Every winter Mexico is filled with American tramps who come to escape the cold up north, and they are a perfect pest at times. The Mexican police will never touch them unless some American or Englishman makes a complaint, in which case they run them out of town. Seven years ago we had such a bad lot here that the colony made complaint, and the police cleaned them up. Two of the most impudent, who returned, I had the pleasure later of seeing do some honest work on the city streets. In Mexico City the Saxon colony has a committee whose business it is to investigate the case of every tramp who arrives; if he is a good man in hard luck he is helped; if, on the other hand, he is a professional tramp, the police are at once notified, and he has to move out. One of the things that strike a visitor to this country is the method of courtship. A Mexican girl of good family is never seen on the street with a man till she is married to him. When a young man wishes to court a girl, he walks up and down daily before the windows of her house. If she reciprocates, she comes to the window after a decent interval, the length of which is according to how highly she values herself, and smiles on him. As he gets bolder he comes nearer and nearer, till finally they get on speaking terms. All this may have taken some weeks. When matters have progressed far enough for the couple to arrive at an understanding, he makes a call on the family, and if they approve of him he is invited to call again. After this he calls as frequently as he can; the girl is present at these state calls, but it is not considered etiquette for him to speak to her directly till they are officially engaged. He must converse with the other members of the family so that they can size him up. Imagine what intellectual conversation a man would “get off” under the inspection of the whole family, and what endurance the family must have to stand it night after night. As soon as he has stayed the length of time that etiquette demands (or as long as the family can stand him), he retires to the street, she comes to her window, and they talk nonsense through the bars for the rest of the evening. It is amusing to take a walk through the residential district from eight till ten P.M. and see the hundreds of young fellows hanging on the bars courting their lady-loves. But it is still more amusing when the lady happens to live on the second storey and he has to shout all his pretty speeches up to her! In most Mexican houses the first floor is one abode and the second floor a separate one, with different entrances and owned by different people. I often wondered what they would do when they built five and six storey flats, till I went to Puebla and saw small telephones in use, which the lady let down to her Romeo. In the case of the idle rich this form of courting goes on all through the day, the young fellow only going home for his meals.