I am writing at the Country Club, which is a most lovely spot at all times, but now is wrapped in a continual, superlative Indian summer. Elim said to me the first thing this morning, "Oh, I do love dat gontry clove," so here I am with him. He met me with Gabrielle, outside of the Church of Corpus Cristi, on the Alameda. That church has a curious history. Though now shrunken and tawdry, it was one of the most important and gorgeous in the viceregal days, and had a convent attached to it for Indian maidens of patrician birth. There is an old memorial over the door recording that it was inaugurated under the 36th viceroy, Don Baltazar de Zuñiga, for the daughters of Christian caciques alone. For the ceremonial of the taking of the veil the most gorgeous of Indian costumes were worn--feather-work mantles, aigrettes sewn with pearls and emeralds, and underneath-wrappings of fine cotton. Now the treasures of the convent are dissipated to the four winds, and as for the patrician maidens, _oú sont les roses d'Antan?_ The only thing of interest remaining in the church is an old copy of a picture of Nuestra Señora del Sagrario, from the Toledo Cathedral, supposed to have been taken to the Rio Grande by the venturesome _hidalgo_, Juan de Oñate, being brought back to Mexico City only after a couple of centuries of travel and vicissitude. The veranda of the club-house looks toward the shining volcanoes and the blue, blue hills, their beauty indescribably enhanced, seen through the brilliant glass-like air. The house itself, in the Spanish-mission style, is very fine, and the links the most beautiful of many I have watched and waited on. There are eighteen holes, with a favorite "nineteenth" in the _cantina_. Some of the mounds over which the golfers play are the graves of those who fell in 1847. General Scott approached the capital from Vera Cruz by way of Puebla, and there was a big battle on what is now the golf links, then the Hacienda de la Natividad, and the near-by church and monastery of Churubusco. There is, facing the very colorful and interesting old monastery, built by the Franciscans in the seventeenth century, a colorless, uninteresting monument, put up by President Comonfort in memory of the Mexicans who lost their lives here, and there are occasional ceremonies "in memoriam" by a grateful country. _November 3d._ Yesterday I ended by staying at the club all day and having dinner there. Elim was taken home, and N. came out after chancery hours. It was a beautiful and peaceful day, and we drove back about nine o'clock, under a young moon. As we got into town, there seemed more than the usual number of little booths, dimly lighted by small hanging lanterns, the owners and their progeny sitting about.