He never stopped, except to jump from one horse to the other at the relay stations, and was allowed privileges of safe-conduct by all shades of combatants, regular and irregular. Once arrived at Vera Cruz, he would eat copiously, sleep for a couple of days, and then return with the mails to Mexico City, ready to repeat his exploits the next month. Do you remember that poem of Bret Harte's, "The Lost Galleon"? I came across it the other day, fingering a volume of American poetry. It, too, evokes pictures of runners bringing mails and valuables from the Orient up from Acapulco, and begins: In sixteen hundred and forty-one The regular yearly galleon, Laden with odorous gums and spice, India cotton and India rice, And the richest silks of far Cathay, Was due at Acapulco Bay. The luncheon at the Villa des Roses was very pleasant. The place is kept by a Frenchwoman with a fine touch and an excellent cellar. She has some wonderful _pâté de foie gras_ in a great _terrine_, just out from France, and her _macédoine de fruits_ was _arrosée_ with an ancient and mellow maraschino. The table was spread in a long glass veranda, with thickly blossoming rose-vines, crimson rambler, trailing over it. The Lefaivres, the Riedls, Von Hintze, the ambassador, Rieloff, De Vilaine, Kilvert, Seeger, the Schuylers, and ourselves made up the party. Mr. Potter's lavishness as to menu made us feel somewhat "boa-constrictory" as we rose from table, but we were able to get into the garden and have our photographs taken by Baroness R., which I send you. _April 29th._ Burnside goes to the "front," which now means Huerta's army against Orozco's; changes of front are among the natural phenomena here. It appears General Huerta is full of resource and has contrived to enlist and equip a large force in this short month. I did not tell you of the dinner at the German Legation the other night for the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Don Pedro Lascurain. Mrs. Stronge presided, with him on her right, and I sat on his other side. He is a tall, spectacled, near-sighted-appearing man with a pleasant expression, but I understand he can see farther than most down financial and political vistas. He has a natural _flair_ for business, having made a large fortune by real-estate purchases in the new section of the town, is moderate in the political sense, honorable and very pious. He told me about the _Sagrado Corazón_, the church he is building almost entirely out of his own pocket for the Jesuits in the Calle de Orizaba near his house. It had been so badly cracked in what is now simply known as the "Madero" earthquake (June 7, 1911), not as a "sign from heaven," that work had to be suspended on it while the foundations were strengthened. N. said he remarked quite simply to him, in the course of a conversation, "Why do you Americans talk of intervening in Mexico? You own it already."