seen in his sister to admire he joined a tolerant skepticism of the whole sex.  This he was wont to express in that marvelous combination of Spanish precision and California slang for which he was justly famous.  “As to thees women and their little game,” he would say, “believe me, my friend, your old Oncle ’Enry is not in it.  No; he will ever take a back seat when lofe is around.  For why?  Regard me here!  If she is a horse, you shall say, ’She will buck-jump,’ ‘She will ess-shy,’ ‘She will not arrive,’ or ’She will arrive too quick.’  But if it is thees women, where are you?  For when you shall say, ‘She will ess-shy,’ look you, she will walk straight; or she will remain tranquil when you think she buck-jump; or else she will arrive and, look you, you will not.  You shall get left.  It is ever so.  My father and the brother of my father have both make court to my mother when she was but a senorita.  My father think she have lofe his brother more.  So he say to her:  ’It is enofe; tranquillize yourself.  I will go.  I will efface myself.  Adios!  Shake hands!  Ta-ta!  So long!  See you again in the fall.’  And what make my mother?  Regard me!  She marry my father—­on the instant!  Of thees women, believe me, Pancho, you shall know nothing.  Not even if they shall make you the son of your father or his nephew.”

I have recalled this characteristic speech to show the general tendency of Enriquez’ convictions at the opening of this little story.  It is only fair to say, however, that his usual attitude toward the sex he so cheerfully maligned exhibited little apprehension or caution in dealing with them.  Among the frivolous and light-minded intermixture of his race he moved with great freedom and popularity.  He danced well; when we went to fandangos together his agility and the audacity of his figures always procured him the prettiest partners, his professed sentiments, I presume, shielding him from subsequent jealousies, heartburnings, or envy.  I have a vivid recollection of him in the mysteries of the SEMICUACUA, a somewhat corybantic dance which left much to the invention of the performers, and very little to the imagination of the spectator.  In one of the figures a gaudy handkerchief, waved more or less gracefully by dancer and danseuse before the dazzled eyes of each other, acted as love’s signal, and was used to express alternate admiration and indifference, shyness and audacity, fear and transport, coyness and coquetry, as the dance proceeded.  I need not say that Enriquez’ pantomimic illustration of these emotions was peculiarly extravagant; but it was always performed and accepted with a gravity that was an essential feature of the dance.  At such times sighs would escape him which were supposed to portray the incipient stages of passion; snorts of jealousy burst from him at the suggestion of a rival; he was overtaken by a sort of St. Vitus’s dance that expressed his timidity in making the first advances of affection; the scorn of his ladylove struck him