The hotel bedroom was high, floor tiled and almost empty of furniture except for two double beds. Long windows opened on to a balcony overlooking the square, full of green tropical trees and flowering shrubs. A great gnarled fire-tree, with its scarlet blossom dominated all other trees, and in the background was the old Spanish Cathedral, its dome covered with buzzard birds, and its tower full of bells. I could have spent hours at my window, feasting my eyes on this scene. I had to share this one and only precious room with Louise and Dick. We had planned to stay for two nights. I have come to Mexico in the same frame of mind with which I went to Russia, prepared for every adventure and discomfort. At bedtime I said to Louise: “I suppose we ought to draw lots as to which sleeps with Dick, but I don’t mind telling you that you can have him!” (I have vivid recollections of the terrible kicks administered by Dick all through the only night I ever spent with him!) Louise replied that she would bear it and we went to bed congratulating ourselves that we had coincided with a storm at Vera Cruz, which was less unpleasant than being baked alive. I had not been long asleep, however, when the rain leaking through the roof over my bed waked me, I pushed my bed into another part of the room. No escape, however, before long the entire ceiling was dripping, and there was only one small dry corner of the room. Into this corner I pushed Dick and Louise. Then, barefooted, I paddled about on the streaming floor, rescuing luggage and clothes. Finally I retired to my damp bed, wrapped in my rug, and with an umbrella open over my head. It seemed but a few minutes before the dawn broke and with it, awakened all the buzzards and all the blackbirds in the square. They shrieked, they whistled, they sang shrill tunes like noisy canaries. It was as if one had one’s bed in the parrot house at the Zoo, and the parrot house leaked. Dick thoroughly awakened, got the giggles and my irritation accentuated the absurdity. What a night! No further sleep being possible, we dressed and went down to breakfast on the sidewalk under the arcade. Here native boys came hovering round with their shoe-shining paraphernalia, which is quite a flourishing trade. Vendors with baskets full of native wares, postcard sellers and newspaper boys; blind beggars and deformities, all were part of our kaleidescopic “entourage,” besides the sombrero’d Mexicans of every type, who walked by us in the street, as spectacular as any passing show. At the neighboring and opposite tables, men stared glad-eyed and even signaled: one hardly dared to let one’s eyes rest anywhere except on the birds in the trees!