Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/245

Rh welcome arrival of the stage, which only once in two days is visible to the naked eye, and which is the only vehicle I have seen in all the town—a rarity, therefore, of a double value, in its contents and in itself. They gaze at the top seat, whose occupants are so busy, bobbing their heads to escape the lamps hanging on ropes across the middle of the street, that they can not gaze back in return.

The scamper ends in flying through a portal and coming to a sharp halt in the court of the Hotel Diligencias, as all the best hotels are called in this country.

To give you a taste of tropical perfection, I shall have to make a journal of my two days' stay in Cuernervaca. I hardly expected to stay as many waking hours. The cave, forty miles away, I could but dimly see by faith, and did not see at all by sight. One of the party was sick, and delayed his coming. We waited for him, but I did not go with them after his arrival. My vacation was no vacation. I made an inspection of the town for business, but also had some time to spare for enjoying its less official aspects.

Do you remember Poe's lines "to Ellen?" If not, get it, and read in it the description of this tiny city and its not tiny surroundings:

You have, of course, read William Morris's "Earthly Paradise?" It is cold in its warmest colorings to this natural and actual paradise. It is just the right length, too, for this lassitudinarian climate and people. Its oversweet prolixity exactly fits a land where "dulces," which are sweetmeats, preserves, and pastry all in one, are of very many varieties, and the tart and lemon-juice never acetate their sweetness; where even the lemons themselves lose their acidity, and are sweet to tastelessness, and lemonade is only half- sweetened ice-water. Tennyson's "Lotos -Eaters" also is a sample of the clime, except that he puts too much vigor into the thought, a blunder of which Morris is never guilty, thought being as far from his mind as from a Cuernervaca belle's or mule's.