for I never saw her again, it being their universal custom to postpone
everything for the morrow — a time which I felt would never come.
The mansion and its associations were so well known that every servant whom we employed could contribute some item of interest concerning its history. An old citizen related to me that at the time of Gen. Taylor's entrance into the city there were in it nine most beautiful and interesting señoritas, daughters of the original founder, Don A——. Naturally, every little detail and event concerning them was eagerly absorbed, and nothing gave me more thorough gratification than the discovery that my very first and best friends made after arriving were the descendants of one of these nine señoritas. Don Benito G——, an accomplished gentleman of Castilian descent, who has occupied the highest positions in the state, wooed and won his lovely bride when she was in her early teens, and for many years they remained under the paternal roof. Here their three beautiful children first saw the light, and their infantile days were spent in these grand old rooms, amid the flowers of the court and surrounded by an atmosphere of beauty and refinement.
At the time of our acquaintance these favored children of a distinguished family were in the bloom of early manhood and womanhood, José Maria, the eldest, aged twenty-six; Benito, twenty-two ; and Liberata, a lovely, dark-eyed girl of sixteen. She was a charming representative of her Andalusian ancestors; the graces of her person added to the beauty of her disposition. In imagination her exquisite flower- sweet face rises before me, her soft luminous eyes, shaded by lashes of wondrous length and beauty, sweeping a cheek that glowed like a luscious peach.
These friends began at once, without ceremony or ostentation, to show me the gentlest attentions, and from the unlimited treasure-house of their warm Mexican hearts they bestowed upon me a generous devotion that brightened my life and made me love and respect their land and their people for their sakes. In every circumstance they proved to be animated by the noblest impulses of our common nature, and one of the happiest discoveries I made during those days of a be-
