Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/571

Rh By all means let some enterprising spirits establish goose ranches. Strangers are particularly impressed with the unyielding pillows and beds, encountered everywhere in hotels; and with few exceptions they are little different in private houses.

Both climate and soil are favorable to the production of broom-corn, and, as the native manufacturers are less skilled in broom-making than in almost anything else, I surely think this manufacture would be a desirable enterprise. American brooms, when obtainable, cost one dollar apiece.

I could go on enumerating the smaller industries which would find a ready demand, and require but little capital. But it is unnecessary. It has only been my aim to show that everything stands waiting for the ready hand and determined will of some who may desire to begin life in that old country on a moderate scale and grow to affluence.

There is no opening whatever for either American matches or match-makers; for the matches of the Mexican match-maker are matchless; a rule that holds good in more ways than one, and may even apply to scenes from the balcony.

I have found an elysium for the Smiths, Browns and Joneses. By merely crossing the Rio Grande, they will find themselves answering to extremely high-flown names, without legal or legislative intervention, or arousing the suspicion that they left their country for their country's good. Plain William Brown becomes Guillermo Moreno, James Smith flows off euphoniously into Santiago Esmith, while John Jones murmurs in the mellifluous Castilian as Don Juan Jo-nis (Huan Honis).

The very serious question of American families taking up their residence in Mexico is one that demands especial care. We of the United States have such a profusion of comforts, even among the plainer classes, that it is not to be expected of an American woman to settle herself contentedly in her Mexican home with the scanty allowance of furniture and otherwise primitive household arrangements she there encounters. As before stated, hotel life is not proper or customary for families, and there are no boarding-houses; the whole