THEIR HABITS E VANGELISTAS THIEVING. 27 



or portico. He is devoted to pulque and music ; for, whilst he 

 drains his social glass in the pulqueria amid a crowd of com- 

 panion leperos, he is ever ready to sing a stave or make a verse in 

 which a spice of wit or satire is certainly found. When he has 

 earned a dollar by toil, he quits his labor even before it is com- 

 pleted, in order to spend his enormous gain. His wants are so 

 small that he may be liberal in his vices. He regards work as an 

 odious imposition upon human nature ; and, created merely to live, 

 he takes care only of to-day leaving to-morrow to take care of 

 itself. Prudence, he thinks, would be a manifest distrust of Provi- 

 dence. His food, purchased at the corner of a street from one of 

 the peripatetic cooks, consists of a few tortillas or corncakes, 

 steeped in a pan of Chili peppers compounded with lard. A frag- 

 ment of beef or fowl sometimes gives zest to the frugal mess. His 

 dress, of narrow cotton or leather trowsers,and a blanket which is 

 at once, bed, bedding, coat and cloak, — is worn season after season 

 without washing, except during the providential ablutions of rain, 

 until the mingled attrition of dirt and time entirely destroy the 

 materials. An occasional crime, or quarrel, which is terminated by 

 a resort to knives and copious phlebotomy, sends him several times 

 every year to the public prison, where he is faithfully visited, fed 

 and consoled by his spouse or amiga. As he passes along the 

 streets with the manacled chain-gang to sweep the town, he begs a 

 claco with such bewitching impudence that the man who refuses 

 the demanded alms must be insensible to humor. Like the Indian, 

 he is remarkably skilful in imitation, and makes figures of wax or 

 rags, which are not only singularly faithful as portraits, but possess 

 a certain degree of grace that is worthy of an artist. Some of the 

 tribe read and write with ease and even elegance. Among this class 

 are to be found the evangelistas or letter writers, who, seated around 

 the portales and side walks of the plaza, are ready, at a moment's 

 notice, to indite a sonnet to a mistress, a petition to government, 

 a letter to an absent husband, or a wrathful effusion to a faithless 

 lover. Another branch of this nomadic horde is engaged in the 

 profitable occupation of " thieving," which requires no capital in 

 trade save nimble fingers, rapid action, and a bold look with which 

 detection may be defied. The narrow streets and lanes of towns 

 are the theatres in which these accomplished rogues perform. No 

 man in Mexico dares indulge in the luxury of carrying a handher- 

 chief in his pocket. The attempt would be useless, for a lepero 

 would appropriate it before the stranger had walked a square. 

 Upon one occasion a hat was actually taken off an Englishman's 



