Just sent off an _Atlantic Monthly_ with a most interesting contribution, "Within the Pale," by a young Russian Jewess, Mary Antin. I haven't been seeing the _Atlantic_ for some years and I am glad they keep their good old historic cover instead of allowing themselves to be seduced by _art nouveau_, with the usual dreadful consequences. Elim is climbing all over me as I write. He has been promised a cat by the drug-store clerk, but, fortunately, there has been some hitch in the proceedings. You know my feelings toward the felines. Elim can fling the _quién sabes_ and the _mañanas_ with the best of them, and evidently takes in Spanish through the pores; he is very little or not at all with the Mexican servants. He told me the other day that he could count better in Spanish than in English, and when I asked him to show me he did very well up to four, which he replaced by the word "pulque," getting quite argumentative. I thought it worth while to investigate the intricacies of the infant mind. I find four is simply the magic hour when the cook leans over the railing and sings out "pulque" to call the expectant _concierge_ contingent upstairs, for its afternoon refreshment, as fixed as the laws that govern the hours. _Saturday noon._ Just home from the _volador_ (thieves' market), with "goods" upon me. Toward the end of the week it gets increasingly aromatic, as it is only swept and garnished Saturday afternoon, and it is traditional and expedient for the foreigner to patronize it on the Sabbath rather than other days. But having been to "La Joya," a very nice and expensive antique-shop in the Avenida San Francisco, where I got a frame of dark wood with ivory inlay, just the size for my Ravell photograph of the Church at Guanajuato, also a love of a little tortoise-shell _petaca_ (miniature valise) with silver clampings, I thought to strike an average in prices at the _volador_, where the sun was shining brilliantly on purely Indian commercial life. The "commerce" consisted more than usual, it seemed to me, of the refuse of ages, collected under irregular rows of booths, canvas- or board-covered, or simply piled on spaces marked out on the uncomfortable, hot cobblestones. It all covers what once was the site of the new Palace of Montezuma, and is named _volador_ after a sort of Aztec gymnastic game. For a long time it belonged to the heirs of Cortés, from whom the city finally bought it, and it is close behind the Palacio.