, there was no costume peculiar to
the country, save that nearly all wore the graceful veil in lieu of the
hideous European headdress of the period. There was, however, then as
now, a decided love for garishness of color among the Mexican women, and
there was but little display of taste in the direction of costume.

The mistress of a large hacienda was somewhat in the position of one of
the European "ladies of the castle" in feudal days; but as a
rule--though, of course, the stated rules had many exceptions--she did
not occupy herself in the same manner as did the feudal chatelaine. She
was apt to be ignorant and lazy; she passed the greater part of the day
in idling upon the _azotea_, as was called the roof-garden which crowned
most of the long and low houses of the Mexican country estates, perhaps
rolling and smoking her cigarettes,--for the Mexican ladies were
inveterate smokers,--or perhaps writing a _papelcito_ to be sent to her
lover in appointment of a tryst. This latter if she were young and
handsome; if she were old--and no daughter of Anahuac passed the Rubicon
of forty and retained her beauty in even the most modified form--she
might reflect on her sins, which probably gave her some little
uneasiness, or she might rehearse them into the ears of her confessor,
or she might do aught that called for no exertion, of mind or body. Of
the latter she would never be guilty, and the former she abhorred to an
almost equal extent. There were, however, marked exceptions to the rule
of inactivity of body in the persons of certain senoritas who could ride
like Comanches and throw a _lazo_ almost as well as their lovers and
brothers, and who delighted in the display of these, their chief and
perhaps only accomplishments. These ladies, however, were in the
minority; the rule of Mexican female life was passivity, not to say
sloth.

As in the case of their predecessors, so with the women of modern
Mexico, consideration has been accorded chiefly to those of the upper
class. There was, however, until recently a very large and significant
class in Mexico called _peons_, who might be said roughly to answer to
the servitors of European feudal times. This class was composed chiefly
or entirely of those of native Indian blood, the descendants of the
races enslaved by the Spaniards and set free so late in the history of
Mexico as even now hardly to have lost in all respects the
characteristics of slavery. These peons form the servito