Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/291

 being, and surely this may be achieved, as there are plenty of damsels of this class, who, like the male lepero, are enamored of freedom. Without the blessing of the priest, they live perhaps happier than with it. . . . . No popular festival, no church consecration, no marriage, takes place in the suburbs, without some of the leperos wounding or killing each other. No one interferes as the fight goes on, each with a knife in one hand and a cloak wrapped about the other, until one falls, and they all disperse, leaving him with his weeping mistress. . . . . These proletarians consist almost exclusively of Mestizos,—the Indians, poor as they seem to be, are not regarded as such,—their number mainly recruited from illegitimate children."

As to stealing, the lepero is a thief from his mother's arms. It is a fact, and I state it as confirmed to me by the chief of police, that nine out of every ten of the boys and men found in the streets of Mexico peddling papers or lottery tickets, or soliciting light employment generally, are thieves and pickpockets, and only approach you on the lookout for an opportunity to plunder you. So numerous are they that the police cannot distinguish the bad ones, as in the United States and in European cities, but class them all as capable of any crime.

The pawnbrokers are the great receivers of stolen goods in this country; the so-called empeños are pawn-shops. Washerwomen of the lepero class pawn the clothes of unsuspecting and trusting Americans when given them to be washed, and more than one engineer has had to visit some empeño and pay down the cash for garments that were already his to get them out of pawn. Either one by one, or all at a time, these garments are gathered into the maw of the Mexican "uncle."

Along the line of the great Mexican Railroad, from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico, nothing is left outside after dark,—nothing that the strength of two men can lift. Even the car-couplings are taken inside the station and locked up. This road once introduced air-brakes on their cars, but the workmen punched holes in the pipes and stole the tubing; so they were taken off. On the National road, and doubtless on all others also, they stole the bolts that fastened the rails to the ties, until they were finally