Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/80

 76 The unsuccessful revolutionist said the people were getting sick of Lerdo. He did nothing. They wanted railroads and emigration; he opposed both. He was Spanish, and not American. When some one told Diaz, the rival candidate, that he would be the next President, "No," said he, "there will never be another President. By that time I shall be an American citizen." This is, much of it, the talk of the outs against the ins—mere bosh—Diaz probably being as little of an American as Lerdo after he gets elected. Yet some say that railroad enterprises will receive a check, and that the new President will install himself with the Church and reactionary and anti-American party. I doubt it. He is too wise. If so, the revolution is only the surer, swifter, and completer. I believe he will verify his antecedents, and lead the country in liberty, education, and improvement. Our general debarks at the next station, and leaves the stage to three of us. Each takes a seat and stretches out ad libitum. Dust piles in on us as a covering, and, through the mouth, covering the inside as well as outside of the body. The moon shines clearly. "Tres jolie pour le voyageur" says the French lady. (Very pleasant for the traveler.) Indeed it is. The hills stand out clearly. The cactus hugs the dusty road, as thick-set as an English hedge or New England bramble-bushes on a country roadside. Its tall leaves tower like huge crowns, and show not so much the richness of the soil as the intensity of the heat. The organ variety is quite frequent, and looks, as it lines the road in the gray moonlight, as if we were riding through Springfield Arsenal. This does not make the terror less, unless we change the feeling, and fancy our road is through a vast organ. That changes the night to music, though we can not quite complete the quotation, and say,

 The cares infesting the day Have folded their tents like Arabs, And silently stole away."

Cares, or fears, which are the soul of cares, still encamp about. A few shots from the sun will scatter them all. Here we are, six