I am enjoying the spaces in this huge house, free to the sun and air on all sides. Its lack of furniture is amply compensated for by flooding luxuries of light and air. I am going to receive on Tuesday, and I suppose many people will come. _October 22nd._ Yesterday I had my first reception. About fifty people came--the _chers collègues_ and some of the colony, mostly only those whose orbit sometimes crosses the diplomatic orbit. There were flowers in every available receptacle. I made a delicious punch myself, if I do say it, and Mrs. Burnside poured tea; but I miss so many of the familiar and friendly faces of our first sojourn--Mr. James Brown Potter and the Riedls, Mr. Butler, and many others. Monday I am giving a “bridge” for Lady C. I cannot yet have any one for lunch or dinner, but I want to give some little sign on her arrival. The Cardens are a very great addition to an ever-narrowing circle. Great Britain stands pat on its recognition of Huerta, which adds greatly to his prestige in the eyes of his own people, and is most welcome in view of the approaching elections. We understand the ticket will be Huerta and Blanquet, in spite of Washington’s frowns. I do not know the real qualities of Blanquet, up to now faithful supporter of Huerta and his Minister of War. The dramatic fact that, in the firing-squad at Querétaro, it was he who gave the _coup de grâce_ to Maximilian, has always overtopped everything else. The pictures of Maximilian in the National Museum, poor, blond, blue-eyed gentleman, show him utterly unfitted to grapple with the situation, though filled with the best intentions. He was like some rabbit, or other helpless animal, caught in a trap. When one has seen archdukes on their native heaths, one realizes that they are not of the material to wrestle with the descendants of Montezuma; though I don’t know that we, in spite of all our “efficiency,” are being any more successful! Great Britain will be very polite, but will not depart one hair’s-breadth from what it has decided on as its Mexican policy, involving big questions, not alone of prestige, but oil, railways, mines, etc. In fact, the British reply to Mr. Bryan in to-day’s newspaper quite clearly says that England will be delighted to follow any policy from Washington as long as it does not interfere with what the British Foreign Office has decided to do. They simply can’t understand our not protecting American lives and interests. Their policy here is purely commercial, while ours, alas! has come to be political. Great excitement is predicted for Sunday, the day of the election, but all the timid have to do is to stay at home, _if_ their curiosity permits. The import duties are raised 50 per cent. from the twenty-eighth of October. But it will, fortunately, bear less heavily on the _frijoles_-and banana-eating part of the population than on those who want breakfast-foods and _pâté de foie gras_.