there
are times no matter what the land-
scape when one really appreciates
An Idler's Note-Book 189
conversation with a man whose
idea of Woman is never for one
little minute according to Schopen-
hauer. Then sometimes, and a great
deal depends upon the background,
it is exquisite to listen to unhurried
and very involved compliments, such
as men with a touch of latinity
know best how to compose and to
speculate all the time how very hor-
rified the framers thereof would be,
could they only read your Philistine
thoughts as you dutifully smile and
smile like a pleased saw-dust doll.
Mexican men are agile and hand-
some usually in a small and unim-
pressive way and they have a great
deal of beautiful manner, and they
are always extremely decorative. But
I do wish their ball-clothes still in-
190 Mexico City
eluded slashed jackets with silver
buttons and large, tinkling spurs
and daggers with magic hieroglyphs
on the blade.
To them American women are
but riddles and American men un-
painted savages.
It is not, I am quite sure, the
dearth of elevators and pie and
soda-fountains and hot breads and
ice-water and telephones that makes
all American - bred young women
doubtful as to their permanent con-
tentment in a glorious country like
Mexico.
Is it the absence of civilized,
educated men who know how to
talk and to not talk to the fairly
intelligent and self-respecting human
beings that happen to be feminine?
An Idler's Note-Book 191
In the way of a little personal
confession and an unwilling one, I
myself had been so absorbed in my
dreamings and my bargainings in
the Thieves' Market that I had quite
forgotten to compare the Mexic and
American type of Man.
But one day, in the thick of a
gorgeous Mexican crowd, this dis-
graceful mental lapse promptly
ended. For it there happened that
I beheld two tall men (I just knew
they were Americans) collide with
great force and each other. Mirac-
ulously, it was not a total wreck.
I paused in amazement. Then great
and very distinctly spontaneous was
m 7 jy when I heard those two
men exclaim in perfectly lovely
nineteenth-century English :
192 Mexico City
"Great Caesar's Ghost! What are
you doing down in this neck of
woods?"
"Well, God bless my old soul!
I'm glad to see you! Shake!"
Now this was not spectacular, and
it was not exquisitely picturesque
like the other Mexican street-greet-
ings, yet it directly appealed to me
and made me think about things.
It is in Mexico inelegant for even
a servant to hurry, and so, as I
sauntered by with extreme nonchal-
ance and an unshed tear of sym-
pathy, I easily discerned that those
big aliens were mighty homesick.
But they knew it not, and, in their
blindness, what could they do but
just blame the infernal country?
And then as I walked on and
An Idler's Note-Book 193
grieved over their sinful inapprecia-
tion of the goodly land (they said
it was musty and God-forsaken),
I was made to recall anew the
brusqueness and the deep good-
nature and the beautiful sincerity
of the masculine type of the dear
and far country of which I had
dreamed at night.
It was near the Alameda that I
detected in the rainbow crowd a man
hustling his little daughter along in
the real American style, dragging
her through so much that amazed
her, so much that made her wide-
eyed. It was perfectly apparent that
he was an American, a man of
purpose and not too much poetry,
and even before he half turned and,
in the thick of that Mexican babel,
194 Mexico City
shouted unto her thus: "Come on,
kid come on! come on! Here! give
that old tramp two-bits. Now, come
along!"
I am sure I cannot tell why this
conspicuous haste and this additional
bit of nineteenth-century English
quite enchanted me; but I discov-
ered that I yearned to shake that
big man by the paw, that 1 wanted
to hunt up an ice-cream soda for
the little daughter.
But, again bowing to wretched
conventionalism even in a strange
land, I sadly meandered past my
fellow-citizen, who, I observed, again
broke schedule time, at the com-
mand of the small girl, to buy out
an old coral-bead woman.
That man was from our own
An Idler's Note-Book 195
magnificent West of that I was
sure. His were the lines about the
eyes and mouth that come to him
and who knows life in the open
country, unfenced, untrammeled,
and who, far from the chattering
crowds, turns "his face to the sun-
set and thinks quietly. Oh ! what 'a
lot of things we could have talked
about (in English!) down there in
Mexico, even in just fifteen min-
utes!
He could have told me the war-
news and of the last flop of the
foreign powers and of some start-
ling invention and of split-ups in
Congress and of some brand-new
book in the millionth edition! He
might have lacked graceful hand
flourishes and pretty bows and light-
196 Mexico City
ning-change facial expressions, but
(I'll wager every ancient idol I got
out at the Pyramid of the Sun one
perfect day) he would have talked
to me as to a rational member of
the species.
And so I have indulged the hope
that those three Yankees of that
afternoon walk did not tarry long in
our sister republic. For nice Amer-
ican men sometimes deteriorate in
Mexico, and, in process of time,
come to look upon their sister's place
in American society as quite too
exalted. Some of them announce
their entire willingness to shut her
up in dizzy towers and convents, or
to hire an old woman to watch her
when she goes to prayer-meeting or
to buy darning-cotton. Some men
An Idler's Note-Book 197
forget that a nation cannot rise
higher than its mothers.
But Mexico. Wherever I wan-
dered, Mexico proved herself so
direct in sympathy and so resource-
ful. For every gray moment, she
gave me a whole hour of rose-
color.
If I failed to see the Southern
Cross, I at least was so happy as
to behold trees decorated with great
bunches of intensely scarlet orchids.
If the volcanoes did persistently
swathe their heads in chiffon veils
of gray cloud; if the yellow fever
did detain us this side of the tierra
caliente, I could count unexpected
favors in the way of Murillos and
Van Dyckes and Guido Renis and
198 Mexico City
Teniers the Elder and adventure-
some jaunts to little story-book towns
with names so Aztec and histories
so thrilling as to petrify with many
an amazement.
If I walked three miles with two
cameras and then found the sun on
the wrong side of the street, I was
sure on my way back to chance
upon some old-time palace or church
or fountain that was simply unfor-
getable.
If my friends in the States forgot
my existence and wrote me no let-
ters I had only to go out into the
highways and compensate myself
discovering their Mexican doubles.
I found many of them, for there
are but a few distinct types and I
suppose they are universal, nation-
An Idler's Note-Book 199
ality and environment being so
largely an accident.
If it rained pitchforks, when I
had planned to stroll and to listen
to the boom and the shiver of the
mighty Santa Maria Guadalupe, or
to hear the band play to the masses
in the moonlit Zocalo with the great
Cathedral and the National Palace
looking like piles of purest marble
in the white radiance, I merely
rubbed my ring and awaited de-
velopments.
Results varied, but the genie un-
failingly appeared.
And then, one soulless day, I was
made to realize that in order to
prevent serious planetary disturb-
ances and a shut-down of the whole
2oo Mexico City +
economic machinery of America, I
must be in a certain corner of the
United States within just five days.
It was unspeakably dreadful, but I
roused me from the lethargy that
was a delight and was glad that the
utmost haste was required of me.
There never would have been
time in this life for goodbyes to
my Mexico.
It all seemed so dear and so
familiar to me.
How could I ever leave all those
fascinating market scenes and the
lovely old churches with flying but-
tresses and weeds blossoming high
on the roofs?
Then there was that princely
garden with the peacocks, where I
had so often loitered, waiting for a
An Idler's Note-Book 201
Rosetti or a Burne-Jones damsel who
never appeared.
Could my fine, aesthetic nature
ever again endure to be awakened
early in the morning by aught save
the pleasant music of the bells on
the old church of the Profesa? I
realized there would be infinite and
unlovely tests.
And then, always and ever, it
would be oh! for a breath of gar-
denias fresh from the hot lands !
And violets from near the Hill of
the Star!
There was my view from the old
cathedral-tower, with the snail-shell
stairway and the giant bells and, far
below the thick, bright crowds, with
the music, the color, the sunlight.
Far to the north, out near the
2O2 Mexico City
maguey-plantations, bloomed Nature's
own gardens for the little peon
women and children acres of wild
pink cosmos and long stretches, big
patches, strips and dots of scarlet,
of blue and of orange. I could
never forget those brown, gentle
people and those miles and miles
of flowers.
Yes, Mexico, my Mexico, had
been very rich in loveliness.
Travelers have long told us the
tale that Mexico, the land of amaz-
ing contrasts, is the most pictur-
esque country under the sun and
now I have some little reason to
believe that this is truth.
In the still of many summer noons
to come, I know I shall dream much,
An Idler's Note-Book 203
grieving and rejoicing, about this
beautiful neighbor of ours with the
tragic history, the goodly place
where no one is in an unseemly
haste and where unconcern for life's
exigencies is in inverse ratio to the
need.
And sometimes, to the poor Amer-
ican pilgrim, jaded with many anxi-
eties, with many ambitions, that
beautiful unconcern is a wondrous
tonic. He has rushed through the
years quite too contemptuous of the
Ideal Existence according to certain
old Greeks who knew all about it
and of modern Mexicans who now
know. Really, in these days the ant
should occasionally go to the slug-
gard and she should consider his ways
and be wise.
2O4 Mexico City
Poverty in rags, against a pink
background of crumbling wall and
with a hedge of aloe, a tangle of
tropic greenery and mossy church -
domes in the purple distance, seems
to fascinate some people in a de-
gree extraordinary.
But just let the wretched beggars
be decently clothed, freshen the wall
with whitewash, cut down the weeds,
stretch a barbed-wire fence and
cover the shaky old church with
shingles or corrugated-iron and those
very people promptly cease their
rhapsodizings and grieve in a way
quite incomprehensible to the mil-
lion.
Yet am 1, I here shamelessly and
impenitently confess it, one of the
mourning incomprehensibles one of
An Idler's Note-Book 205
those who only with reluctance will
acknowledge that Poetry is really a
poor and forsaken old thing. Or
just a legend.
But Progress, this great, blatant
march though there be many notes
harsh and discordant must really
not I suppose be regretted nor held
in disesteem; for we have many
times assured our unhappy selves
that Progress means many splendid
things, such as a sturdier lower
class, an enlightened, a well-fed
one.
Nevertheless, the unfortunates who
have all along suspected that for
Commerce and Industry must we
everywhere forego Beauty and Poetry
will shortly languish. They will
mourn anew and of all creatures be
206 Mexico City
the most dejected and wretched.
For Mexico, the serene land where
unreproached many hitherto did spend
in pleasant dreamings their little
hour ere they were hurried else-
where, has at last been entered by
the enemy. The shout of the van-
dal has already gone up. His ax
and his pick are never silent now;
his bucket of blue whitewash is as
inexhaustible as the sea.
The years are relentless, and they
will bring many changes and all
those nerve-wrecking things known
to us poor moderns as Advantages.
Will Mexico be happier then? And
better? Or merely less lovely?
One can learn vastly important
things down there in Mexico. I
An Idler's Note-Book 207
learned that to idle by the wayside
was as good as to try to get as
much money as Hetty Green and
that to tranquilly dream epics and
lyrics (principally lyrics) was as
good as to be as mentally restless
as a Corliss engine.
Ah! surely it was only when
America was younger and less com-
fortable that it was right to lead a
life of such furious industry to look
upon Pleasure only as a heresy.
So I did strike my breast and
cry Alack! when, in the Land of
the Noontide Calm, I heard that
penetrating voice of Dame Duty;
and, with all those tender farewells
of mine unsaid, with memories of
many marvelous things and with a
2o8 Mexico City
readjusted Theory of Averages, I
turned and came again into my
own country.
THE END
