seem to
know that a regular flood has been pouring in through these southwestern
gateways. You will some day."

What they saw on the Mexican side of the bridge was, as the customs man
had said, nothing much. But J.W. came away with a strange sense of
depression. He had never before seen so much of the raw material of
misery and squalor; what he had observed with wondering pity in the
villages on the American side was as nothing to the unrelieved
hopelessness of the south bank of the river.

That night in the hotel lobby J.W. noticed a fresh-faced but rather
elderly man whom he recognized as one whom he had seen over in Mexico
earlier in the day. With the memory of what he had seen yet fresh upon
him, J.W. ventured a commonplace or two with the stranger, and found him
so genial and interesting that they were still talking long after Fred
Finch had yawned himself off to bed.

"I thought I remembered seeing you over there," said the unknown, "and
you didn't look like a seasoned traveler; more like the amateur I am
myself, though I do get about a little."

"I'm no seasoned sightseer," said J.W.; "this is my first time out. And
that's maybe the reason I've developed so much curiosity about the
people we saw to-day. Do you know much about them?"

"Who? the Mexicans?" The other man smiled, and then was suddenly
serious. "My friend, I begin to think I'm making the Mexicans my hobby.
I don't know who you are, but if you are really interested in the
Mexicans as human beings I'd rather tell you what I know than do
anything else I can think of to-night. It isn't often I find a traveling
man who cares."

"Well, I do care," J.W. asserted, stoutly. "They're people, folks,
aren't they? And it looks as though they could stand having somebody get
interested in them a little."

"Ah, I see now what you are; you are that remarkable combination, a
traveling man and a Christian. Am I right?"

"Why, I suppose so," said J.W., with a smile and a touch of the old
boyish pride in his name. "My initials, as you might say, are 'John
Wesley,' and I'm not ashamed of them."

"And that means you are not only a Christian, but a Methodist? My dear
man, we must shake on that. I'm a Methodist myself, as the stage robber
said to Brother Van, with the romantic name of Tanner. Got my first
interest in Mexico and the Mexicans when my daughter married a young
Methodist preacher and they went down there as missionaries. I make a
trip to see them and