workmanship, rocking-chairs with and without arms, made of pine, stained or painted or varnished, and upright chairs with cane seats. I ventured to ask when he could complete for us a dozen chairs, four rockers, and some tables. Utterly amazed, he looked at me with a smile of incredulity, as if to say, "What can you do with so much furniture?" He disapproved of my wish to have oblong and round tables, so I yielded acquiescence to the customary triangular ones which grace the corners of every parlor of respectability.
It now becomes necessary to introduce what proved to me the most peculiar and interesting feature of home-life in Mexico. This is not an article of furniture, a fresco, a pounded earthen floor, or a burro or barred casement, but the indispensable, all-pervading, and incomparable man-servant, known, as the mozo. According to the prevailing idea, he is far more important than any of the things enumerated in my household ménage, for from first to last he played a conspicuous róle.
Forewarned—forearmed! The respectability of the household depending on his presence; one was engaged, the strongest character in his line—the never-to-be-forgotten Pancho.
It was perhaps not a just sentence to pronounce upon this individual, but circumstances seemed to warrant the comparison I involuntarily made between our watchful Pancho and a sleepless bloodhound. At night he curled himself up on a simple petate with no pillow and only a blanket, and was as ready to respond to our beck and call as in the day.
In this house were two kitchens, representative of that part of the country. In the center of one was a miniature circus-ring about three feet in circumference, consisting simply of a raised circle of clay
