Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/96

 90 That is already done, and this writing is in a square and handsome parlor, for which the sum of forty dollars a month is paid; too costly for a long stay, but as Methodist preachers never continue in one stay, it may answer for a temporary sojourn.

Yet, costly as it is in this city, it is less than half, if not less than a third, what a like apartment could be rented for in a city of the States. With board at its fonda, or restaurant, at thirty-five dollars a month—four meals a day if you wish, and all you ask for at each meal—the whole expense is less than two dollars and a half a day, better for room and food than could be got in New York for four dollars a day. This may be reduced a little, yet not much. Board can not be much less, this ranging only at about one dollar a day; but rooms, unfurnished, may be had for a fourth of this amount, and furnished, if you take one looking on a court instead of the street, in any of the hotels, for about one-half. In this hotel they are twenty-five dollars; very clever rooms, too.

This long preamble is given for two reasons: first, to give you assurance of the practical nature of our mind, so that any fantasies of eulogy over Mexico and its environs into which we may subsequently fly may be considered exceptional, and not normal; and, second and chief, that any of our ice-bound, snow-driven, sleet-covered, cold-racked, and so-on-suffering friends of the North, who may have made more money than they are willing to give the Church, though not more than they ought to give, may know where to come and spend it and the winter.

It is a paradise of climates. The air is just right every day. A light cape is all you want across your shoulders, and that is to be worn in the house rather than out-of-doors, for the houses are cooler than the street. Flowers and fruits are everywhere, and very excellent in taste and looks. Great bouquets of violets and other delights, packed in the mechanical French fashion, learned, it is said, from the French, and improved on by the Aztec, are offered you for a York shilling and upward. The flower-girls stand or sit at the corners of the streets, sometimes old men and women, with their big and little bouquets on the sidewalk about