Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/143

Rh four of her masculine comrades executed in twenty-four hours after her revelation.

But there is no less danger in leaving the city. The country is full of robbers. Stage-coaches are rifled on every road. The Government is powerless to protect life or property. Yet one might as well die by the robbers as be scared to death through fear of being robbed. "Faint heart never won fair lady," or any thing else.

a great thing to say, if we mean all it includes, though many trip over the distich as though it were only pretty poetry.

Our point objective is Pachuca. You have heard of the silver mines of Mexico. Who has not? Curiosity and churchianity led our first steps to these treasures. We wanted to see what had made Mexico so attractive, and how she could be made more so. Miss Kilmansegg would not have been worth much without her precious leg, and Mexico would have been let alone as severely as the Central African governments, but for her precious legacy. But these treasures are useless to this country unless Christ go with them and before them. They have poured forth hundreds and thousands of millions into the lap of earth; they have enriched thrones and subjects in all lands; they control the merchandise of China and India to-day. Yet the nation that produces them is poor and ignorant and blind and naked; a nation peeled and robbed by its own masters; a nation of blood and strife and desolation. How its splendid ceremonials of service, and magnificent altars and vestments, and golden shrines, and silver altar railings, and unbounded pomp and parade are rebuked by this poverty and peacelessness of its people! Christ must come to Mexico. Even so, come Lord Jesus, and come quickly.

The text for this sermon was Pachuca and Real del Monte, or Royal Mount. If a pun were allowable, it might be anglicized into Mount of Reals, the silver York shilling of the country, or worse yet, and more Englishy, into the Real Mount, for most people would