Children are really good here, their reverence for their parents being something beautiful. When entering the dining room each one kisses its mother's hand, and when she asks them if they wish such and such to eat they reply: "With your permission." Although all are smokers they could not be persuaded to take a cigarette in their mother's presence. The pulque, which is also given around with the coffee, they refuse through respect to their mother; but they drink when she is not by, and of course she is aware of the fact, and has no desire to prohibit them from it. It is just their form of respect to refrain in her presence. A Mexican could not be compelled to eat of two different dishes from one plate. Even the smallest child is proof against persuasion on this point. The frijoles, or beans, are served on a tortilla, a sort of corn-cake baked in the shape of a buckwheat cake. Another tortilla is folded together, and answers for a spoon. After finishing the beans it is not considered proper or polite unless you eat your spoon and plate. Every family has at least half a dozen servants. They are considered excellent when they receive five dollars a month, and board themselves. Sometimes they are paid three dollars a month, and allowed six cents a day to furnish what they want to eat. This sum is called the retainer. Women do the cooking, and the men wait on the tables, make the beds and nurse the babies. Contrary to the usual report, they are very, very cleanly. Every room in the house is swept daily; balconies and uncarpeted rooms scrubbed as often. Beds, which are always single iron cots like those used in hospitals, have board or iron bottoms, and the hardest of hard pillows. Brooms are an unseen article, notwithstanding the country furnishes the most beautiful broom corn in the world. It is bought in bunches and tied to a short stick, and used in that manner, forcing the sweeper to bend nearly double. Scrub brushes are but a bunch of coarse straw tied around the top with a string, but they make the floors perfectly white. There is a fortune here awaiting some lively fellow who will bring machinery and make brooms and brushes for the natives: the straw costs comparatively nothing, and is of the very best quality. Lotteries swarm here, and are a curse to the poor. Men, women, and children sell the tickets along the streets, and the poor have such a mania for buying that they will pawn their clothing in order to obtain a ticket. There are no newsboys in this country. Occasionally a boy is seen with a package of papers, but he does not call out like they do in the States. Women generally sell papers, which they fold and hold out toward passers-by, never saying a word. The people appear just the opposite of lazy. They move along the streets with a trot, equal in speed to the burro; they never turn their heads to gaze at a stranger, but go along intent on their own affairs as if they realized the value of time and shortness of life.