Robert Welles Ritchie

“ Then, finding itself temporarily checked, the mob bayed at the guarded President. Out of the roaring bass of the multitude treble shrieks were distinguishable. "Death to the tyrant!" "Death—death to Diaz!" Other voices taunted with vivas for Francisco Madero, vivas for the revolution. The jackals of the city, confident of security in the anonymity of the mob, bravely baited and insulted the old lion of Puebla, whose absolutism had been an ever-present terror for longer than a generation.
Minute by minute the temper of the mob grew more dangerous. ”

“ The Voice was of the mob. On an afternoon in late May of 1911 Mexico City was rising against its master. Out of the kennels of mean streets, whose meanness marble palaces and flowering gardens screen, the canaille of the capital had come pouring, had whirled into mob coalescence, and now were baying and coursing the streets to seek the life of that master. Don Porfirio, the once beloved—Don Porfirio Diaz, dictator and builder of Mexico for more than thirty years—was the master.
All rules of psychology fall before the manifestations of the Latin-American temperament ”

“ Tension grew, minute by minute. Of a sudden came the sharp crash of splintered glass, and the clatter of stones against the marble front of the Palace; half of the hundred windows on the plaza side were broken. The vicious roar of the crowd drowned an order that the commander of the cavalry troop gave, but rifles came down to bear on the black masses, and the quick recoiling of the mob's front sent a backward wave through the press. ”

“ The fate that directs the destinies of the average Mexican peon seems always to move with a certain perverse malignancy. Does he want political liberty or only an extra drink of aguardiente, he dies getting it. His fate leads him blind-folded, ever on the edge of a chasm, where one misstep will blot him out. So it was nothing but their presiding evil genius which dictated that daily for a week before the abdication of Diaz a band of two-hundred-odd revoltosos in the state of Puebla had made it a practice to stop the train out of Mexico City running over the narrow-gauge line to Vera Cruz. ”

“ Slowly the two women began to pace through the swirling tides of humanity, rhythmically waving back and forth their banner of sedition. Men crowded for places behind them. Now the nascent procession was of three ranks, now of Ave, now it filled the street from curb to curb. The two women walked ahead and alone, screaming and singing in an intoxication of the mob call; behind them, the mob. The mob found voice, and it was a bestial, unhuman voice.
Quick as ever the thousands in front of the Chamber of Deputies found a singleness of purpose, recruits came by other thousands. ”

“ A sudden choking blotted Diaz's speech, and his eyes showed tears. "And now, my soldiers—last of the army of Porfirio Diaz—I say farewell. You have guarded me to the ultimate moment—you have been loyal. My soldiers, blessing—take the blessing of your old commander! More—more I cannot—say!" ”

“ In one hour the people of the capital, who had cheered themselves hoarse just a year before when the head of the nation rode through the streets in the triumph of the Centennial, were whirled away in a blood-lust that drove them in solid masses of thousands against the barriers of the Calle Cadenas, where their President lay sick in his bed. ”

“ In theory they stopped it to see that no soldiers of Diaz should be sent out to reinforce the feeble garrisons on the Gulf coast, but probably the perfect joy in doing a simple, lawless act was the sole inspiring cause of their vigilance. They did not rob, did not molest the few passengers who dared a railroad journey during those troublous days; the petty excitement of stopping the train, firing a few shots in the air, and voicing a few vivas for the revolution was their sole reward. ”

“ Out of ten thousand conflicting spurs of action comes, in the snapping of a finger, a sinister unity of purpose, which knows not the individual brain that conceived it, nor the logic of its action. Ten thousand clods, jumbled in confusion, are instantly turned into a single straight furrow. ”

“ No word of the coming of Diaz's train had been sent along the railroad line. The American manager of the railroad in Mexico City feared to trust local telegraphers with train orders, so the light engine running as pilot and the three short trains behind it sped down the slopes of the high plateau toward the sea unheralded and without a schedule. Before the sun was high the band of rebels camped near the railroad track in a barren maguey desert near the town of Oriental heard an engine whistle and saw smoke lifting beyond the spur of the nearest bald knob. ”