It is true that other hotels, of the spick and span brick ugliness the New West delights in, flanked the motion picture houses and drug-stores, but we chose Frank’s, the oldest inhabitant,--a type of hotel fast becoming extinct. Downstairs, plain sheathing; upstairs the same. Our bedroom opened on a veranda which we had to traverse to reach the bath. It was a novelty to us, but the traveling salesman next door took it casually enough,--or else he had forgotten to pack his bath-robe. Our hostess was the first of a long list of ladies young and old we were to meet, who knew well the gentle art of twirling a toothpick while she talked. Perhaps it is the badge of a waitress in these parts, like a fresh bush over ancient wine-houses, a silent, but eloquent testimonial to the gustatory treats of the hotel. I think we never met, from now on, a waitress in Texas, Arizona or New Mexico, who was not thus equipped. Ours did not flourish hers in vain. The flakiness of the biscuits, the fragrance of the wild honey, and the melting deliciousness of the river fish, caught fresh in the Rio Grande an hour before, caused us to see Del Rio with happy eyes. To this day, Toby speaks of it as if it were the third finest metropolis of the West, which must be attributed entirely to the seven biscuits which floated to her hungry mouth. I might as well admit at once our tendency, which I suspect other travelers share, to grade a town by the food it served. I suspect that Del Rio, to one unfed, would seem a commonplace hamlet, save for its interest as a border settlement. Mexico, three miles away, held out the charm of a forbidden land. We circled next morning to its border, past thatched shanties of Mexicans and negroes, and took a glance at the desolate land beyond, barren, thorny, rolling away to faint blue hills. A camp of United States soldiers lay athwart our path, and two alert soldiers with a grin and a rifle apiece barred our progress. Toby had been keen to cross the line, but when she saw them she said characteristically, “Mexico seems to me vastly overrated.” So ignoring the khaki, of our own free will and choice we turned back. I confess I was relieved. Toby has the post card habit to such an extent that I was prepared to have to fight our way across the border, dodging bullets and bandits, so that she might mail nonchalant cards to her friends, beginning, “We have just dropped into Mexico.”