egun at the Staten Island Academy.
The great delight of the ten-year-old schoolboy was to follow
the rushing fire-engines which were an almost daily feature
in the life of the New York streets. Even in manhood he could never resist
the lure of the fire-alarm.

Two years later (1900) came a new migration, which no doubt exercised
a determining influence on the boy's development. The family removed
to Mexico, and there Alan spent a great part of the most impressionable years
of his youth. If New York embodies the romance of Power,
Mexico represents to perfection the romance of Picturesqueness.
To pass from the United States to Mexico is like passing at one bound from
the New World to the Old. Wherever it has not been recently Americanized,
its beauty is that of sunbaked, somnolent decay. It is in many ways
curiously like its mother--or rather its step-mother--country, Spain.
But Spain can show nothing to equal the spacious magnificence of its scenery
or the picturesqueness of its physiognomies and its costumes.
And then it is the scene of the most fascinating adventure
recorded in history--an exploit which puts to shame
the imagination of the greatest masters of romance.
It is true that the Mexico City of to-day shows scanty traces
(except in its Museum) of the Tenochtitlan of Montezuma;
but the vast amphitheatre on which it stands is still wonderfully impressive,
and still the great silver cones of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl
look down upon it from their immaculate altitudes.

Though well within the tropics, the great elevation of the city (7400 feet)
renders its climate very attractive to those for whom height has no terrors;
and the Seegers soon became greatly attached to it.
For two very happy years, it was the home of the whole family.
The children had a tutor whom they respected and loved,
and who helped to develop their taste for poetry and good literature.
"One of our keenest pleasures," writes one of the family, "was to go in a body
to the old book-shops, and on Sunday morning to the 'Thieves Market',
to rummage for treasures; and many were the Elzevirs and worm-eaten,
vellum-bound volumes from the old convent libraries that fell into our hands.
At that time we issued a home magazine called 'The Prophet',
in honour of a large painting that we had acquired and chose to consider
as the patron of our household. The magazine was supposed to appear monthly,
but was always months behind its time. Alan was th