The beginning of the manuscript was sent off to the publishers in the June following, just two months after landing at home, and the remainder was printed, chapter by chapter, as I managed to finish each: a most terrible and anxious manner of proceeding and one certainly not to be recommended. The first proof of _Mexico as I saw It_ was returned on July 10th; the slips, or galleys, finished on August 10th; the whole was paged and passed for press on September 10th. It appeared in October at a guinea net, the illustrations mostly from my own camera. So I was just six months in Mexico, and just six more getting out the book; in my own souvenir copy there is written on the fly-leaf: “It is done, but it has nearly done for me.” Reviews were more than kind, but then the subject was new, so people found it interesting. As Frederic Harrison wrote in the _Positivist Review_: “The marvellous restoration of Mexico, from being a hot-bed of anarchy and the victim of superstition to its present condition of one of the best governed and most enlightened of modern countries, has often attracted the attention of political observers. In Mrs. Alec Tweedie’s most interesting volume we find suggestive sketches of the institution of the Republic, and a personal character of the President, General Porfirio Diaz, the noble statesman who has achieved such triumphs.” How could one help being gratified that other influential organs of public opinion felt with me the “fascinations of the Southern _haciendas_ and of the natives of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec,” and held the information, that had been zealously collected, of practical and informing value? On the hospitality of the President it is only necessary to say that, looking back to those records of 1900-1, I find this expression—warm from the heart—respecting General and Madame Diaz: “Their kindness and courtesy, the extraordinary thoughtfulness and consideration with which I was treated, will ever remain in my mind. Without the personal aid of General Diaz I could not have written _Mexico as I saw It_, and perhaps this peep into the life of the people, over whom he rules so powerfully, may help to make that wonderful country a little better understood.”[5] * * * * * Five years later I returned to Mexico and wrote the _Life_ of the President. The first time I left the country I was limping with pain after a serious illness of blood-poisoning—the second time I left almost limping again, but that was from the weight of the precious documents I bore away.