Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/310

254 requirements of a forced hospitality, and consequently it affords all the pleasures of general society without the necessity of expensive entertainment. There are great disadvantages attending upon this constant dwelling in the public eye and in the blaze of artificial light; yet it is so agreeable a mode of killing time in Mexico, that the habits or the nature of the people must change essentially before we may expect to find them surrounding nightly the domestic hearth instead of the dramatic stage. Yet we should not be unjust to the Mexicans in this condemnation of one of their agreeable habits, which originates perhaps as much in their climate as in their tastes. Fine skies and genial atmospheres drive people into the open air. Wintry winds, desolate heaths, ice and snow, gather and group them into the nestling places of home. When houses become in this way mere shelters instead of shrines we might well pardon the taste which leads a sensitive people to enjoy the beautiful landscape as long as day permits it to be seen, or to retreat, at nightfall, into those splendid theatres in which they may behold the mimic representation of that varied activity of life to which their monotonous career is a comparative stranger.

Nevertheless, a well-bred Mexican family is one of the most delightful circles into which a genteel stranger can be admitted. The