With us, a mechanic is associated with the idea of a person occupying a respectable position in life; but at Mexico he still belongs to a degraded class, as men are there esteemed; he is a _peon_, on a footing with a common laborer. The highest wages are three shillings a day, while at least two days in the week he is kept from his usual employment by "days of obligation," that is, festival days on which it is unlawful to work. _Tortillas_, Indian griddle-cakes, with black beans (_frijoles_) and red peppers (_chilie_), are his daily food; and his lodgings are a palm-leaf mat upon a stone or earthen floor, while his _serapa_ does duty for a blanket at night. The greasy friar does not forget him as he goes his rounds in search of Peter's pence; and the priest sets before him the horrid consequences of entering Purgatory without first discharging the debt he still owes for his baptism. He and his "wife" still remain unmarried; for how can they ever raise the money to pay the priest? And if by chance he gets involved in debt, or for the debt of one of his kindred, one third part of his daily labor is embargoed by the creditor. When the Mexican mechanic has a small kit of uncouth tools, he works upon his own account, but at the smallest possible profit. When he has finished a pair of shoes, if he be a shoemaker, he or his wife starts out to dispose of them to some passer-by in the street before a new pair is undertaken. When the tinman has finished a sprinkling pot, he or his boy walks the street till it is sold, and then perhaps a tin bath is made; and if, luckily, from a chance customer he has obtained an extra price, a _fiesta_ is proclaimed to the family connection, and maybe the additional luxury of buying a ticket in the lottery of the Virgin of Guadalupe is indulged in, and a vow is made that if he wins a prize, one half of the profits of the stake shall be deposited as a gift at her shrine. In this way a week is passed, and it is terminated with the entire exhaustion of the little fortune of the poor mechanic. The kindred have had a time; _pulque_ and liquor have been passed around freely; the women have enjoyed "equal rights" with the men; they have drunk their full share, and smoked their little cigars. The tin-man, once more penniless, with an aching head, but with a light heart, returns to his little hammer, and a piece of solder and tin got on the pledge of his future earnings. Such is the condition of native Mexican mechanics, and of the mechanic arts at the capital. [Illustration: TRAVELING IN MEXICO.]