Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/44

42 were relatively large to these primitive people, we have yet to find the first instance of cheating or of theft. Not only this, but some examples of most stubborn and improbable honesty have appeared in our own set of experiences, which in a party of seventy-five must be reasonably large. Is New York or Chicago, where the inhabitants are obliged to chain door-mats to steps, and fasten burglar-alarms to windows, where pickpockets throng the city thoroughfares, and shoplifters prowl about counters under the dazed eyes of detectives, — is New York going to throw the first stone? Or Boston, where sneak-thieves snatch weekly washings from the lines in back yards, and a bundle left for sixty seconds on the seat of a horse-car is gone from sight forever, as completely as the lost Pleiad? Why should we point a blunt moral in Mexico, which could be given a sharper tip in any large city of our own beloved Union?

Every thing unforeseen is possible here. We are walking through the days that follow the Arabian Nights. Each class of the population wears the garb which is the uniform of its occupation. The water-carrier, in armor of leather, bears