In Guanaguato, a mining town near here, there used to live a mine manager who was in the habit of keeping rather large sums of money in his house. His servant girl told some of her friends of this, and also that he would be out at the mine on a certain night. She was, however, mistaken about the latter, as he happened to stay at home. During the night Mrs. Rose woke up and found four men in her room. When she called to her husband one of them struck her across the back with a machete (cane knife), then her husband woke up and grappled with them though quite unarmed. While the poor fellow was putting up a most unequal fight his wife, though badly hurt, ran to the bureau, got out his revolver and handed it to him. But he was so terribly wounded that though he was able to empty the gun and scare off the robbers he could not shoot well enough to get any of them. His wife recovered, but poor Rose died the next day from his wounds. I am glad to say that the murderers were all caught later and shot. But there is a moral to this which many of us have learned: if you have a revolver keep it under your pillow and not in a bureau drawer. A few years ago a poor old American market-gardener here was killed a most brutal way, being first tortured to try to make him show where he had hidden money that did not exist; he was well over seventy years old, rather childish, but liked and admired by the entire American colony here. Some of this bandit element then decided to hold up the owner of one of the largest hardware (ironmonger’s) stores here; but his wife and fourteen-year-old boy happened to overhear some of the conversation from the porch of their house (not one hundred yards from where the old man had been killed), and one with a shotgun and the other with a 22 calibre rifle went out and so peppered them that they fled with what lead they had received. It was lucky for them that they did so, for, on another occasion, a man did actually hold up this same gentleman, and when Kipper finally got through with him, he was glad to get into the hands of a policeman alive. I have said enough to show that the people are thieves, and at times dangerous. As I said before, there are plenty of policemen, but they are on actual duty twelve hours per day, and then have to sleep in the police station, ready to be called out in case they are needed; therefore they put in most of their duty-time getting cat-naps in doorways or wherever they can find a place. Besides this, they are recruited from the peon class, and get very little pay. During my first year’s work, when I used to go to the yard at 3 A.M., I have seen a dozen of them asleep on the benches in San Francisco park as I passed through. Discipline is almost unknown, and I have seen policemen on duty sitting on the curb shining their shoes. Of course they smoke all the time on duty, and very frequently drink more than is good for them.