Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/167

 Rh the Indians a lesson, the viceroy had erected the statue of an Indian weeping, in the same attitude as the real one, sitting with his back to the wall, which remained there until the house was demolished, when the statue was sent to the museum. But the street did not change its name.

The street-car system is admirable. First and second-class cars are yellow and green, and every ten, fifteen, thirty, or sixty minutes they leave the Zócalo all in a line, one after another, on their rounds, some of which include a radius of from ten to twenty miles.

Every moment in the day the ear is regaled with the unmelodious tooting of a cow's horn in the hands of the car driver. These men manage to extract more muscular exertion from their mulas than ever did a hard-hearted Sambo.

As the street-car lines have their second and third-class lines, with prices to correspond, so also is the cab system regulated.

The distinction in prices is indicated by flags. Carriages bearing a blue flag are first class, and may be had for $1.00 an hour, while a red flag is second class and costs 75 cents; a white flag shows a third-class coach, price 50 cents an hour. No deviation from these rules is allowed save on feast-days. But as those who dance must pay the piper, so, also, he who rides in a Mexican cab must pay the driver his fee of a medio for is pulque.

One great convenience in these cabs is a cord which is worn on the arm of the driver, one end being in the carriage, so that the passenger may at any time call an instantaneous halt without exhausting his lungs.

The iron-handed law at the Federal capital is unrelenting toward cabmen, and as the rates are posted in each vehicle and the drivers are all numbered, there is no necessity for an over-charge. Americans, with their profligacy in small change, are the most easily imposed upon, but if they make complaint the abuse is at once corrected, and the driver stands a chance of losing his position.

There is no fire department to speak of: as the buildings are either of stone or some other fire-proof substance, a conflagration is