First visit to the Embassy—Adjusting oneself to a height of eight thousand feet in the tropics—Calle Humboldt—Mexican servants—Diplomatic dinners—Progress of Maderista forces.

May 7, 1911.

Yesterday proved very full, though I had thought to engage it, as far as the outer world was concerned, by a single visit to the Embassy. N. came home to lunch with the announcement that it was Mrs. Wilson's day, so I went back with him, thinking to greet her for a moment only, but she insisted on my returning for the afternoon reception, and was most cordial and welcoming.

I came home, tried to rest, and didn't, and, finally pulling my outer self together with the help of the big, black Alphonsine hat, sallied forth at five o'clock to see the general lay of the Mexican land. I found various autos drawn up before the Embassy door, and Mrs. Wilson, very gracious and attractive-looking in a heliotrope dress, was receiving many callers in her handsome, flower-filled drawing-room. Various diplomatic people were presented, but mostly, as it happened, from or about the equator.

I met, however, a charming young Mexican—Del Campo, I think his name is—from the Foreign Office. His English was so choice and delightful that I asked how it came about. He explained that he had an Irish mother and had been en poste in London. Toward the end the ambassador came in, very cordial, and asking why in the world we hadn't telegraphed that we were coming up on the night train, so that we might be properly met; but I told him one couldn't be "properly met" at 7 A.M.

An agreeable, clever man, Stephen Bonsal, who has been correspondent at various crises for various newspapers in various parts of the world, came in late. He is down here to watch the progress of the revolution from the very good perspective afforded by Mexico City. After every one but Mr. Bonsal had gone there was an interesting conversation about the potentialities of the Mexican situation.

The ambassador is a great admirer of Diaz, and fears the unknown awaiting us.

In the evening we dined with the first secretary, Mr. Dearing, a delightful man of good judgment, with dark, clever eyes, who says he has in view just the house for us. I am glad to find him here.

It's all rather a blur of fatigue, however, and this morning not much better. I am conscious all the time of an effort to adjust the body to an unaccustomed air-pressure, a different ambiency. After all, it is nearly eight thousand feet in the tropics. This hotel "leaves to be desired" from every point of view, and we must make other arrangements at the earliest opportunity.

Later.

Various reporters have been here wanting details of our "previous condition of servitude," and bothering us for our photographs, which we have not got.

Mr. Weitzel, special secretary, sent from Washington to "help out" pending N.'s arrival, has been to lunch, and I am going out to drive with Mrs. Wilson in a few minutes.

Was it not tragic—one of those tricky, inexplicable, unnatural arrangements of fate—that Aunt Laura, up from Tehuantepec on business, should have been leaving one station as we got in at the other? It would have seemed to the human understanding the preordained moment to span the decades between this day and that long-ago parting in my childhood.

Later.

Just home from a delightful drive about Chapultepec Park with Mrs. Wilson. It is entered through a broad, eucalyptus-planted avenue with fine monuments and vistas, leading into the beautiful, poetic grounds, with the far-famed castle of Chapultepec standing on a hill in the midst, about which grow countless varieties of exotic tree and flower. As we drove about she told me of the wonderful fiesta there at the time of the Centenary, when the park was hung with thousands of electric lights, of the dignity and state of Don Porfirio, and of DoÑa Carmen's wonderful white Paris gown and her strings of pearls and diamonds, and flashing through it all her gracious smile as she received the great of the earth, gathered from the four winds.

But there seemed something of a fairy tale about it all, with a revolutionary army in the north headed straight for us, brought together by an unknown dreamer of the dream of equality, a sort of prophet and apostle.

May 8th.

I have already sent off two letters, but this goes via the pouch to Washington. I am not formulating anything about Mexico. I feel myself simply a receptacle for impressions not yet crystallized.

I am now going to look at the house Dearing spoke of. This hotel, though quite new, is already rickety and proves itself more primitive at each turn. The doors in every room are placed just where you don't expect them; either you can't shut them or they won't open. The hot water runs cold, and the cold hot. We are up a huge number of stairs, the first step placed at right angles as you go out of the door; and I seem to be living in a world of luggage. The pleasant rooms can only be got at through the undesirable ones. The food to me is interesting with its American veneer over unclassified substances, but would never do for Elim.

This afternoon I made official calls with Mrs. Wilson—just a leaving of cards, and in the evening we dine with Dearing and Weitzel, who, now that N. has arrived, is returning immediately to Washington. The weather is beautiful, but the dark and splendid clouds that yesterday "gathered round the setting sun" are, they tell me, the forerunners of the rainy season.

May 9, 1911.

Instead of dining with Mr. Weitzel we all had a very pleasant dinner at the Embassy last night. Everything exceedingly well done. A Belgian maÎtre d'hÔtel has brought his Brussels ways with him, and it might have been a pleasant dinner anywhere. The Embassy is very handsomely equipped throughout with the furnishings of Mr. Wilson's Brussels Legation, and the rooms are all large and high-ceilinged and generally ambassadorial-looking. Mr. Wilson has a very complex situation well in hand, but says he has ample reason to fear that if Diaz goes it will be an embarking on unknown seas in a rudderless ship. Personally I have not got any of the points of the compass yet, but something seems brewing in all directions.

Later.

We took the charming dwelling I spoke of yesterday—not too large, and thoroughly furnished by comfortably living, cultured people—42 Calle Humboldt. The name of the street itself is in the proper Mexican note. I want to keep the house, which is built in the dignified, solid way of half a century ago, on the basis of the former masters, so I looked over the accounts, which in themselves give a picture of Mexican life.

The servants get fifteen cents a day for their food, consisting largely of frijoles, and their everlasting pulque, which my nose is no longer a stranger to, and their wages range from seven to nine dollars a month. There is a dear little flower-planted corridor—pink geraniums and calla-lilies—running around the four sides of the patio, on which all the rooms open, and there is a second brick veranda, with various shrubs and flowers and oleander-trees, out beyond the dining-room, where Elim can play in the flooding sun. Four of the servants have been many years with the Americans to whom the house belongs, Mrs. Seeger and her daughter departing only last week on the Ward Line Merida.

The house has never been rented before. Its only drawback is that it is in the center of the town, though it is at the end of the street near the broad Paseo. The Embassy is some distance out, in one of the new "Colonias." We can move in immediately. Everything is in apple-pie order. I have seen two smiling, black-dressed, white-collared, white-aproned maids, who said they wouldn't stay if I got a butler. It sounds so promising that I certainly won't introduce any possibly disturbing element into this paradise.

42 Calle Humboldt.

I am sitting here quietly in the charming little library waiting for the maÎtre de maison, whom we have just missed; a few final arrangements are to be made. There are many bookcases filled with really good books, easy-chairs, writing-desks, and all sheltered from this beautiful but cruel light by awnings at the windows of court and street—everything comfortable and comme il faut. The rooms have the high ceilings of this part of the world, and in the drawing-room, which gives into the library, are more books, and furniture that will be pleasant to live with.

Mrs. S., fearing possible destructions of a very probable revolution, took with her all her really good portable things, I understand. Collections of fans, paintings on bronze, some old pictures, valuable bric-À-brac—in short, the gleanings of years. I am thankful, of course, not to have the responsibility of anybody's special treasures.

The rooms are all enfilade, with the open corridor running around the inside of the patio, and all, except two big corner rooms giving on the street, open onto it. Just opposite is the Ministry of Finance, and at the head of the street in the big Plaza is the Foreign Office. There is an artesian well at the back, but the water must be boiled and filtered. I understand one must keep one's eye on the filtering and boiling, which seems superfluous to the Aztec. Nothing is spoken except Spanish, which pleases me, as it will break me in immediately. The servants are a cook, the two nice maids, two washer-women, and a little half-priced maid called a galopina. As you will judge by the name, she does all the running, and doubtless the kitchen work nobody else will do.

I am most fortunate not to have to try my novice hand on getting a household together in this land of unknown equations. Just to step into a well-ordered household is a piece of good luck. I have already seen a corner I shall make mine, a sofa near a bookcase and reading-lamp, and an old, low, square table which I shall put beside it for books and flowers, and where the tea will be brought.

May 10th.

A word in haste by the pouch. Don't believe all you see in the newspapers, and especially don't let the Paris Herald make you panicky. We are well, and to-morrow we move into the pleasant home. In case there are riots we can sport not only one oak, but two, as there is a double set of doors to the large vestibule leading into the courtyard, and we are up one flight, in what the Italians would call the piano nobile. Nothing above but a flat, convenient, accessible roof. I am told the roof is a great feature of Latin-American life, especially in revolutionary days.

I write at length about the disposition of the house because I know you will like to hear; not because there is one chance in a thousand of the siege so much talked about, though it seems in the note to order large supplies from the American grocery-stores, and people are having their doors and window-shutters strengthened. The fighting on the frontier has nothing, as yet, to do with us.

May 12th.

All peaceful here in Mexico City. Diaz and Madero are supposed to come to some sort of terms. The well-seasoned inhabitants who know the people and conditions feel there is no cause for personal anxieties, though, of course, there are always alarmists. One minister, whose posts during a long career have been Guatemala, Siam, and Mexico, talks wildly, and has stocked his house for a siege. He lets the water run into his tub at night for fear the water-supply will be cut off, and has had iron bars put across his shutters.

Yesterday, when we got to the house, there was not a sign of any of the servants. It appeared completely deserted, and might have been a Mayan ruin so far as signs of life were concerned. After an hour of thinking their delicacy, or whatever it was, had gone far enough, I investigated the back quarters, and they all appeared smiling and ready. As I understand it, there was some Spanish-Indian idea about not intruding at first; but I wanted to get settled!

I was out this morning, getting a few necessary additions to the house, though everything is here, even to some linen and silver. The departing Belgian secretary is having a sale, and I met there several of the colleagues looking over his household gods.

Last night we were again at the Embassy for dinner, and the cook returned me some of the morning house money—fifty cents or so—that had not been used. I was so surprised that I took it. They seem a pleasant, peaceful, gentle, ungrasping sort of people.

The house is open day and night—we live a practically outdoor life. To get to the really charming dining-room with its yellow walls, rare old engravings in old dark, inlaid frames, its cabinets with bits of Napoleon, Maximilian, and other old china, we have to go out under "the inverted bowl" of an unimagined shining blueness and around the corridor. It certainly poetizes the hour of refreshment. The climate is indescribably beautiful to look at, but it is all too high. Few foreigners can stand it À la longue. The patio was flooded with moonlight when I went to bed, and flooded with sun when I woke up. I praised Allah.

The dinner of twelve at the Embassy last night was very pleasant. President Taft's announcement that there would be no intervention made every one feel easy again. Rumors had been rife in town as to possible decisions in Washington. I sat between the ambassador and an American, Mr. McLaren, an intime of Madero, in whose house he lay concealed last autumn when he was in danger of arrest.

I was most interested in hearing, at first hand, about Madero. Mr. McLaren, a clever lawyer with a long experience of Mexico, says he is inspired, illuminated, selfless, with but one idea, the regeneration of Mexico. He seems to have no doubt of Madero's being able to work out the Mexican situation along high, broad lines, and thinks he will surely be here, in the city, through force or the abdication of Diaz, within a month or two.

Mr. Wilson, on the contrary, told me again he saw with dread the overthrow of the Diaz rÉgime. Though the President is eighty-three, with many of the infirmities and obstinacies of old age, he also preserves many of the qualities that made him great, and Mr. Wilson said that he personally, in all his dealings with him, never found him lacking in understanding or energy.

I reminded myself of La Fontaine's fable, Entre deux Âges, with the difference, however, that instead of having no hair left, I had no opinions left, when we rose from dinner. We drove home in an open motor under a thickly starred and gorgeous heaven; but the unfamiliar constellations gave me sudden nostalgia.

Later.

Last night the Ward Line Merida sank. The wife and daughter of Mr. Seeger were on her. After five hours of anguish and uncertainty, in complete darkness, bereft of every personal belonging, the passengers were transferred to the United Fruit Company steamer that ran into them. The news has just come in. It makes 42 Calle Humboldt seem very safe. To think that as we were returning to its security from the pleasant dinner at the Embassy the disaster was taking place!

FRANCISCO I. MADERO
(From a photograph taken in 1911)