Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/573

 Rh and be freely invited to a place at their board, but to receive money for anything but the rent would be an infringement upon their established usages and ideas of hospitality.

While the vegetables, meats, and fruits are not so high as in the United States, and are generally better, other necessaries make expenses mount up amazingly.

American men accommodate themselves quite readily in Mexico to the inconveniences of the home life—natural enough, when they have none of the worry—but, with a few exceptions, I have never seen an American woman in the country who was not continually pining to return home.

So far, no educational advantages exist for American children; and this of itself is a source of great perplexity. But the children themselves are extremely adaptable to everything in the country, learning the language with wonderful rapidity, and in their childish communications adopting the customs of Mexican children. Like these, they are universally petted and adored by all classes, from the servants to the highest society. I have seen one American child engage the attention and interest of every Mexican in a railway car. An American gentleman and his wife who had resided a number of years in Mexico, and had had four children born to them in that country, were returning to Texas. These little ones had completely identified themselves with the country of their nativity and repudiated that of their fathers. Soon after crossing the Rio Grande, they stopped at a ranch house, and seeing some other American children bare-footed, they ran excitedly to their mother, exclaiming with mingled scorn and pity, "Mira, mama! las gringitas sin zapatitas! ("Look, mamma! those little gringos without shoes!")

Anglo-Mexican children will never admit that they have American blood in them.

Generally there is but little social interchange between the women of the two countries; but when it takes place, warm friendships are apt to ensue. I wish my countrywomen residing there would make more effort in this direction, that the people of both countries might