We should have been pleased to have you among us a longer time, to give you better tokens of our esteem and to show you the high appreciation we feel for the people of the United States and her great ruler, President Roosevelt. But inasmuch as this is impossible, owing to your important and urgent labors at home, allow me, Mr. Secretary, to state that if our demonstrations of friendship are short, they are made in the land of traditional frankness and true friendship. Let us drink, ladies and gentlemen, to the health of his excellency, Mr. Root, his distinguished wife, and his "simpatica" daughter, and wishing for all of them all kinds of happiness, let us prove that we have shaken their hands in the spirit that sons of Jalisco always shake hands--our heart is our hand. MR. ROOT'S REPLY I thank you very heartily for your kind words, for your flattering description of myself, and for the spirit of friendship for my country which you exhibit. I am highly appreciative of all the hospitality, the warm welcome, and the graceful and most agreeable entertainment which you and your people of Guadalajara and of the state of Jalisco have given to my family and to myself. I think it is perhaps fitting that I should make the last extended visit of all I have been making in Mexico, to the city of Guadalajara. The most striking feature of Mexican life to a stranger is that rare combination of history and progress which one finds. The two eras of history, the Spanish, and before that the Indian civilization, which has to so great an extent passed away, and beside that the modern development, the spirit of modern enterprise, the active progress of mining and agriculture and manufactures, the stimulus of sound finance, and the general determination of the people to take rank with the great productive nations of the earth,--nowhere have I found that combination more marked and distinct than I find it here in Guadalajara. As I said to you a short time ago, your excellency, the things that impressed me most on entering this city were, first, that it was clean; secondly, that there were many fine-looking people; thirdly, that it was cheerful; and, fourthly, that it had many beautiful buildings. I can add to that a fifth, that it is bright with the rainbow of hope for the fruits of its many enterprises.