I have just seen a list of the diplomatic shifts. Dear Mr. O'Brien goes to Rome, the Ridgely-Carters, after their pleasant, successful years of Europe, to the Argentine. The Jacksons have been appointed to Rumania. It was very nice having them "near," in Havana. Each must take his turn in the tropics, but we aren't any of us physically fitted for prolonged sojourns, and I suppose they are delighted to return to Europe, after their "cycle of Cathay." Mr. Lloyd Bryce, so cultured and agreeable, has been appointed minister to Holland. With his beautiful wife and their gifts of fortune they will make a representation in a thousand. Mexico seems to me the best of the Latin-American posts, the most important to the United States, the most interesting, the most accessible. We are lucky to have got it, though I didn't feel so on the night of the 10th of January, when the friendly porter of the Hotel Bristol (in Vienna), as I was coming down-stairs for one of the usual _petits soupers_, said to me: "So Madame is going to leave us?" When I asked, "Where?" he told me it was _Mexico_, having seen the Paris _Herald_ before we had! It was like hearing we had been transferred to the moon. Penn Cresson, secretary at Lima, is passing through, _en route_ for Washington. He says Peru is far; but he brings some very attractive photographs of his abode there, and it all depends, anyway, on what you take to a place yourself--the heart and brain luggage--whether you like it or not. Yesterday we started to call on Madame Bonilla, whom I had met at the Del Rios', and for whom Mr. Cresson had messages from the British consul-general and his wife in Lima, formerly in Mexico. Madame B. is an Englishwoman, and I had heard much of her great taste and the really good things she has picked up. When, on going to the address I thought was hers, we got into a hall with a life-size negro in plaster-of-Paris, draped with a pale blue scarf, and holding out a gilt card-receiver, placed near the door, and to whom we almost spoke, I was a bit taken aback. An Indian servant somewhat stealthily showed us into a dull-red dadoed room with a waving, light-blue ceiling, and many enlarged family photographs in black frames hanging against the walls. I saw C.'s interest wane as to the giving of the message, and when, after ten minutes, a large magenta-robed, hastily dressed, startled-looking dark lady appeared, we could only make our excuses. After much courtesy on her part, murmurings of _à la disposición de usted_, and more excuses from us, we got the address next door, where we found the kind of interior we were expecting, drank the freshest of tea brought in immediately by an accustomed servant, and poured by a charming lady never surprised at five o'clock.