altillo's superiority would speedily tame him.
Since his brief and characteristic note apprising me of his marriage,
I had not heard from him. It was, therefore, with some surprise, a good
deal of reminiscent affection, and a slight twinge of reproach that, two
years after, I looked up from some proofs, in the sanctum of the "Daily
Excelsior," to recognize his handwriting on a note that was handed to me
by a yellow Mexican boy.

* See "The Devotion of Enriquez," in Selected Stories by
Bret Harte Gutenberg #1312.

A single glance at its contents showed me that Mrs. Saltillo's
correct Bostonian speech had not yet subdued Enriquez's peculiar
Spanish-American slang:--

"Here we are again,--right side up with care,--at 1110 Dupont Street,
Telegraph Hill. Second floor from top. 'Ring and push.' 'No book agents
need apply.' How's your royal nibs? I kiss your hand! Come at six,--the
band shall play at seven,--and regard your friend 'Mees Boston,' who
will tell you about the little old nigger boys, and your old Uncle
'Ennery."

Two things struck me: Enriquez had not changed; Mrs. Saltillo had
certainly yielded up some of her peculiar prejudices. For the address
given, far from being a fashionable district, was known as the "Spanish
quarter," which, while it still held some old Spanish families, was
chiefly given over to half-castes and obscurer foreigners. Even poverty
could not have driven Mrs. Saltillo to such a refuge against her will;
nevertheless, a good deal of concern for Enriquez's fortune mingled with
my curiosity, as I impatiently waited for six o'clock to satisfy it.

It was a breezy climb to 1110 Dupont Street; and although the street
had been graded, the houses retained their airy elevation, and were
accessible only by successive flights of wooden steps to the front door,
which still gave perilously upon the street, sixty feet below. I now
painfully appreciated Enriquez's adaptation of the time-honored joke
about the second floor. An invincible smell of garlic almost took my
remaining breath away as the door was opened to me by a swarthy Mexican
woman, whose loose camisa seemed to be slipping from her unstable bust,
and was held on only by the mantua-like shawl which supplemented it,
gripped by one brown hand. Dizzy from my ascent to that narrow perch,
which looked upon nothing but the distant bay and shores of Contra
Costa, I felt as apologetic as if I had landed from a balloon; but the
woman greete