red, wound with a rich band about the crown and another around the
brim. Those of straw were of every imaginable weave, some of rattan,
like baskets or veranda furniture. The Mexican male seems to be able to
endure sameness of costume below it, but unless his hat is individual,
life is a drab blank to him. With his hat off the peon loses seven
eights of his impressiveness. The women, with only a black sort of thin
shawl over their heads, were eminently inconspicuous in the forest of
hatted men.

Mournfully out of the black drizzling night about the station came the
dismal wails of hawkers at their little stands dim-lighted by pale
lanterns; "_Anda pulque!_" Within the car was more politeness--or
perhaps, more exactly, more unconscious consideration for others--than
north of the Rio Grande. There were many women among us, yet all the
night through there was not a suggestion of indecency or
annoyance. Indian blood largely predominated, hardy, muscular,
bright-eyed fellows, yet in conduct all were _caballeros_. Near me
sat a family of three. The father, perhaps twenty, was strikingly
handsome in his burnished copper skin, his heavy black hair, four or
five inches long, hanging down in "bangs" below his hat. The mother was
even younger, yet the child was already some two years old, the
chubbiest, brightest-eyed bundle of humanity imaginable. In their fight
for a seat the man shouted to the wife to hand him the child. He caught
it by one hand and swung it high over two seats and across the car, yet
it never ceased smiling. The care this untutored fellow took to give
wife and child as much comfort as possible was superior to that many a
"civilized" man would have shown all night under the same
circumstances. Splendid teeth were universal among the peons. There was
no chewing of tobacco, but much spitting by both sexes. A delicate,
child-like young woman drew out a bottle and swallowed whole glassfuls