It is not, however, among the higher classes of city-dwellers that one should seek for the most characteristic aspects of the life of a nation. These city-dwellers, and especially the female moiety of them, are apt to be mere imitators of other cultures, shaping their lives, as their costumes, in obedience to the dictates of some other land, higher in the scale of fashion. It is to the country, the _terris_ as distinguished from the _urbis_, that one must go to obtain the truth of female life in Mexico or any other land; for, though fashion may hold sway here also, it is less apt to overcome national taste and custom. Female life on the great estates of Mexico, the _haciendas_, in the first days of the republic was in a measure characteristic and individual--more so, at least, than at any time since the days of the first coming of the Spaniards. To some extent there was a continuance of the customs of the race which had dwelt in Anahuac before the coming of the invaders, the customs being modified by the conditions and needs of the new time. Among the upper classes, there was no costume peculiar to the country, save that nearly all wore the graceful veil in lieu of the hideous European headdress of the period. There was, however, then as now, a decided love for garishness of color among the Mexican women, and there was but little display of taste in the direction of costume. The mistress of a large hacienda was somewhat in the position of one of the European "ladies of the castle" in feudal days; but as a rule--though, of course, the stated rules had many exceptions--she did not occupy herself in the same manner as did the feudal chatelaine. She was apt to be ignorant and lazy; she passed the greater part of the day in idling upon the _azotea_, as was called the roof-garden which crowned most of the long and low houses of the Mexican country estates, perhaps rolling and smoking her cigarettes,--for the Mexican ladies were inveterate smokers,--or perhaps writing a _papelcito_ to be sent to her lover in appointment of a tryst. This latter if she were young and handsome; if she were old--and no daughter of Anahuac passed the Rubicon of forty and retained her beauty in even the most modified form--she might reflect on her sins, which probably gave her some little uneasiness, or she might rehearse them into the ears of her confessor, or she might do aught that called for no exertion, of mind or body. Of the latter she would never be guilty, and the former she abhorred to an almost equal extent. There were, however, marked exceptions to the rule of inactivity of body in the persons of certain señoritas who could ride like Comanches and throw a _lazo_ almost as well as their lovers and brothers, and who delighted in the display of these, their chief and perhaps only accomplishments. These ladies, however, were in the minority; the rule of Mexican female life was passivity, not to say sloth.