Mr. Potter and Mr. Butler came in late and stayed late, and we spoiled our dinners sitting around the dining-table, eating sandwiches and sweets and talking about the party. We screamed with laughter at Mr. Potter's cutting from one of the big New York dailies, which quite solemnly states that Zapata is a natural product of the Diaz rule, and is merely avenging the innocent and oppressed ones. We all had a conviction that they had rather be unavenged. What twaddle the people have to read, anyway. As for me, school begins with my first waking moment and continues without a recess till I pass from this land of the unexpected and unsuspected to that of dreams. _April 25th._ The newspapers have been having large head-lines the past two days regarding the Zapatistas, for "the Attila of the South" is moving on Cuernavaca from the north, and it seems but a question of time before the lovely town falls into his hands. The Federal garrison is estimated at only a few hundreds, while the Zapatistas have between four and five thousand men. The inhabitants are anxious to be allowed to surrender, as Zapata has declared that if there is resistance he will sack and burn the town, "piously" leaving nothing standing but the cathedral, according to his solemn promise to the bishop. There was quite a tidy bit of warning at Huitzilac, when that town was stormed, as to what might happen to Cuernavaca, which is full of refugees from Guerrero and the southern part of Morelos. This most fertile and lovely state, wherein may be seen "all the vegetable kingdoms of the world in a moment of time," is practically in the hands of the Zapatistas, shading off into "Salgadistas" and endless other "istas," coloring the country-side independently. In all this the women and children seem the pity of it. At home or afield, they are continually being caught up into mysterious traps of destiny. Even here in my house there are, from time to time, curious disappearances. Josefina, the silent, consumptive seamstress who comes to sew and mend, has one of those vanishing sorts of lives. She has wonderful hands, and can copy with her slender, tapering fingers the most complicated French clothes. In fact, if one were able to get the stuffs here, one couldn't tell the copy from the original, cut and all. She has just been copying that rather intricate Jeanne Hallé purple-and-black blouse. Except for the inside waistband, whose origin is nameless, like Josefina, you can scarcely tell them apart, not a sixteenth of a centimeter's difference in length, breadth, or width.