only a few years more will witness an upward and onward progressiveness heretofore unknown.
At home, also, their range of accomplishments is extended. Where formerly señoritas employed themselves in lacework and embroidery, they now cut, fit, and make their own dresses with taste and skill, copying closely European and American fashions, and taking much pleasure in the selection of the various styles.
During my sojourn at the capital, one young señorita graduated in dentistry. She began at once assisting her father, who was a dentist, in his office, the fact being announced in all the leading daily papers.
Happily the class which most needs this aid and encouragement is the one most benefited by it—the excellent, faithful, and hospitable middle class.
It need not be inferred that husbands interdict their wives from sharing intellectual enjoyments. Yet one—a distinguished man of letters—remarked to me that it was all very well for American women to walk along with the men in science and literature, but it would never do for Mexican women to know any place aside from the home, with its relation to husband and children. If so, they would at once grow unhappy and discontented.
A Mexican gentleman, who had lived a great deal in the United States, and appreciated the Americans as a people, freely admitted to me that he had made the "double mistake of marrying two American women." If this remark savored of a lack of gallantry, it bore, however, a general truth, for the races are not, as a rule, suited to each other conjugally.
But some of the most majestic old dames it has ever been my fortune to know are among the Mexican women. They step as if descended directly from Montezuma, and the manner in which they uphold the dignity of their homes is something well worth seeing.
In neither sex is the slightest effort made to conceal age. Even young ladies on the shady side of an "uncertain age" do not seem aware that the least derogation attaches to that fact, but with a quiet unconcern state the exact number of their years.
