What he loves is his adobe hut running over with children and surrounded by just enough land, planted with corn, beans, and peppers, not to starve on, when worked intermittently, as fancy or the rainfall indicate. The Indians certainly seem, under these conditions, a thousand times happier than our submerged tenth, but it's never any use comparing especially dissimilar matters. Anybody who has been to Mexico, however, knows that the Indian of the adobe hut has little or no qualification to permit of his being changed into a scientific farmer by the touch of any wand. And as for slogans! They're all right to get into office with, but try tilling the soil with them! _January 31st, evening._ ... And so the anniversaries come. I feel but a stitch between your destiny and Elim's, holding the generations together in my turn. I am distant from you, but I embrace you all--the dear ones of my blood. I realize the fortuitousness of mine and all other human experiences. I have never had the things I worked for, prayed for, hoped for, but always something unexpected, which showed itself as inevitable only after it had happened, though at the time it seemed to come as a blow or a gift, accidentally, unrelatedly. The path has always lain where I never had an intimation of the tiniest trail. "Strange dooms past hope or fear" of which we all partake.... [30] Elliott Baird Coues, + Zürich, January 2, 1913. [31] (1917) Le Colonel de Chambrun, croix de guerre, grande croix de la Légion d'Honneur, cité many times à l'ordre de l'armée for deeds of bravery, and once, in the autumn of 1915, "pour sa gaité communicative dans les tranchées"--so indicative of his special talents and great heart. [32] Henri de G. (Lieutenant 4th Zouaves), wounded at Verdun, June 9, 1916. Croix de guerre in Belgium, 1915, Légion d'Honneur, Verdun, 1916. XVIII Washington warns Madero--Mobilization orders--A visit to the Escuela Preparatoria--A race of old and young--The watchword of the early fathers _February 1st._ To-day a military lunch--De Chambrun, Captain Sturtevant, just leaving, and our new military attaché, Burnside, just arrived. Speculations as to the potentialities of the situation put a bit of powder into the menu, and the appearance of small fat ducks awakened a few hunting reminiscences, but mostly it was martial.