Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/381

 Rh first admits you to the rest of the stables. The room where I write opens into the court on the left. After passing the porter's room into the court, turn to the left, first door; enter. There I sit at a table, with a tallow-dip upon it. Three single cots are in the room, and all occupied to-night; floor of hard earth, every thing comfortable. It is no worse, though less pretentious, than the hotel at Ceral. It is not so disagreeable. My fellow room-mates are a Mexican gentleman, and a German youth of nineteen, who left home to escape the draft, and is to make his residence in Durango. He took the precaution to arrange at Brownsville to become an American citizen at twenty-one. So Bismarck and Moltke have lost him for their battle of Dorking. The Germans do not like to "train" any more than the Americans or English; "'tis not their trade." They will have to abandon that purpose, and trust, as do their kin, to patriotism to defend what patriotism, more than military training, won.

This bright boy is afflicted, as most boys and men are here, with a tendency toward Cognac, and yet complains of the very ailments Cognac pre-eminently induces. When will the good cause of total abstinence preserve youth and men from this dire curse?

Let us run over the log of the day. Out and off at four, in a magnificent starlight, as clear and lustrous as a Northern coldest winter's night, and as warm as a Northern summer's. It chills a little in the riding, and a bonfire of corn-stalks at the first posta is not disagreeable. A peon has kindled the fire, and stands over it in his white cotton trowsers and shirt, with his zerape round his shoulders, his feet bare save of sandals and thongs. He is on a walk from Mattejuala, to work on a road for three reals (thirty-seven and a half cents) a day. Think of that, ye who are giving Irishmen three dollars, and sending to China for substitutes. Here are millions of industrious and ingenious gentlemen—I use that word in both senses—whom you can get for a dollar, and they will think themselves wealthy. Let our Samsons find China at their doors.

The apple and quince trees hang full of blossoms, in a garden