Page:Mexico of the Mexicans.djvu/43

Rh of much poetry. In his address there is little halting, no searching for words, no hesitation. He is fluent and eloquent—if he is young, perhaps too eloquent. Both in writing and speaking, he employs terms which appear to the colder Anglo-Saxon strained and exaggerated, but which to him are mere phrases of use and wont, lacking which his speech would seem to those who listen cold and insincere. He is idealistic to a degree, and possesses a keen sense of the aesthetic and beautiful in all its manifestations. It is not his Spanish origin alone which endows him with the rich gift of the seeing eye, for the despised Indian, whose blood flows in the veins of the noblest Mexican families, is extraordinarily talented in this respect, having a quick and appreciative sense for colour and form, and a quite distinguished musical ability. The gifted stock which old Spain sent to the shores of Anahuac has not only been quickened by intermixture with native blood, but has, perhaps, grown more eloquent, more rich aesthetically, by reason of the semi-tropical environment in which it has been placed.

It is difficult for a foreigner to advance an opinion concerning the women of the Mexican upper classes, because of the restraint in which they are held by custom and etiquette—a restraint almost Oriental, and dating from the Moorish usage of female seclusion in old Spain. Mexican girls of the upper classes are most jealously sheltered by their parents, and duennaship is prevalent. The whole life of the Mexican woman centres in love and marriage. Before the latter event, her social intercourse with men is of the scantiest, and she is usually "seen and not heard." Dark and Castilian in appearance, she possesses great feminine charm, ripening at an early age and usually attaining the appearance and proportions of maturity when most Anglo-Saxon maidens are in the transition stage of "flapper"-hood. She is romantic in the extreme, and prone to the consumption of novellas which recount the exploits of mediaeval dames and