The political mess thickens. So much might have been done, if all the efforts of the government had not been expended on keeping in office. War-ships are announced, some of ours, and the English and French and Germans will take a look, too. A curious complication about the railways has come to a head, involving not alone money, but life. Shortly after Madero came in he endeavored to get rid of the American railroad servants, who tried to get the matter taken up in Washington, and there was a lot of unofficial talk besides. Madero had ordered that, after a certain date, all orders must be written in Spanish; the trainmen, while speaking Spanish, in the majority of cases, could not write it sufficiently well for prompt and efficient service. Mr. W. has been so convinced from the beginning that Madero could not fill the position that he has lost interest in personal communications. So he sent N. up to Chapultepec to see Madero and explain to him the bad effect this would have. There were even threats of boycott on the northern frontier by union trainmen, who considered it would be an unjust act, as many of the men had been in Mexico since childhood, and there were many of them over age who couldn't get jobs in the United States. N. told him it was very impolitic, etc., etc. Madero thought it over and said in French: "You can tell the ambassador that the order very probably will not go into force, though it is impossible for me to revoke it." N. reported this to the ambassador. Several days afterward, on April 17th, he met Mr. Brown on the links. Mr. Brown said, with a smile, "That order went into force to-day" (Mr. B. had to sign it as president). N. hurried off to the ambassador, who was naturally very annoyed, and said N. must have misunderstood Mr. Madero. N. thought his goose was cooked; that Madero would go back on him and throw the interview in with a lot of other Mexican apocrypha. But Madero was most decent about it all and said: "Yes, I did tell Mr. O' S. so, but I was unable to prevent the order from going into force." The result has been that a large body of trained men who couldn't negotiate _la lengua castellana_ have been obliged to leave the country, to their own and Mexico's detriment. Madero's idea was to "democratize" the national railways--_i.e._, to load the system with as many employees as possible. At the end of the Diaz régime there were a few dozen competent inspectors; under the Madero régime they had been increased tenfold. The green parrot I brought from San G. is chirping in the next room--quite a member of the family, but dreadfully backward as to languages. [44] Died in New York, August 23, 1916, of a _maladie de langueur_. How could she resist a winter exiled in Harlem, after the flight from Mexico in 1915--the world, her world, in ruins? As well put an orchid in a cellar in the autumn and expect to find it blooming in the spring.