To accomplish this task, which I felt was a sacred mission and a tribute that I wished to pay to my Mexican friends, I undertook the present volume. I have not failed to realize that the field is new and that it required a more skillful pen than mine to accomplish all that was intended. The details were so numerous and yet so indispensable to the full delineation of character and customs, that great patience has been necessary to eliminate from the material accumulated much that was interesting but not essential to the main design of the work. Then, too, dealing with so many subjects grouped under general headings, the tendency was to make broken and fragmentary sketches. Every chapter will be found to be complete in itself, however, and all serve to give faithful pictures of the people.
Having lived in close personal contact with the domestic service of the country, I have devoted a few of the initial chapters to this unique and, to us, humorous phase of Mexican life,—showing the unfailing inbred adherence to national characteristics.
In submitting this volume to the people of both Republics, it is with the sincere wish that it may, in a measure, lead to a better acquaintance the one with the other, and that this acquaintance may induce both to realize that they have differences and peculiarities naturally adapted to their governments, races and religions. Each can respect and co-operate with the other in peace and harmony, independent and separate as they ever should remain, fixed by nature; but sisters as Republics.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
A duty would be neglected if I failed to pay a tribute to the many friends from whom acts of kindness were received during my residence and journeys in Mexico. To mention each one is impossible, because none were met who did not aid me in my efforts, either by words or acts, which, though perhaps forgotten by them, will ever be by me most gratefully remembered.
To ex-Governor John Ireland of Texas my first acknowledgments
