silver buttons. He
is jostled by a fellow-countryman, who gathers his serape across his
left shoulder and breast so adroitly as to partially conceal his shabby
attire, while he puffs his cigarette with assumed nonchalance,
exchanging a careless word in the mean time with the gypsy-like woman
who offers bananas and zapotas for sale. Dainty senoritas trip across
the way in red-heeled slippers of Cinderella-like proportions, while
noisy, laughing, happy children, girls and boys, romp with pet dogs,
trundle ribbon-decked hoops, or spin gaudy humming tops. Flaring posters
catch the eye, heralding the cruel bull-fight or a performance at the
theatre. On Sundays a military band performs here forenoons and
evenings. Under the starlight you may look not only among the low
growing foliage to see the fireflies, which float there like clouds of
phosphorescence, but now and again one will glow, diamond-like, in the
black hair of the fair senoritas, where they are ingeniously fastened to
produce this effect. It is strictly a Spanish idea, which the author has
often seen in Havana. So brilliant are these tropical fireflies that
with three or four placed under an inverted wineglass one can see to
read fine printed matter in the nighttime. It is the common people
mostly who use these insects as evening ornaments on their persons,
though sometimes the most refined ladies wear them. The firefly has a
hook-like integument on its body by which it is easily fastened to the
hair or dress without any harm to itself. It seems as though nature had
anticipated this peculiar use of the "lightning-bug," and so provided
the necessary means for the purpose. The country people bring them to
market in little wicker baskets or cages, and it is curious to see with
what avidity they will consume sugar. As you gaze with interest at the
picture of tropical life, you are quietly asked for a few pennies by a
man so well dressed, and apparently so well to do, that it seems more
like a joke than like real begging. Just so the author has been accosted
in the streets of Granada, in continental Spain, with a request for a
trifling sum of money, by well-dressed people. Comparatively few beggars
importune one in the large cities of Mexico, being deterred by the
watchful police; but in the environs of any large settlement the
poverty-stricken people are sure to descend upon the stranger like an
army with banners.

The architecture of Vera Cruz is of the old Spanish s