ly patriotic as his military career unquestionably had been? Or was it a personal lust-later tamed and purified by responsibility and the evolution of events? Was it the professional revolution. of independent Latin America-an Out trying to get In -or was it something more prophetic? One's first presumption may easily be-as mine was before I had earned any right to presume-that the revolt against Juarez and the upsetting of Lerdo were rather less nobly inspired than their sequel.

It is good history, as well as good morals, that no man can play a part absolutely and always. If he be acting, he will sometimes forget his rôle, and we shall catch him. If he is never inconsistent, then he cannot be making believe. The career of Diaz seems to me to stand that test, for it has been logical in every step. The Pretender could not have known all he was to do; but he certainly knew very well what he was doing. He saw the consummate need of his centrifugal country - and the only man who could fill it. Something more or less like usurpation had become the recognized highway to the Presidency-not an incumbent since the Independéncia had an absolutely clean title of election-and among the periodic crowd of usurpers he knew one who could lift the country permanently out of the reach of usurpation. If under our notions of democracy we cannot quite grasp the premise, we can at least read the logic of his demonstration. From the first he has walked a straight and narrow path toward the consistent goal. A cavalier might well refuse the advances of his country's foes, but only a patriot would

have declined his country's proffers as too generous for her own good. There was nothing parvenu in the penniless lad who refused pay for his first military service; nor in the struggling youth who declined the law degree that Juarez gave him, and studied two years longer, amid arduous duties, to earn it; nor in the young officer who several times declined to be promoted over the heads of his elders, lest it create jealousies harmful to the cause; nor in the sudden popular idol who twice could have had the Presidency at Maximilian's hands-and with it the deliverance of his country-but would not, because Juarez was his President.

This may not be so picturesque a con

clusion as the notion that here was a sheer usurper, gradually transformed to a high patriot by the unfolding of events and of his own eyesight, but it seems to tally better with the record. We have reasonable authority, too, for knowing a man by his fruits. Several Presidents of Mexico have tried to do something for their country besides sitting at its head; not all of them together have done for it what Diaz has. It would doubtless be a poor creature who had no ambitions of his own. A fit selfishness is the datum-plane of humanity, and only above that is man's altitude measured-by the measure wherewith he subordinates that ambition to other things, or other things to that am

bition. Diaz has never needed a guardian, but neither has his country, since he came up.

Bearing on the same point from an other side is the attitude of his present authority. No Governor in our States is more accessible than this President, plus. He wears no body-guards, no hedges, no ostentation. It is not precisely a czar who gives audience to laborers, rides unattended in a street car, and often walks to his residence alone, or to church with no more retinue than his wife. A man of warm friendships as of stanch resentments, he does not abuse either. He may not forget, but he does shelve, a personal grudge whose object can be a citizen of use to the republic-and his whole tenure of office is full of instances. As to his friends, he remembers a certain fine discrimination between Porfirio Diaz and President Diaz. No one is allowed to become his shadow, and he is scrupulous that his public goings and comings shall not be inseparably associated with certain companions. For, in his own words, "Nothing so irritates a people as the insolence of favoritesand all favorites tend to insolence."

This, of course, is a matter of business judgment. Outside what he conceives to be a ruler's duty to the public, he is not only accessible, but notoriously warm-hearted. His career is as full of handsome friendships. and tender mercies as of uncompromising firmness. One incident, which I believe has not been published, is illustrative of the man. In June, 1895, the President was invited to Catorce, the chief mining camp of San Luis Potosí, to inaugurate the great electrical plant (the first of its kind in Mexico) at the

Santa Ana Mine. A large company of the foremost men in Mexico had come up with him from the capital, and the mine-owners had made a fitting fiesta. When Diaz appeared at the works the laborers went wild and surged forward upon the Presidential party. A stranger might have fancied this tattered and mine - stained horde about to swallow up the little knot of broadclothed statesmen. One grizzled old Indian in the van hurled his shabby hat aloft with a stentorian shout above all the clamor, Viva nuestro tata!"*

"Long live our father!" Tata is at once as affectionate as "daddy," yet reverent. The Indians use it of God.

PORFIRIO DIAZ, JUN.

and rushing upon the nonplussed President, caught him a tremendous hug that fairly lifted him from his feet. Diaz involuntarily fell back a step. Then his inscrutable face suddenly resolved in a smile, half humorous, half tender; and as his friends elbowed him out of the crush they saw a tear creeping down either cheek.

As the military history of Diaz in many ways suggests that of Graut-though he had none of Grant's technical preparation, and led far smaller armies, and had always to create them himself out of next to nothing, forging invincible steel from the peon mud-so does his personal simplicity. At the opening of the lips the resemblance ceases; but there was the same quietness of taste. No man of Latin blood could disregard the demands of ceremony in a ruler; no man of any blood could be more modest in them. When and where etiquette compels, Diaz is splendid; and none can better carry off the pomp and circumstance of state than this ascended soldier, who would be at home in any court. But outside the necessities of occasion, he goes as unfrilled as our President; scrupulously neat and scrupulously simple in his dress. And while a tyrant may be unvain, tyrants do not walk loose among their serfs.

There is a deeper test of balance than unpretentiousness amid the temptations of practically supreme power. Diaz has remained to this day a man of the strictest habits. He has no vices-not even that sweetest and most human vice which is so easy to an autocrat. Abstemious, methodical, tireless; working with remarkable despatch a long day, yet scrupulous that not even the nation shall quite rob his family of him; early to bed and early to rise; always busy but never hur ried; a sturdy walker; a superb rider of superb horses; a real hunter-as frontiersmen count hunters, and not by the category of titled trigger-pullers who butcher tame, fenced game-the private life of this curious man is as wholesome as his administration, and has broadly aided it. It has been a greater thing to conquer the hearts than the hands of a nation. I can remember when to scratch a Mexican college-boy was pretty generally to find an anti-Porfirista; and every priest's robe covered a Tory. Why? Well, the radical objection to the President was-that he was President. Sophomoric minds,

overfed with reading, looked more to the shadow than to the substance. They tended-as their elders sometimes tend— to remember the theory and forget the fact. They failed to notice that all of a republic is not the license of all to misgovern themselves; that peace, security, the equal conservation of every man's right, are as significant of democracy as is the name of an office; and they were restive over a matter of definition. It was almost precisely the same "objection to federal interference upon which the people of the United States sat en banc a few months ago, and gave verdict for defendant.

But this last barrier between Diaz and the inner hearts of his people has gone down before his personality. It was partly by la mano dura, but more by the clear head and the clean record. It might be too much to call any man unselfish; it is enough when a man acts unselfishly-and this is the root of this man's complete mastery. It has become inev itable, even to the most unthoughtful stiff-neck, not only that he could hold his place, but that he held it in trust. Within a few years-even within his term just ended the last opposition to Diaz has died a natural death. Even the Church party, which delivered its country up to the Intervention of the philistines, sees now that it would be folly to exchange a just opponent for a partisan of its own.

The hold of Diaz on his countrymen began in his extraordinary military ca

reer.

Not only its brilliancy, but its patriotism, kindled hero-worship to a blaze. In the longest and darkest night that Mexico ever knew, he rose early and shone steadfast, the star of hope for national autonomy. His people, his gov ernment, and his foe all came to recognize him as the first soldier of Mexico. Upon the head of this, to general surprise, he has earned a still rarer distinetion.

The greatest general in Mexican history, he has also proved himself the greatest statesman. And no less than his record of war and administration, his private character has conquered the love of those whose admiration was already stormed. His relations as husband, father, and man have all been to the point. His first wife, mother of his three children, was a lovable girl, who died too soon to share his full greatness; but when, in 1883, he married Carmen Romero Rubio,