Page:Six Months In Mexico.pdf/200

198 According to law every door must be locked at ten o'clock, and all those entering afterward must pay the patero for unlocking and unbarring the heavy portals.

The poor, when dead, are carried to the graveyard on the heads of cargadores. If the coffin is only tied shut with a rope, it is borrowed for the occasion. The body is taken out at the cemetery and consigned, coffinless, to mother earth.

The Mexicans began to call the Americans gringos during the war. They say the way the title originated was this: at that time an old ballad, "Green grows the Rushes, O!" was very popular, and all the American soldiers were singing it. The Mexicans could only catch "green grows" and so they have ever since called the Americans "gringos."

Newspapers are published every day in the week except Monday. Sunday is always a feast day, and as no one will work then, the paper cannot be gotten out for Monday.

Mexicans never suffer from catarrh; they say it is because they will not wash the face while suffering from a cold. They say a green leaf pasted on the temple cures headaches.

The women in Mexico are gaining more freedom gradually; they have them now as telegraph and telephone operators. Some Mexican bachelors use the telephone for an alarm clock, that is, they have the girls wake them by means of the telephone placed in their room.

No bills are legal unless they are stamped. Every man has a peculiar mark which he scratches beneath his name. It is a sort of a trade mark, and makes his name legal.

The Indian women have some means of coloring cotton so that it will never fade.

There are public letter writers on the plazas, where one can have the correspondence attended to for a small sum.

Letter-writing is an expensive thing in Mexico; to all points not exceeding sixteen leagues, they pay ten cents for a quarter of an ounce, or fifty cents an ounce. Postal cards are two cents; to send a letter to the United States only costs five cents. Every state in Mexico has its own stamps.

Some haciendas are enormously large in Mexico. One