chronicler goes on to say that the Mexican women generally made good
wives and affectionate mothers; but even in this matter she does not
strike us as speaking from conviction. However this may be, she is
certainly at no loss to characterize the taste in dress displayed by the
"fine ladies" upon festal occasions. Describing one of these, she
writes: "Here was to be seen a group of ladies, some with black gowns
and mantillas, others, now that their church-going duty was over,
equipped in velvet or satin, with their hair dressed--and beautiful
hair they have; some leading their children by the hand, dressed--alas,
how were they dressed! Long, velvet gowns trimmed with blonde, diamond
earrings, high French caps furbelowed with lace and flowers, or turbans
with plumes of feathers. Now and then, the head of a little thing that
could hardly waddle alone might have belonged to an English
dowager-duchess in her opera-box. Some had extraordinary bonnets, and as
they toddled along, top-heavy, one would have thought they were little
old women, without a glimpse caught of their lovely little brown faces
and blue eyes."

Though again Madame Calderon very kindly bestows her criticism upon the
dresses of the children rather than those of the mothers, even a mere
man can guess what must have been the appearance of the mothers who had
chosen thus to dress their offspring.

It is not, however, among the higher classes of city-dwellers that one
should seek for the most characteristic aspects of the life of a nation.
These city-dwellers, and especially the female moiety of them, are apt
to be mere imitators of other cultures, shaping their lives, as their
costumes, in obedience to the dictates of some other land, higher in the
scale of fashion. It is to the country, the _terris_ as distinguished
from the _urbis_, that one must go to obtain the truth of female life in
Mexico or any other land; for, though fashion may hold sway here also,
it is less apt to overcome national taste and custom.

Female life on the great estates of Mexico, the _haciendas_, in the
first days of the republic was in a measure characteristic and
individual--more so, at least, than at any time since the days of the
first coming of the Spaniards. To some extent there was a continuance of
the customs of the race which had dwelt in Anahuac before the coming of
the invaders, the customs being modified by the conditions and needs of
the new time. Among the upper classes