“I should say they are,” said the man of authority with emphasis.  “In the last four or five years the Mexican population of the United States has about doubled; three quarters of a million have crossed the Rio Grande somewhere, or the border further west.  You people from the East make a big fuss over immigration from Europe, but you hardly 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 the babies about once a year.  But now I am getting interested in these people as an American and, I hope, a Christian who tries to work at the business.  What did you say your other name was?”