Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/57

Rh The government residences are being tastefully arrayed, and coats of white, yellow, and blue wash are spread over all the buidings surrounding the square. I never knew before how easily and cheaply one can renew the face of a soiled wall. That cathedral looks as if built yesterday. True, if it should rain to-night, it would be badly streaked, but it can not rain, for

 To-morrow will be the happiest day of all the glad New-year; To-morrow will be, of all the year, the maddest, merriest day;" For Vera Cruz is joined to Mexico, and Lerdo comes this way.

This last line is not in Tennyson.

To-morrow came, but not the President. Every body dressed himself in his best: the streets were trimmed with lanterns; a green pavilion was arranged at the station; but he came not. Announced at ten, re-announced at five, the soldiers marched down the streets, all colors, officers and privates, and all mixed together, just as they ought to be in the United States. The people fill the balconies, house-tops, and walls. The boys jeer, and hoot, and whistle, as if they were Yankees. Still he comes not.

Somebody drops a real in the passage-way, kept open for him by the soldiers, and a bit of a black boy, very pretty and very prettily dressed, is pushed out for it by older boys, white and olive, who dare not risk the attempt themselves. A soldier holds him back. His mother, a bright, comely lady, stands behind him, watching him with mingled fear and admiration. She is afraid those olive-colored gamins, of fourteen years or thereabouts, full of roguery and rascality, will burn her boy's fingers in pulling that most desirable silver chestnut out of the martial fire.

While all, officers, soldiers, lads, and loungers, are intent on that shining mark, a bright boy, dirty and brown, in the employ of the street lamp-lighters, comes down the path to help locate some temporary lamp-posts, sees the real, catches it, and is off, amidst the laugh of the crowd. So the successful man is often the last on the field of conflict.

It grows dark, and we give it up, and so do many others. At