Page:Six Months In Mexico.pdf/63

Rh crimson velvet on a canary background and rich yellow lace, low-necked and en train, and the father in common dress suit. The Mexican boys never appeared better than in the grand old dress of former days. Mostly crimson velvet and satin were affected, showing to an advantage their superb eyes and complexion. The women were remarkable for their homeliness.

A grand supper of thirty-five courses was served and more wine, champagne and cigarettes consumed than would be done at forty receptions in the East.

Now, having shown you how they do at private balls where only the elite are permitted to attend, would you like to don a mask and domino and sit with these very same people in the boxes at the theaters, and watch the promiscuous crowd beneath? It is not a select crowd by any means, but one composed of the lowest in the land. Yet men take their wives, sisters, and friends, masked, that they may watch through opera glasses this wonderful sight, and wives and sweethearts get friends to take them, that they, unseen, may see if husband or lover takes part in the revel, for the men are of the best and wealthiest families.

At 11 o'clock the doors are flung open and people come in slowly. The two bands play alternately the Spanish danza and the waltz. The women come in dressed in all the styles ever invented. One beautiful woman wore a blue satin dress, embroidered with pink rose buds. Another wore blue, trimmed with beaded lace, which glittered like hundreds of diamonds in the gas-light. Two came together, one in black, the other in crimson velvet, profusely and gayly embroidered. Some were dressed after the style of the male dudes of the States, but the majority wore nothing but a comic-opera outfit, dotted with silver or gold spangles, according to the color. The men, with the exception of a half dozen, wore their common suits, and never removed their hats. Nearly all the women wore their hair short, which they had powdered.

At first they wore masks, but in a short time they were removed, and by 3 o'clock everybody was drunk. When a man refused to dance with a woman, a fight was the result, and everybody would quit dancing until it was settled. One year fifteen men were killed during the week it lasted. This year but one has met his death. The