As for the Posadas, we are evidently not to be initiated into their mysteries. The Mexican families of note continue to sport their oaks since the coming in of the Madero administration, and the Diplomatic Corps this year is left out in the cold on these intimate occasions, which are family parties held during nine days before Christmas, symbolic of the efforts of Mary and Joseph to find a resting-place in crowded Bethlehem. _December 24th._ We see the list of diplomatic shifts; among them are a few real Christmas presents. Dearing, who returned a short time ago, is made assistant chief of the Latin-American division of the State Department. He has made and will continue to make _une bonne carrière_. Schuyler, whom I have not seen since he passed through Copenhagen _en route_ for Petersburg, takes his place here. Cresson goes to London, which will please him; the Blisses get Paris, quite the handsomest of all the presents. Weitzel, who was here when we arrived, goes to Nicaragua, and so on through a long list. I felt, when I saw the changes, a sort of hankering for the Aryan flesh-pots, a sudden feeling of my unrelatedness to Latin America. I was, so to speak, for the moment "fed up" on the tropics with a thick sauce of world pain. Any light-colored diplomat will know just what I mean, and I dare say the dark ones feel it in higher latitudes. Diplomacy, as offered by the United States Government, is a most unsettling thing, anyway. The basic uncertainties of the _carrière_, to begin with, and then, if you are in a place you like, the feeling that at any time the trump may sound, and if you don't like it, hoping to be changed. However, it all goes up like smoke along with other human things. [27] During the first Carrancista occupation of Mexico City this house was sacked and stripped of all belongings. Not an electric-light fixture, not a door-knob was left; even the costly floorings were torn up. Street-cars run through the Calles de Londres and ---- told me that for days the traffic was interrupted by cars filled with the Creels' furniture and works of art, which were left standing in front of the house. One rather sighs for the fate of the Sèvres vases, and one thinks involuntarily of the new verb in the Spanish language, "_carranciar_," to steal like a Carrancista. [28] _Diplomat's Wife in Mexico_, Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe. XV The first Christmas in Mexico City--Hearts sad and gay--Piñatas--Statue to Christopher Columbus. _Christmas Day, 1911._ My first thought was of my precious mother, _l'absence est le plus grand des maux_. I went to midnight mass at the French church with Madame Lefaivre. The _Adeste Fideles_ was beautifully sung, and I thought of the millions of throats, all over the glad, sad earth, singing the peace-bringing air.