uman race. I need not
say that both Enriquez and myself look forward to it with confident
tranquillity."

There was clearly nothing for me to do now but to shake hands again and
take my leave. Yet I was so much impressed with the unreality of the
whole scene that when I reached the front door I had a strong impulse
to return suddenly and fall in upon them in their relaxed and natural
attitudes. They could not keep up this pose between themselves; and I
half expected to see their laughing faces at the window, as I glanced up
before wending my perilous way to the street.

I found Mrs. Saltillo's manuscript well written and, in the narrative
parts, even graphic and sparkling. I suppressed some general remarks
on the universe, and some correlative theories of existence, as
not appertaining particularly to the Aztecs, and as not meeting any
unquenchable thirst for information on the part of the readers of the
"Daily Excelsior." I even promoted my fair contributor to the position
of having been commissioned, at great expense, to make the Mexican
journey especially for the "Excelsior." This, with Mrs. Saltillo's
somewhat precise preraphaelite drawings and water-colors, vilely
reproduced by woodcuts, gave quite a sensational air to her production,
which, divided into parts, for two or three days filled a whole page
of the paper. I am not aware of any particular service that it did to
ethnology; but, as I pointed out in the editorial column, it showed that
the people of California were not given over by material greed to the
exclusion of intellectual research; and as it was attacked instantly
in long communications from one or two scientific men, it thus produced
more copy.

Briefly, it was a boom for the author and the "Daily Excelsior." I
should add, however, that a rival newspaper intimated that it was also a
boom for Mrs. Saitillo's HUSBAND, and called attention to the fact that
a deserted Mexican mine, known as "El Bolero," was described graphically
in the Aztec article among the news, and again appeared in the
advertising columns of the same paper. I turned somewhat indignantly
to the file of the "Excelsior," and, singularly enough, found in the
elaborate prospectus of a new gold-mining company the description of the
El Bolero mine as a QUOTATION from the Aztec article, with extraordinary
inducements for the investment of capital in the projected working of an
old mine. If I had had any difficulty in recognizing in the