Elim's fourth birthday party--Haggling over the prices of old Mexican frames--Zapata looms up--First glimpse of General Huerta--Romantic mining history of Mexico. _August 3d._ Again it is the blessed anniversary. It seems but a moment of time since my arms received my son. He asked me, the first thing this morning, at what time he would be four years old. When I told him it had already happened he set up a dreadful howl. It appears he had expected to feel himself becoming four, as he informed me when he got his breath. I only send this line to you on this, his fourth mark on the shores of life. Now I must be up and doing. The sun is flooding the _patio_. _Later._ His birthday party was sweet, but I was deathly homesick for you, when kind and friendly strangers came, bringing their gifts and good wishes. He had his cake, and the four candles for the years he had blessed my life. The two little Japanese, Madame Chermont's little boy, the two handsome children of the Casa Alvarado, the little Simon boy (too sweet, with his dark curls and big eyes), Dearing, Arnold, and Palmer, from the Embassy, came. Von Hintze, who loves little children, dropped in late with a book of fairy tales. Mrs. Laughton brought Æsop's Fables, not many pictures in it, and as Elim opened it at a printed page he said, with shining eyes, "_Endlich habe ich ein Lesebuch_." He has spent a good deal of time, since, holding it upside down and asking not to be disturbed while reading. He and Jom Chermont had a clash of arms, and Bobo, the two-year-old little Jap, ran the whole show with singular competence. An invading nostalgia possessed me all the afternoon, and I kept thinking of the beautiful word the Portuguese chargé, De Lima, taught me a few days ago at dinner--"_saudades_," meaning memory of dear and early scenes, or of loved ones, or of all these things together. I presented my son with two tortoises and a little green bird, a _clarine_, which can be kept on the oleander terrace, though he had asked for a monkey and a crocodile. I see that Abbey is dead. The wonder of those reds of the "Parsifal" frieze in the Boston Library has followed me for years. _Tout a une fin_, but when an artist dies there is a double end. I have just come across most beautiful photographs of Mexico--gum-prints and callotypes, after some special process by an artist named Ravell, who has a remarkable eye for this beauty and evidently a soul to receive it. _August 8th._