DOMESTIC LIFE. 



255 



formal manners of the Spaniards have descended to the Mexicans. 

 You are received cordially but carefully, and you must either be 

 useful or known, before you are admitted into the confidence of a 

 family. Until this occurs your reception and departure from a 

 Mexican dwelling are quite as ceremonious as your initiation into a 

 Masonic lodge. Bows, gestures, shrugs, grimaces, and all the or- 

 dinary rites of external politeness are plentifully bestowed on the 

 stranger; — "But sad is the plight of the luckless knight," who 

 imagines that these elegant formalities literally mean what the 

 profess. Americans, especially, whose extraordinary and loose so- 

 cial facilities habituate them to an unrestrained intercourse with all 

 the members of families as soon as they are either prudently or im- 

 prudently introduced to them, — are often in danger of making this 



INTERIOR OF A MEXICAN HOUSE. 



sad mistake in Mexico. Neither wealth, education, nor political 

 position, entitle an individual in that republic to pass the threshold 

 of distant and civil intercourse. The Mexican's house, purse, or 

 daughter, are not at "your disposal," although he tells you that 

 2a 



