I had not intended to lug into Mexico such a load as I did. But it was a
Jewish holiday, and the pawnshops were closed. As I passed the lodge on
the north end of the bridge over the languid, brown Rio Grande it was a
genuine American voice that snapped: "Heh! A nickel!"

Just beyond, but thirty-six minutes earlier, the Mexican official
stopped me with far more courtesy, and peered down into the corners of
my battered "telescope" without disturbing the contents.

"Monterey?" he asked.

"Si, senor."

"No revolver?" he queried suspiciously.

"No, senor," I answered, keeping the coat on my arm unostentatiously
over my hip pocket. It wasn't a revolver; it was an automatic.

The man who baedekerized Mexico says Nuevo Laredo is not the place to
judge that country. I was glad to hear it. Its imitation of a
street-car, eight feet long, was manned by two tawny children without
uniforms, nor any great amount of substitute for them, who smoked
cigarettes incessantly as we crawled dustily through the baked-mud
hamlet to the decrepit shed that announced itself the station of the
National Railways of Mexico. It was closed, of course. I waited an hour
or more before two officials resplendent in uniforms drifted in to take
up the waiting where I had left off. But it was a real train that pulled
in toward three, from far-off St. Louis, even if it had hooked on behind
a second-class car with long wooden benches.