gh
altar and the quaint old holy pictures ranged thick upon the walls; and
through the burying-ground--and to all the rest of it; and for this
service there is nothing to pay. On departing the visitor, if he
chooses, may leave a coin behind; but he doesn't have to--it isn't
compulsory.

There is a kind of traveler who repays this hospitality by defiling the
walls with his inconsequential name, scratched in or scrawled on, and by
toting away as a souvenir whatever portable object he can confiscate
when nobody is looking. Up in the bell tower the masonry is all defaced
and pocked where these vandals have dug at it with pocketknives; and as
we were coming away, one of them--a typical specimen--showed me with
deep pride half of a brick pouched in his coat pocket. It seemed that
while the priest's back was turned he had pried it loose from the
frilled ornamentation of a vault in the burying-ground at the cost only
of his self-respect--admitting that he had any of that commodity in
stock--and a broken thumbnail. It was, indeed, a priceless treasure and
he valued it accordingly. And yet, at a distance of ten feet in an
ordinary light, no one not in the secret could have said offhand whether
that half-brick came out of a Mission tomb in California or a
smokehouse in Arkansas.

We didn't see any Indians when we ran down into Mexico. However, we only
ran into Mexico for a distance of a mile and a half below the California
state boundary, and maybe that had something to do with it. By
automobile we rode from San Diego over to the town of Tia Juana,
signifying, in our tongue, Aunt Jane. Ramona, heroine of Helen Hunt
Jackson's famous novel, had an aunt called Jane. I guess they had a
grudge against the lady; they named this town after her.

Selling souvenirs to tourists, who come daily on sightseeing coaches
from Coronado Beach and San Diego, is the principal pastime of the
natives of Tia Juana. Weekdays they do this; and sometimes on a Sunday
afternoon they have a bullfight in their little bullring. On such an
occasion the bullfighting outfit is specially imported from one of the
larger towns farther inland. Sometimes the whole troupe comes from
Juarez and puts on a regular metropolitan production, with the original
all-star cast. There is the gallant performer known as the armadilla,
who teases the bull to desperation by waving a red shawl at him; the no
less daring parabola, sticking little barbed boleros in the bull's
wither