Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/74

72 centre of each circle is to be filled with a monument or statue, surrounded by a garden with fountains and flowers, around which on each side the avenue sweeps superbly. But a land cannot have too many pastimes; and the favorite one here, of revolution, checks such minor matters as internal improvement and decoration, so that only three of these pretty pleasure-grounds have been finished in twenty years: the other four are as yet in outline. Through this magnificent driveway hundreds and hundreds of brilliant equipages pass and repass in the late afternoon, — the carriages full of brightly dressed ladies, the servants in splendid but showy livery, and the jeunesse dorée, more gilded than ever under this Oriental sun, dashing on their small, fiery steeds through the central space. The young girls wear flowers in their dark hair; the elders drape head and shoulders in the soft black lace of the mantilla, which adds a new grace to even a homely woman; the cavaliers are valiant in all the picturesque bravery that youth can dare or money purchase; and a gay whirlwind of nods and smiles, and that fascinating little Mexican greeting which is spoken with the fingers, blows