old woman, and I saw that we were
destined to secure nothing but decrepit hags, as representatives of
the fair sex. At the next closed house, I stopped, and turning to an
official, who spoke Spanish, said, "I am tired of these closed houses;
who owns this house?" His name was given, and I wrote it down. "Very
well," said I, "I shall recommend to the _jefe_ of the district, when I
reach El Salto, that he be made to pay a fine of five pesos." At this,
the town officials gasped, but we walked to the next house, which was
also closed. "Who owns this house?" And down went a second name. By
the time I had three names of owners of closed houses on my paper, the
officials held a hasty whispered consultation; then coming to me,
they begged me to excuse them for a moment, as the _secretario_ would
accompany me upon my round, and they would soon rejoin us. With this,
they disappeared, and we entered another old woman's house. When we
emerged, a wonderful change had taken place; every house in the village
had its door wide open, and in the doorway were to be seen anywhere from
one to three or four ladies of all ages. From this time on, there was no
lack of women, and the twenty-five were promptly measured.

We had picked out our subjects for modeling before we started on our
rounds to measure women; and had left Ramon in charge of that part of
our work, staying only long enough to see him make the mould of the
first subject. This was an indian, named Juan, the first _alcalde_ of
the village. We had carefully explained the operation to our subjects;
we had described in detail the sensations and emotions connected with
the thing, and thought we had the subjects well prepared. When Juan
began, he seemed to have good courage, but we told a young fellow, who
sat near and understood Spanish, that he should tell the man certain
encouraging things which we repeated to him. The translation was
promptly done, and we were therefore much surprised to see our subject's
confidence gradually give way to terror. While we were applying the
first mould, he began to sob and cry like a child; this was, however,
nothing compared with the abject terror and sorrow which he displayed
while we were making the face-mould. The tears flowed from his eyes; he
sobbed, cried aloud, and we could see the thumping of his heart against
his chest. We had never had a subject who took the matter so hardly.
When the operation was completed, we learned the cause of all th