hind the driver, and find a seat on the same shelf occupied by a priest dressed in his robe, beads and all. It is the first sight of this sort I have seen in the country. He would not have dared to have done it in the city of Mexico. But they are less rigid here in respect to all interdicted matters. They allow bull-fights and priest's robes, neither of which can occur in the capital.
He seems clever, this priest, and is disposed to be conversational. By means of broken English and Spanish, helped on with some broken French and Latin, we contrive to get at each other's meaning quite fairly. He informs me that he is a priest of the new order of the Paulists, that he is conversant with Greek, Hebrew, Italian, and French, as well as Spanish; that he has never been at Rome, but expects to go next year. He inquires my profession. "A writer for the press," I innocently answer. It is well sometimes to have two strings to your bow. But I add, "I am a Methodist." I meant to tell half the ecclesiastical truth, if I shrunk from telling the whole. This reserve is not unwise; for Leon is the most fanatical of cities; and the knowledge that a Protestant minister was entering it, even as an observer, would have been reported to the bishop before I had been fifteen minutes in the town. What consequences might have followed, poor Stevens's fate suggests. It was only about two days' ride beyond Leon, in a less religious town, that he was massacred by order of the Church authorities. By this semi-reticence, too, I got out of my Paulist friend light that I should not otherwise have gained. He caught at the word "Methodist." "How many churches have you," he said, "in the States?" I tell him there are six leading churches: Baptist, Catholic, Congregational, Episcopal, Methodist, and Presbyterian. He asks the peculiarities of the five of which he is ignorant. They are given. "Any Lutherans?" "A few churches of that name, composed principally of Germans." "Any Calvinists?" "Many of that faith, but no church organization of that name." "Are not many indifferentestas?" I repeat that word, not catching its meaning. "Yes," he replies; "no religion, no faith, no confession, nothing?" "Yes, there are some who are not Christians, but most
