PREFACE.
The descriptions of Mexican life, customs, and character embraced in the following chapters are drawn from a close and interested scrutiny of the people of our neighboring Republic during a residence and visits among them including in all a period of about seven years.
Like all foreigners, I was practically a stranger to the marked peculiarities of race, social and business life, government, and religion there to be encountered. In all that I had read on the subject, in books or transient sketches, I found that no one had endeavored to minutely describe certain phases of Mexican life and character, necessary to be understood in order to fully appreciate the people.
First impressions of writers are either glowing on account of novelty, excitement, and varied pleasures, or marked by unfavorable criticisms obtained from a mere surface-view of the new society with which they mingle. I shared in the variety of impressions common to all strangers; but experience with the people and a careful observation of them brought about a change in my opinions as to the fitness of their government and national customs for the varied races of their Republic. And more than this: a closer contact also revealed to me the high culture and splendid attainments of her men and the warm, sympathetic hearts of her women.
The longer I mingled with the Mexican people the more forcibly was I impressed with the fact that they are not properly understood by their Anglo-Saxon neighbors. As this thought grew in my mind day by day, there grew with it a desire to acquaint my own countrymen more intimately with them, and, if possible, secure a fairer appreciation of a people whom it has been too long the custom to decry, but who deserve the highest commendation for their works and institutions, projected and carried out under many difficulties.
