Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/312

256 everything he possesses is "à la disposicion de Usted!" Yet, when his acquaintance has ripened into friendship, and he understands that you appreciate his tastes, his country, his language, his prejudices, his religion, and his habits, or do not visit him, as many foreigners have done, merely to scoff and condemn,—then, indeed, the social manners of the Mexican relax into intimacy, and the attention he bestows on you may be more firmly trusted because it was so cautiously yielded. The stranger who penetrates a Mexican house under such circumstances, finds its hospitality unbounded, and its generous inmates his devoted and faithful servants either for life or until he forfeits their esteem by treachery or misconduct.

In every Mexican church, monastery, convent, palace, house, hut, hovel, hacienda, or rancho, the traveller will not fail to observe an image of "The Virgin of Guadalupe." Many men receive the name of "Guadalupe," in baptism, and almost every woman has it added to the others she receives from her parents or sponsors. A saint whose tutelary influence is at once so national and so curious deserves especial mention in the notice of a country over whose people she is supposed to exercise a mysterious dominion; and we therefore present the reader the following translation from the