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112 toward a pulque counter, and that she tossed off a pint tumbler full with as much sang-froid as you would show in taking a glass of ice-water. But she did it with so airy a grace, and with an abandon so different from the usual timid aspect of her sex, that it was irresistible.

The people were better dressed here, the serapes finer, the sandals more like proper foot-coverings, than in any place we had so far reached. There were fewer of the very poor, fewer cripples and beggars and unemployed, than even in the City of Mexico; consequently the general air of content and happiness was greater. The churches offered an embarrassment of riches, and both public buildings and plazas were exceptionally well kept. Its cleanliness was marked, and a corresponding degree of healthfulness made it doubly attractive. At the Hotel de Diligencias, where we had our second purely Mexican dinner, the tables were laid under the arches of the upper gallery of the inner court, under hanging baskets of flowers, with climbing vines and strange shrubs rising from pots of deep blue pottery placed closely around the light balustrade which separated us from the open air. The deep sky,