Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/465

Rh "Here Colonel, come in here please, and tell this stupid thing that I want 'em all!" he exclaimed as he caught sight of me.

"Todos Señor? Todos?" replied the woman at the counter, with an expression of anxiety and doubt on her face, as she turned appealingly to me.

"No, cuss you no! I said all, didn't I? Don't try to run no todos on me; I want 'em all!" shouted John, seizing the box and pulling it from her reluctant hand. "Blast her, she is trying to retail them to me by the todos, when I told her more than forty times over, that I wanted 'em all!"

I explained to the irate descendant of Ham, that todos and all, were synonymous terms in the two languages.

"Then why did'nt she say so at once, and not keep me here fooling all day?" was his emphatic rejoinder as he threw down the two dollars demanded and left the shop, shaking his head wrathfully, and evidently more disgusted with the country and everything in it than ever before.

We staid over night at Palmar, an old Indian town twenty leagues from Puebla, and lodged at a fonda. There is nothing at Palmar worth describing—at least I saw nothing.

The splendidly uniformed commander of the Rural Guard of Puebla, mounted on a fleet little bay horse, all life and fire, with saddle, bridle, stirrups, holsters, etc., etc., one mass of beautifully wrought silver, accompanied us from Puebla to Orizaba. At intervals of about twenty miles, the guard of twenty-five to fifty men, all similarly mounted and presenting a magnificent appearance as they dashed along at full speed by