Dick insisted on looking up some of his “ship friends” who live in the town. We found them, and left him in their back garden playing in their water tank. It was a great chance to see some of the churches, and drive round the town, and do the things that bore Dick. The town is overburdened with churches, but their exteriors are so decorative that one is glad they exist. The domes are tiled, either with blue and white or yellow. They glisten in the sun like enamel. I went into one called “Of the Company” and happened upon a service with a cardinal. At least, I suppose he was a cardinal. He was dressed in the color of that name. This crimson melodramatic figure seemed to me emblematical of the inquisitorial Church of Spain. Sitting all over the floor were Indian women with their babies, and when the organ subsided, there was a real baby chorus. The church entrances are the congregating places (as in Italy) of the most wretched beggars. I could not help wondering why a man with no legs submits to living his remaining life on a plank with four wheels; why old age with its skin wizened like a walnut can bear the degradation of extreme filth, and of asking charity on bended knee; and why a blind individual can roll sightless grey orbs and fix them on me while so doing. Why don’t they end life? Why is it endurable? But almost worse in my estimation, was the woman who passed me by, bent double by an enormous load on her back, and dragged down by a baby tied in a bundle to her breast. Must she bear both those burdens? At midday, there was supposed to be a “battle of flowers.” I have seen the real thing on the Riviera, where the national temperament is joyous. But can people here have a real spontaneous out-burst, when the big sad-eyed Indian stands at the street corner, gaping and incapable of throwing off the melancholy of generations? A few dressed-up cars appeared, but there was no profuse flower throwing. Perhaps, like me, the Pueblans were economizing. Anyway, it was so dull and half-hearted that we took a train to San Francisco. This is a church and garden on the outskirts of the city. Soon we rambled on, up and up, to a hill summit, from which one viewed the city in the plain, and Popocatapetl with its snow peak, emerging through a bank of cloud. It was beautiful on our hilltop, wild, deserted, peaceful, and the persistent Church bells came to us distantly. We had been told by Dick’s “ship friends,” that it was not possible to go outside the town without a man, and so we had Dick. He found a dew pond, and was perfectly happy.