Ladies in the States should import their servants from Mexico. Their hire is a very little sum; they furnish their own food; they are the most polite, most obedient people alive, and are faithful. Their only fault--and a very common one with servants--is that they are slow, but not extremely so. To children they are most devoted; as nurses they are unexcelled; their love for children amounts to a passion, a mania. As a common thing here, a girl of thirteen is not happy unless she has a baby; but with all that they are most generous with them. Much amusement was caused the other day by an American asking a pretty little black-eyed girl if the bouncing babe tied to her back was hers. "Si, senor, and yours, too," she replied, politely. The men share the troubles of nursing with the women, and the babies, tied on their mother's or father's back, seem as content as if they were rocked in downy cradles. Babies, as soon as born, are clad in pantaloons and loose waist, irrespective of sex. There are no three-yard skirts on them. Boys retain this garb, but girls, when able to walk, are wrapped twice around the body with a straight cloth which serves for skirts. If you ask a native in regard to the sex of a baby he will not say it is a boy or it is a girl, but "el hombre" (a man) or "la mujer" (the woman.) All efforts fail to make them say "hijo" (son) or "hija" (daughter). CHAPTER XXXI. THE ROMANCE OF THE MEXICAN PULQUE. The maguey plant is put to as many uses by the Mexicans as the cocoa palm is by the South Sea Islanders. All around Mexico, even on the barren plains where nothing else can exist, it grows in abundance. Its leaves are ten and more feet in length, a foot in breadth and about eight inches thick. Of course, there are smaller and larger growths, according to their age. After collecting strength for about seven years it sprouts from the center a giant flower stalk, twenty or thirty feet high, on which often cluster three thousand flowers of a greenish yellow color. These wonderful plants in bloom along the plains form one of the most magnificent sights in Mexico. At the very least, forty have been seen at one place, each vieing with the other to put forth the most beauty.