But there is another sort--less often seen upon the streets of San Antonio. This sort is the Mexican of class, who has come within recent years in increasing numbers to dwell in a city where unassuming soldiery afford more real protection for him and for his than do all of the brilliantly uniformed regiments with which Diaz once illuminated his gay capital. Since our neighbor to the south entered fully upon its troublous season these refugees have multiplied. You could see for yourself any time within the past two years sleeping cars come up from Laredo filled with nervous women and puzzled children. These were the families of prosperous citizens from the south of Mexico, who in their hearts showed no contempt for the comfortable protection of the American flag. * * * * * A man plucks you by the sleeve as you are passing through the corridors of one of the great modern hotels of San Antonio, hotels which, by the way, have been builded with the profits of the cattle-trade in Texas. "That _hombre_," he says, "he is the uncle of Madero." But a mere uncle of the former Mexican President hardly counts in a town which has the reputation of fairly breeding revolutions for the sister land to the south; whose streets seem to whisper of rumors and counter-rumors, the vague details of plot and counterplot. There is a whole street down in the southwestern corner of San Antonio lined with neat white houses, and the town will know it for many years as "Revolutionary Row." For in the first of these houses General Bernardo Reyes lived, and in the second of them this former governor of Nuevo Leon planned his _coup d'etat_ by which he was to march into Mexico City with all the glory of the Latin, bands playing, flags flying, a display of showy regimentals. Reyes had read English history, and he remembered that one Prince Charlie had attempted something of the very sort. In the long run the difference was merely that Prince Charlie succeeded while Reyes landed in a dirty prison in Mexico City. Here then is the very incubator of Mexican revolution. There is not an hour in San Antonio when the secret agents of the United States and all the governments and near-governments of our southern neighbor are not fairly swarming in the town and alive to their responsibilities. The border is again passing through historic days--and it fully realizes that. It is twenty-four hours of steady riding from San Antonio over to El Paso--the queer little city under the shadows of the mountains and perched hard against the "silver Rio Grande," this last often so indistinguishable that a young American lieutenant marched his men right over and into Mexican soil one day without knowing the difference--until he was confronted by the angry citizens of Ciudad Juarez and an _affaire nationale_ almost created. Every mile of that tedious trip trouble is in the air.