and with the still colder iron for your bedfellow, is no very enviable situation. Some would bribe the blacksmith to make them leaden instead of iron rivets, which, when blackened with charcoal, had much the appearance of iron, while they could be easily taken out or reheaded. One medio would buy a leaden rivet; and for some time this ruse was practiced. Frequently, however, when the officers would suddenly enter our cells, they would find our comrades without chains, and as suddenly every fellow would jump to his "jewelry," and clamp it on with a magic celerity which entirely bewildered the senses of the officers, and then as suddenly put on a demure, inoffensive countenance, after the manner of schoolboys cutting up their juvenile antics upon the sudden appearance of the pedagogue. Our old friend with the large corporation, after much fretting about our not wearing the "jewelry," told the governor "that it would require as many blacksmiths to keep us ironed as there were Texians in the castle."

One of our companions, who belonged to the Santa Fé prisoners, the year previous told us a similar anecdote, which then happened in the city of [247] Mexico. Santa Anna sent for the blacksmith, and gave him a severe scolding for not keeping the chains on the prisoners. The poor smith, trembling with fear in his mighty presence, replied, "I know not how it is, sire; I place the best and largest irons upon them, but no sooner do I turn my head than the irons will be laying upon the ground, and they will do 'just so' at me: they surely must be kin to the devil."7

What the poor smith meant by "just so," in which he suited the action to the word, was the "you-can't-come-it-Judge"-motion - à la Kendall. This motion is performed in the following scientific manner, to wit: place the extreme end of the thumb on the tip of your nose; then lock the little finger of your left hand into the thumb of your right, and with the four digits of the said right, give a quivering motion, as if you were performing upon the piano variations to the Battle of Prague; give a comical wink, and pronounce the talismanic words, "You can't come it, Judge," and you have it. This is what the Mexicans cannot comprehend; and you see them frequently practicing it at one another with as imperfect a knowledge of its meaning as a Texian has of the rationale of animal magnetism.

Respecting our rations, they were such, even without labour, as would hardly have kept soul and body together. We fortunately had a small balance of funds still by us, which had been so kindly furnished us by our friend J. P. Schatzell, and Mr. Marks, [248] the United States vice consul in Matamoras. So long as it lasted, our room-mates made out pretty well. A medio each of lard, onions, and red pepper, cut fine, put into our rations of poor beef, and recooked over a small earthen stove of charcoal, made quite a savoury meal for several. We also purchased sugar and coffee, and every day, at twelve o'clock, from the milkman, a gallon of leche de burra, ass's milk. When we had the means, all of our mess took