The ambassador has always had the gravest doubts as to Madero's competency. Nothing any of us have seen, up to now, has been encouraging. It is one thing to inflame a country by promises of everything to everybody; it's another thing to rebuild a state, as he set out to do, from ruins, or even to sustain law and order, as he knew it, and benefited by it, in his youth. That dreamy face of his makes me think of the school-boy's definition of an abstract noun, "something you can't see," and those hands, with their soft and kindly gestures, are so unfitted for grappling with this special Leviathan--and consequences are pitiless. Alas for the _peu de politique et beaucoup d'administration_ of Diaz! [Illustration: A BEAUTIFUL OLD MEXICAN CHURCH Photograph by Ravell] I discovered a decided hint of original sin in Elim yesterday. When I told him to kneel in church he said his leg hurt him; when I told him to make the sign of the cross he said his arms hurt him, and his neck was like a ramrod when I told him to bow his head. _April 27th._ A year ago to-day we set out on our tropical adventure, and the end is not yet. I said to the ambassador yesterday, _à propos_ of picnics, "What shall we do next Sunday?" He answered: "You may be on a war-ship next Sunday." However, the climax may not come for months, and it may not come that way when we do leave, but it would be a fine finale! _Later._ Your letter from Mentone of April 15th has just been handed in--twelve days only; did it fly through space? I ask myself. I have been reading an account of the death of the great viceroy, Bucareli, which tells of the famous courier who was sent to announce the nomination to his successor, Mayorga, then in Guatemala, building a new capitol near the old, destroyed by earthquake. He did the distance, over pathless mountains and deep valleys, in seven days, spurred on by the motto of "the king is dead, long live the king"--in this case translated into an old Mexican saying of "_No es lo mismo virrey que viene que virrey que se va_" ("A viceroy that comes is not the same as a viceroy that goes"). The Mexican post, in the old days, was auctioned off to the highest bidder by the state, not a confidence-inspiring way of communication, and it ended by wealthy people having their own runners. Now, in twelve days, a letter takes its flight from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Mexican heights! _Autre temps, autres mœurs._ There is from the time of the wars of independence the picturesque tale of the "Courrier Anglais"; nothing English about it, except that an Indian horseman by the name of Verazo would leave Mexico City in time to reach Vera Cruz for the arrival of the packet from Southampton, and in his saddle-bags would be the whole diplomatic and mercantile correspondence of the capital.