Page:Six Months In Mexico.pdf/77

Rh half a dozen branch roads leading from the Vera Cruz line to beautiful towns in the country. He took the punched envelope back to Pittsburg as a memento of the cheapest journey he ever took.

does not know how a nation mourned for one Virginius like McCullough; has never witnessed Barrett's Cassius and David Garrick, or been thrilled with O'Neill's Monte Cristo; has never looked on Mary Anderson's exquisite form and cold, unsympathetic acting; has missed Margaret Mather's insipid simper and Kate Castleton's fascinating wickedness; is wholly unconscious of Little Lotta's wondrous kick and Minnie Palmer's broadness; has never seen pretty Minnie Maddern's "In Spite of All," and a mother of fifty odd years successfully transformed into a child of nine—Fanchon; is in blissful ignorance of "Pinafore" and "Mikado," and yet she lives and has theaters.

The most fashionable theater in Mexico is the National. President Diaz always attends, and of course the elite follow suit. It is well to say the president always attends, for there is little else to go to. Bull-fights, theaters, and driving are all the pleasures of Mexican life; the president gives no receptions or dinners, and entertains no Thursday or Saturday afternoon callers, so before death entered his family circle he was at the theater almost every night.

No paid advertising is done by theaters in the papers. Once in a while they, with the exception of the National, send around bills of their coming plays, accompanied by two tickets. For this they get a week's advertising; cheap rates, eh? Besides this they have native artists who select the most horrible scene to depict in water colors on cloth and hang at the entrance; these "cartels" are changed necessarily with every play, as billboards are in the States, and some of them are most ludicrous and horrible in the extreme. The Saturday I reached Mexico one of the theaters had on its boards a play, the cartel of which represented the crucifixion. What the play was could not be ascertained.