Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/36

Rh men or by contracting national loans which may finally overwhelm the republic.

The church, the army, and the government, are thus three permanent resources for young persons who are too indolent to engage in mercantile pursuits, or too proud to stoop from their hereditary family rank either into trade or the workshop.

Bad as are these social features, there is another which may be reckoned still worse. There are thousands in the republic whose daily reliance is exclusively on fortune, and for whom the turn of a card decides whether they are to return to their comfortless families with a plentiful dinner, or without a cent upon which they may, to-morrow, recommence their contest with luck at the gambling table. This is a dreadful vice when it becomes habitual among a naturally susceptible, thriftless and procrastinating people like the Mexicans. Prodigal not only of their gold but of their time, they squander the latter without ever reflecting that it is the capital of industrious men. They regard business as a burden, and put off, whenever they are permitted, a debt, an engagement, or a duty, "hasta manana"—until tomorrow!

We are perhaps wrong in alleging that every duty is procrastinated, and life given up exclusively to pleasure; for the genuine Mexican is strict and punctual in the performance of, at least, the externals of religion. The pious observances of the church, are, however, even more generally rigorous among the women than the men.

The Mexican females in the upper ranks are badly, if at all, educated. Few foreign modern improvements have been engrafted on the old Spanish system of teaching, whilst the subjects taught, and the text-books used, are quite as primitive. At home, the Mexican lady is obsequiously served by devoted domestics, but is brought up without a personal knowledge of a housewife's thrifty duties. The evil influence of such vacant minds upon the male sex must, necessarily, be very great. If the intellect does not suggest topics for conversation, it is natural that the instincts will supply the deficiency. Thus it is that the life of large numbers of Mexican men is summed up in devotion to their horses, their queridas, and their favorite gambling tables; whilst the existence of Mexican women is as easily divided between mass, meals, dress, driving, and the theatre.

Yet we will not be tempted by an epigrammatic sentence, into condemnation of the whole of Mexican society. It would be