Page:Life in Mexico vol 2.djvu/214

194, when a boy, being sent with a commission to the Viceroy Revillagigedo, and being very much frightened, but soon re-assured by the kind reception of the Representative of Majesty. He spoke of the flourishing condition of the mint in those days, which coined twenty-seven millions annually, and was a royal house. He said that the viceroys used to praise them and to thank them for their exertions; that the house was then kept in the most perfect order, the principal officers wearing a uniform, &c.

Hereupon, another old gentleman took up the theme, and improved upon it; and told us, that, on one occasion, they had one million three hundred thousand dollars' worth of gold in the house; and described the visit of the Vice-Queen Yturriguray, who came to see it, and sat down and looked round her in amazement at the quantity of gold she saw accumulated. This old gentleman had been thirty years in The mint, and seemed as though he had never been anywhere else; as if he were part and parcel in it, and had been coined, and beat out, and clipped there.

Hearing him, another, a fat man, rather unclipt-looking than otherwise, began to bewail the state of the times, till it was a chorus universal, where all sang in one key. One had a very large, underhanging lip, with a kind of tragi-comic countenance, and was constantly making lugubrious puns. Another, who seemed bred to the mint, (though by his account the mint was not bread to him) was insatiably curious, as a man born in a mint might be. We passed about three hours in a mixture of admiration of the