There are certain ways hard to get accustomed to in this country. One is the habit of lying, not maliciously, but that lying to keep you in a good humour which is practised by all classes. For instance, you go into an office and ask for a certain person who happens to be out. You ask when he will be back, and the reply is invariably, “Please sit down, he will be back in a moment.” In fact, they lead you to suppose that they are astonished that he has not already returned. And all the time they know that he has gone home, and left word that he would not return! I have been to a foundry to get delivery of work promised me by the owner on his “word of a gentleman,” by the following day (which he knew, and I knew, could not possibly be done), and I have finally got the work delivered three weeks later, after going up and cursing him twice a week. I have asked for work long overdue, been met at the door and told that I must have missed it on the way there as it had just left for the factory, while all the time it was still unfinished. Then there is the siesta habit indulged in by all Mexicans, though foreigners do not follow the custom or find it at all necessary to health. From 1 P.M. till 3 P.M. all business is stopped, not a store is open or an office. Another trouble is stealing; it seems to come natural to a Mexican of the lower classes to steal. Then, if he can, the Mexican does everything in the opposite way to any one else. I have heard it said that the only thing they do the same as other people is digging a well, because they do not know how to start at the bottom; but this is an exaggeration. When a Mexican gives his address he puts the street first and the number afterwards; their exclamation marks are used upside down, and the query mark is like this ¿. If they are going to pull down an old house and build a new one, they build the new one inside the old one, and only pull down as it becomes necessary; they saw with the teeth of the saw away from them, and other things too numerous to mention.