The feature of the church is the statue of St. Anthony of Padua, which once was among the group of _santos_ in the façade, but had been cast down during the anti-church riots of 1857. For many years it lay covered with mud and dust in a ditch by the Alameda. Now it is a mass of votive offerings--_milagros_ they are called--in the shape of hearts, limbs, etc., whatever organ had been damaged by the casualties of earthly existence. I espied an ingenious presentment of a liver in copper hanging in its proper anatomical place on the person of the _santo_. The Indians have the strange habit of making their offerings to this shrine in groupings of thirteen--thirteen candles, bouquets containing thirteen flowers etc.--commemorative of the death of San Antonio on the 13th of June (1531). I can't see how the Indian is benefited by the suppression of religious ceremonies. Gods he _must_ have. And when one comes out into the Alameda, the sun shining on the belfries and domes of the many churches surrounding it, filtering through the lovely foliage of the park about which the Indian tides sweep, fixed as the laws that govern other tides, one feels the bounteousness of the natural world, and a desire to render thanks to _something_. The long, narrow, flower-planted atrium of San Diego, from the early part of the sixteenth century, flanks the charming old house where the presses of the _Mexican Herald_ turn out world news on the site of the Aztec market-place, or _tinquiz_. But though the outer seeming of life is changed, I could but think me of the changelessness of the human heart. _Good Friday Evening._ A sickening heat was in the air all day, with a something withering and nerve-disturbing about it, though, as the thermometer goes, the temperature was not high. I went early to the little near-by church of Corpus Christi. The singing of "Dulce lignum" made me think of the great ceremonies at St. John Lateran, and much that is no more. I returned at 2.30, when a strange-faced priest with an "inner" look and a something burning in his voice, a Spaniard by his accent, was finishing the "Three Hours." Afterward, in company with Indians and black-rebozoed women, I followed the Stations of the Cross.... _Holy Saturday._ Mexico City is one vast "rattle," the most dreadful sounds everywhere to commemorate the holy, still day, and as for Judas, he is a legion in himself. The Calle de Tacuba presented a strange sight. Stretched on wires or strings from one house to the other were bright-colored, hideous figures, representing the _maldito_[42] dangling in grotesque attitudes against the blue sky. On various street corners he is being burned in effigy. Firecrackers are exploding as I write, bells are ringing from every belfry. Grief is noisy in the tropics, even for the laying in the tomb of the Son of Man.