Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/27

Rh remembering the filth of Chicago and New York, if our sallow Eastern skins could ever show so beneficent a change of color.

The plan of spending our days visiting or sightseeing, passing to the next important point in the cool of the evening, and resting luxuriously for the night drawn up on some quiet sidetrack, works wonderfully well. There is something gorgeous in the idea of a special train, that moves when one pleases and rests when one desires; that goes on like an obedient carriage-horse, stopping here to let you pick flowers, and there for fear of disturbing your after-dinner coffee; that meets you with welcome, homelike face after each new pilgrimage into the strange, unknown country; that offers you plenty of plump pillows and soft cushions to poultice the bruises of fatigue. It is a little nest of such comfort and luxury as these Mexican cities, enchanting as they are as studies and full of brilliant novelty, have not as yet the slightest conception. To come back from a tiresome and exciting ride in quest of pleasure or information; to find your quarters swept and garnished; your neighbors in their customary places; the judge's pretty wards at their