Arizona weekly enterprise., 1888-01-28
THE PRESIDENT OF MEXICO.
How He Gained His Edueation-A Lucky
 Chance Success.

How He Gained His Edueation-A Lucky
 Chance Success.
 President Diaz is an ardent friend of educational progress, and an intelligent co-laborer with all men working here to better current educational methods: He gained his own education most labori- ously, and his career from boyhood to early manhood was one long struggle for knowledge. The son of honorable but poor people in Oaxaca, he went to the elementary schools, and, like Cleveland, clerked it for awhile in a grocery, or rather general country store. This he did to help his excellent mother, who seems to have been made of that superior sort of stuff that we always find in the mothers of great men. Curiously enough young Diaz was intended for the church, there being hereditary chaplaincy in his family, which was reserved for him. An uncle, the protector of the family, urged his taking theological course, and he accordingly was entered at the famous seminary of Oaxaca, where he ground away at the dTy bones of doc Urine for a number of years, all the whil e feeling an inclination toward the law !. which was drowned on by his uncle.
 It was young Diaz' s idea to help his mother by taking the shortest cut toward an independent position such as the church would give him, but the struggle within him was a sharp one between in- clination and the duty he felt toward a mother for whom he had the warmest love and reverence. He took private pupils to elie out his maintenance in tn. seminary, and was early marked by older men about him as a lad of singular firm ness of character. Finally, by lucky chance, the way opened for him to enter the civil institute or college of OaXaca where he could study law. His uncle disowned him when he made up his mint to enter new profession, but his excel lent mother said to him: II will not try to bias you; do as seems best" To hell his mother he took more private pupils | and thus, by teaching and studying harC and at unreasonable hours, he gained hi education, entering afterward the law | office of JuareZ, who was subsequently 1 president of the republic. In later year he took up the military profession, il which, as every one knows, he made l; brilliant success, and handled consider able armies, having at one period ove 1 1000 men under him.
 I cite the case of President Diaz as il lustrative of that hunger for learning and that determination in securing al education so frequent among ambition Mexican young men People who asser 1 that Gen. Diaz is an uneducated, rougl man either purposely lie, or are totall ignorant of his career. Like man another man of eminence, he may be sai to be the son of his own works. Of tn leading men of this republic, at the pres ent day, I know few who were not poo lads at the outset, gaining an educatio
 by hard work. One eminent lawyer be gan peddling vegetables to earn h
 schoolbooks, and cared for his mothe
 while studying at school. This filial al
 lection is universal among MeXicans. I'll
 father and the mother are not neglected
 Family ties are strong, and in man
 families there is fine spirit of nutu;
 helpfulness.- City of Mexico Cor. Bosto
 Herald.