on solid, cumbrous wheels made from a single round of a tree-trunk, and fashioned into shape by hard labor. The bronze-skinned, bare-legged beggar dozing against some crumbling corner of a white adobe wall; the mule-teams with jingling bells, clattering harness, and shouting driver; the horsemen dashing across the glaring plains, swarth and picturesque in their brilliant riding-scarfs, — what is there to remind us of the staid, sober American life, as ugly as it is comfortable? It is all Oriental, even to the barking dogs that howl through the dark streets by night to quicken the footsteps of the wayfarer.
Now and again, amid this bewilderment of romantic effects, some fine example of practical prosperity is found, as in the Industrial School of Guadelupe, a suburb of Zacatecas. This institution was designed for the training of orphan boys, and is supplied with the means necessary for turning out finished workmen in any one of sixteen different trades. The two hundred and seventy pupils are given a good common-school education, together with practical instruction which places the means of livelihood in their hands from the moment of leaving school. Masons, bootmakers, tailors, printers, farmers, carpenters, telegraph operators, were being here prepared for active life, under care of the Government; a primary department, a school for the deaf and dumb, and a general training in music, also entered into the programme of the institution; and the plan as a whole was in such successful and happy operation, as made it the most satisfactory proof of promise for the future we had yet met in Mexico. The children's faces were bright and animated: employment invariably lifts the people out of the sad and resigned aspect which otherwise seems habitual to them. Indeed, a very short time in the country is sufficient to convince one of the falsity of American views regarding it. We have heard of the people as lazy, which is an absolute mistake. They are often idle from want of occupation; but where idleness may be only a question of circumstances, laziness is an inherent vice. They are not only ready for employment, but anxious to procure it. They work with an earnestness and honesty that shame our slovenly Northern laborers, whose chief anxiety seems to be to accomplish the smallest amount in a given time. Digging in the fields, carrying water, bearing burdens, the Mexicans work without ears, eyes, or concern for aught save the object in hand: they spare themselves no more than if they were burros or horses. We were told that they were dirty, and their towns filthy. We found them dirty, as regards personal cleanliness, in towns like Chihuahua and Zacatecas, where water has to be dipped with a gourd from the basin of a stone fountain, with scores awaiting their turn, or bought from a carrier. But in Aguas Calientes, where the warm waters which give the place its name run through the ditches, the population was constantly bathing, or washing clothes; and there was no suspicion of uncleanliness. Under the circumstances, a similar leaning toward dirt would be found among our own poor people; while the bath of the rich Mexican is as much a necessity as his morning coffee. The bare, poor houses and narrow cobble-paved streets are always perfectly clean. Every city of any size in the republic is swept each morning with whisk-brooms and dust-pans. Imagine New-York's Broadway or Boston's Washington Street subjected to a like process! But there is unfortunately absolutely no knowledge of sanitary conditions to supplement this fine wholesome sweeping away of abuses. Drainage and health departments are yet in swaddling-clothes. We have been warned about their thieving propensities, and the ingenuity of their devices to obtain unlawful possession of others' goods and chattels. After visiting twenty cities, and wandering at will through strange and crowded quarters; after displaying in market-place and arcade sums of money, which, though small enough in themselves, were relatively large to these primitive people, we have yet to find the first instance of cheating or of theft. Not only this, but some examples of most stubborn and improbable honesty have appeared in our own set of experiences, which in a party of seventy-five must be reasonably large. Is New York or Chicago, where the inhabitants are obliged to chain door-mats to steps, and fasten burglar-alarms to windows, where pickpockets throng the city thoroughfares, and shoplifters prowl about counters under the dazed eyes of detectives, — is New York going to throw the first stone? Or Boston, where sneak-thieves snatch weekly washings from the lines in back yards, and a bundle left for sixty seconds on the seat of a horse-car is gone from sight forever, as completely as the lost Pleiad? Why should we point a blunt moral in Mexico, which could be given a sharper tip in any large city of our own beloved Union?
Every thing unforeseen is possible here. We are walking through the days that follow the Arabian Nights. Each class of the population wears the garb which is the uniform of its occupation. The water-carrier, in armor of leather, bears his heavy jar suspended from a band around the forehead; the ochre-man, stained like a terra-cotta image from head to foot, carries his package of brick-colored clay above his matted, gory locks; the fruit-vender, crying his luscious wares in sudden, shrill monotone, balances his enormous pannier on his head, and steps as airily as if he were beginning a fandango. Under the open arches of the portales the crockery merchant sits before his pile of Guadalajara jars and brightly glazed pottery; Indian women carry their double load of baskets and babies with the superb indifference to fatigue which marks their race; dealers in "frozen waters" call their sherbets in prolonged, piercing notes like those of a midsummer locust; sidewalk cooks squat on their haunches beside small fires of mesquite, over which bubble earthen dishes of stewed vegetables, frijoles, or crisp tortillas; and flower-girls surrounded by piles of glowing poppies, pyramids of heliotrope and pansies, baskets of scarlet cactus blossoms, and tangled heaps of superb roses magnificent in color and perfume, fill the atmosphere with brilliant beauty. No wonder the winter world at home looks pale and cold by contrast! We shall remember Irapuato with love and delight, when the memory of perhaps better places has faded, because there, one hot, dusty midsummer afternoon of March, we bought Indian baskets of woven grass full of luscious strawberries, and reached refreshment and coolness through the base medium of dos reales, vulgarly known as a quarter. The state of business enterprise in the country may be gauged from the fact, that while the little town and its surrounding district overflow with this delicious fruit, and are within ten or twelve hours' distance of Mexico, it never has entered any original mind to establish connection between the two points, and bring the country product into the city market. So that while strawberries go begging for customers at Irapuato, customers go begging for strawberries in the capital, and neither finds what it wants. The guide-books speak of Queretaro as having forty-six churches. If you should chance to be there on Sunday morning, you will think it has at least a hundred and forty-six; that every church has three towers, every tower three bells, and that every bell is cracked. It would be beyond human endurance elsewhere, but the lighter air of this high altitude makes the sound so faint and tinkling that one is more amused than annoyed. Only the clapper is moved in the act of ringing; and one is haunted all through Mexico by a constant vibrant clatter from these petulant tongues, that reminds one of the "damned iteration" of the old poet.
Outside the city, in the pleasant sabbath silence, the fine trees of the Alameda tempered the hot air with shadows; and along all the paths, leading as is customary toward the central fountain, hedges of pale pink roses, with the richest perfume we ever found, even in the regal Jacqueminot, lined each side with luxuriant beauty. The courtesy which had made our way easy so far followed us here, and allowed us to revel in great handfuls of these beautiful things, which scarcely showed a gap in their full ranks after the party had satisfied their cravings. We found ourselves, in rambling about, tired enough to rest upon one of the carved stone seats which have been a source of such delight to us in every town and city so far. Soon one of the uniformed police on duty near by approached, saluted, and in voluble, respectful, sweet Spanish, endeavored to make us comprehend that we were in some way transgressing rules. Unable to reach our understanding through the medium of the tongue, he had recourse to pantomime; and it dawned slowly upon our night of ignorance, that the kindly little man desired us to walk about under his guidance to look at the attractions of the spot. He loaded himself with our wraps and impedimenta, lifted his hat again with the bow of a born courtier, and, silent but eloquent, drew our attention to this or that effect, led us here and there through shaded alleys, picked for us now and again an unusually gorgeous rose, and followed with persistent helpfulness to the door of the Pullman. Even the natural conclusion of a "tip" had to be forced upon him instead of being waited for, and we spent a half-hour of deep mental introspection in trying to comprehend how this product of a semi-civilized state should so outrank his prototype at home in every outward sign which goes to mark the gentleman. Imagine the manner in which two plainly
