Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/56

 a pecuniary burden added. But he charged for it, as I say.

"Well, good-night," he said, saluting us as patrons.

"Wass you wants?" And, after having passed the long, shady strip of park called the Alameda, he even ventured upon a certain facetiousness, as, "Wills you to want a wiskey?" He had learned this proud acquirement in the military service on the frontiers of Texas.

A long, dark ride conveyed us to the principal hotel. As it was once the palace of the Emperor Iturbide, after whom it is named, it should have something stately about it, and so it has. There is a high, sculptured door-way, of an Aztec touch in the design, though not in the details, and long, grotesque water-spouts project into the street. Within is a large, dark, arcaded court, from which open café and billiard-room, the leading resort of the golden youth of the town. The office is a dark little box of a place, with two serious functionaries, who seem to receive the visitor only with suspicion. The gorgeous and affable hotel clerk of northern latitudes is unknown. In the rear are more courts, not arcaded; and around all of these the rooms are ranged in several stories.

It is not so late on the evening of his arrival but that the traveller may, after dinner, still take a stroll. He will be apt to fancy at first, from the quietude, that his hotel is not on a principal street; but it is in the most central part of the city—on the street which, with three others running parallel for say half a mile, and the included cross-streets, contain the principal retail traffic.

It is an early discovery that Mexico is a grave and not a gay city. There are no crowds on the sidewalks, no eating of ices in public, no cafés chantants, nothing