Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/165

Rh it is likewise too personal for friendship. One can judge of the absolute result better by listening to the strain.

The chief value of the book lies without doubt in the insight it gives concerning a phase of Mexican character little credited by the outside world,—the appreciation of woman. The preface might be quoted entire, for the elevation of its sentiment and the purity of its ideal of the sex. Space allows us to choose only one of its lighter and more graceful thoughts, interpolated in the prose text to give the editor's conception of the theme which inspired the volume:—

 'And what is Poesy?' she said. As laughingly she questioned me. 'The smile upon thy lips; the red, Ripe bloom upon thy cheek so fair; The glinting of thy golden hair; Those flashing eyes that scorn control; Thy budding form; thy waking soul— Thou, thou thyself art Poesy!'"

The first number is dedicated to Carmen Romero Rubio de Diaz, wife of the president. It is in a more hackneyed vein, and neither so graceful nor so expressive as many of the others. We may