The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-08-09

from these numerous fines that the great
profit on home manufacture arises in
Mexico. Everything here is protected to
such an extent as TO almost prohibit COM
petition, and there is no better field for
manufacturing enterprises. Such as have
been established are making money and
there is plenty of room for more. In an
other letter will discuss this question
more at length and will show how a mum
Der OF smart Americans are already IN the
held and are making fortunes.
OLD AND CHEAP BOOKS.
Mexico city is perhaps the best place in
the world for the purchase of antique books
and the secondhand book stores cont ain
hundreds Of old volumes bound in vellum
and musty with the age of hundreds Of
years. / bought a rare old volume which
was printed in the year 1903 for dollar, it
is Latin book beautifully printed and
illustrated and it would bring high price
at any antiquarian's America. l found
it in book stall under the long arcades
that run around the plaza in Mexico city,
and the dark faced book peddler asked me
SO for II. pulled out a bright new Next
can dollar and held it up before his eyes.
He at first scorned 1t but as l started to
put II back into my pocket he handed me
the book and held out his hand for the
dollar. You find all kinds of old and rare
volumes here. Two-thirds Of the wealth
of the whole country belonged TO the
priests at the time that their property was
contiscated some years ago by the govern
ment. They had vast libraries IN their
monasteries and their converts were filled
with old books, since then great
many of these have been sold and stolen
and you find them in every language and
some of them date back of the invention of
printing and were made by the monks of
vha mil Ia h., \ vie Cd ha
national library of Mexico. 1t is in the
big church of San Au ,ustin, which was
confscated and devoted to the purpose and
it contains nearly two hundred thousand
volumes or about one-third as many as our
national library at Washington. the walls
of the church have been lined with shelves
and its naves and its chapels are filled with
books. / walked through long aisles of old
volumes bound in vellum and no one of
which l was told was less than one hun
dred years old, and l saw that there were
hundreds of men and boys sitting at the
tables in the reading room and porting over
books and making notes from them. Some
of these were schoolboys, others were
students of the many colleges of the cap
ital, and others | was told belonged to the
Mexican congress and were getting up
speeches which they would soon spout in
the senate and house.
Mexico City is in fact far more Guilt
waited capital than is generally supposed.
You may have as good schools here as any
where. There are colleges for women and
men. There is great national museum, a
tine art gallery which contains number
of the old masters, and the people have
their social clubs and their literary socie
ties. Mexico has its poets, and while l
have been here its poet laureate has re-
cited a patriotic poem at public celebra-
ton. 1t has its novelists and its historians,
and nowhere in the world will you find
more general love for music among ali
classes of the people. Every Mexican city
has its plaza or central park containing
flowers, trees, seats and band stand and
several times week the government and
other bands give here free open air con-
certs. In Mexico City every Sunday morn
ing you may hear delicious music by one of
the best bands of the world IN the Plaza
Mayor. From II o'clock to l the whole
city turns out and takes promenade in
the Alameda, another great park, and here
also an excellent band plays at this time La
the evening there is more music in the
plaza, and this great square OF ten acres is
filed with men, women and children OF all
ages and costumes. There are hundreds
of poems who move about under big hats
with bright blankets thrown around their
shoulders over their cotton suits. Their
dark faced wives in red skirts and white
waists with only their eyes showing out of
the blue or black rebosas which they have
drawn around their heads, walk by their
sides, and half-naked little children trot
along with bare feet and with bare heads
beside them. Many of the women have
babies wrapped up in their rebosa shawls
or slung upon their backs, and in many
cases the men carry the babies. Here a
couple OF lovers go along hand in hand or
with the arm of the man around the waist
of the sweet heart or wife, and all listen to
the music and criticize and enjoy it. There
are also the rich in the plaza. Men and
women as well dressed as you will see them
in New York, and not a few Spanish
maidens are walking slowly along dressed
in black with black shawls on their pretty
heads, their great soulful eyes peeping out
all the more strikingly from the sombre
background These maidens are always
accompanied by their nurses or mothers,
who act as their champerons to ward of
the attentions OF the gay youth of the cap
ital. The order in such crowd is some
thing wonderful. Mexico is much better
regulated city than New York, and there
is no brawlipg nor noise.
MEXICAN THEATRES.
The theatres of Mexico are excellent.
The first stone theatre built in North
America was erected in the western part
OF this country and you find fair theatres
in all the Mexican cities. Mexico has
three theatres which range in seating
capacity from two TO three thousand and
you are sure of finding at least one good
troupe playing. l heard Emma Juch in
the Walkure in the theatre Nacional and
the audience was as fine as any you will
see in the Metropolitan opera house in New
York. The cream of the Spanish nobility
of Mexico was present and there were
hundreds Of finely dressed men ana women
in the boxes, there were many pretty girls,
some of them Indians, some Spanish, some
Mexican and not a few American and
English. The theatre was walled with
boxes and all the ladies were in full dress.
The pit was given up TO the men who kept
their hats on until the play began and who
smoked between the acts. At the close of
each scene all of these men rose. clapped
their opera glasses to their eyes
and starred at the ladies in
deal of rowing back and forth. There was
considerable of visiting in the boxes be-
tween the acts, and L am told that the
Mexicans perform many of their social
obligations eJ the theater. Another night
went to the Teatro Principal, which is
nearly as large as the Nacional. This
thester was founded in the seventeenth
century by two monks, and when it was
Ourneo III LIZ u was looheo upou rs
judgment of God for the sacrilege of the
church trying to raise money In this way.
The monks, however, rebuilt it, and it Is
now one of the leading theaters of the city.
1t is managed differently from our theaters,
and you can 90 in and sit for an act and
pay for that act only. listened TO % cents
worth of "Travista'' in the pit. and
might have had an act il box for about
10 cents more. / was amused at the way
the man in the box-office kept track Of the
seats sold. He had q diagram OF the