THE FANDANGO. 283 



the trees is replaced with a carpet of short grass, thickly 

 dotted with the white headstones that preach a sermon as 

 eloquent as it is mute the milestones of eternity! Be- 

 hind, a precipitous mountain-side, green and gold, crimson 

 and purple, blazing with the georgeous brightness of the 

 tropics. And the whole scene reflected with wondrous 

 fidelity in the glassy mirror it encircles. No rude wind 

 ever roughens that sheet of burnished, bluest steel that 

 gem of purest aquamarine set in gold and malachite. 



And as Acapulco is beautiful, so are many of her gentle 

 inhabitants. Los hombres are muy diabolos. The most 

 beautiful woman I ever saw was there. She was the 

 cause of my having an adventure no, of my thinking I 

 was going to have one : it did not amount to an adven- 

 ture then, though for a time it looked likely enough to 

 be a very disagreeable one. I met her first at a fan- 

 dango, to which I had gone with a friend, a practically 

 speaking naturalized citizen, one of Acapulco's many 

 American resident merchants. It was a pretty little fte 

 why given I do not recollect, do not think I ever knew. 

 The first thing that rivetted my gaze when, on going into 

 cdsa from the pitchy darkness without, my eyes recovered 

 the shock of the glare from a multitude of hanging lamps, 

 was she. Now some people maintain that beauty and 

 ugliness are purely matters of taste, of education, of asso- 

 ciation ; that there is no such thing as absolute beauty, 

 absolute ugliness. I say there is. I have seen both. I 

 then saw an example of the first. 



Undoubtedly to a wide range of objects the application 

 of the several terms of the degrees of beauty, and its 



