LITMIR.BIZ

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produce, crates of chickens. Every sort of portable thing is here borne upon the human back. Now and then one or another seats himself upon the stone and iron benches and engages in gossip. Of these, also, my camera makes note.

      Later in the morning, I saunter through many streets, inquiring my way to one of the great markets. Here I linger, going about from stall to stall and taking a picture as my fancy urges. A policeman, uniformed like a Paris gendarme, eyes me curiously, comprehends the power of my camera, and comes up to me smiling. He drives back the crowd, calls up his companion-in-arms and stands at attention, begging me to send him a copy of the picture. A group of errand boys, who carry large flat baskets, and will take anything home you buy, attracted by the mysterious black box, line up and motion that their pictures also be taken. The instantaneous movement of the shutter strikes them with wonder, when, throwing a few centavos among them, I catch them now struggling for the coin. I have become the center of attraction. The swarming street crowd crushes about me, all eager to face the magic instrument, till I am fain to call upon my policemen friends to fend them off.

      Standing there, joking with my guardians and keeping the good will of the increasing mob, I am accosted by a tall, thin-bearded gentleman in rusty though once fashionable black. He speaks to me in French. He is from Paris, he says; and Ah! have I really been there in Paris! Très jolie Paris! He also enjoys coming to the markets, and wandering among the stalls, and watching the people, and noting their habits and their ways. He guides me about among the different sections, commenting on the fruits and vegetables and wares. When we have spent an interesting hour, he invites me to share a bottle of French wine, a delicious claret, and then, lifting his hat, bids me adieu and is lost forever among the swarming multitudes.

      There is so much to see in this ancient city, so much to feel! It is so filled with historical romance! As I wander about it, my mind and imagination are continually going back to the pages of Prescott and Arthur Helps, whose histories of Spanish invasion and conquest I used to pore over when a boy, and to the tragedies which Rider Haggard and Lew Wallace so graphically portray. I scarcely dare take up my pen, so afraid am I of retelling what you already know. I am ever seeing the house tops swarming with the dark hosts of Montezuma, hurling the rocks and raining the arrows upon the steel-clad ranks of Cortez and his Christian bandits as they fight for life and for dominion in these very streets below.

      I stood, this morning, within the splendid cathedral, built upon the very spot where once towered the gigantic pyramid on whose summit the Aztec priests sacrificed their human victims to their gods, while down in the dungeons beneath my feet, the Holy Inquisition, a few years later, had also tortured men to their death, human victims sacrificed to the glory of the Roman Church. An Aztec pagan, a Spanish Christian, both sped the soul to Paradise through blood and pain, and I wondered, as I watched an Indian mother kneel in humble penitence before an effigy of the Virgin, and fix a lighted taper upon the altar before the shrine, whether she, too, felt clustering about her, in the sombre shadows of the semi-twilight, memories of these tragedies which have so oppressed her race.

      On these pavements, also, I review in fancy the serried regiments of France and Austria marshaled in the attempt to thrust Maximillian upon a cis-Atlantic Imperial throne. In this day, one recalls almost with incredulity the insolence of this conspiracy by European Monarchy to steal a march on Western liberty, when it was thought that democracy was forever smitten to the death by civil war. But the bold scheme was done to death by Juarez, the Aztec, without Sheridan’s having to come further south than the Rio Grande.

      All these pictures of the past, and many more, crowd thick upon me as I walk the streets and avenues of this now splendid modern city.

      I have also tried to see what I could of the churches, – the more important of them – which here abound, but my brain is all in a whirl, and saints and Madonnas troop by me in confused and interminable train.

      Ever since Cortez roasted Guatemozin upon a bed of coals, to hasten his conversion to the Roman faith and quicken his memory as to the location of Montezuma’s hidden treasure, the Spanish conquerors have been building churches, shrines and chapels to the glory of the Virgin, the salvation of their own souls and the profit of their private purse. Whenever a Spaniard got in a tight place, he vowed a church, a chapel or a shrine to the Virgin or a saint. If luck was with him, he hadn’t the nerve to back down, but made some show of keeping his vow and, the work once started, there were enough other vowing sinners to push the job along. Mexican genius has found its highest expression in its many and beautiful churches, and perhaps it has been a good thing for genius that so many sinners have been ready to gamble on a vow.

      When Juarez shot Maximillian he also smote the Roman Church. The Archbishop of Mexico, and the church of which he was virtual primate, had backed the Austrian invader. Even Pope Pius IX had shed benedictions on the plot. When the Republic crushed the conspirators, the Roman Church was at once deprived of all visible power. Every foot of land, every church edifice, every monastery, every convent the church owned in all Mexico was confiscated by the Republic. The lands and many buildings were sold and the money put in the National Treasury. Monks and nuns were banished. Priests were prohibited from wearing any but ordinary garb. The Roman Church was forbidden ever again to own a rod of stone or a foot of land.

      So now it is, that the priest wears a “bee-gum” hat and Glengarry coat, and the state takes whatever church-edifices it wants for public use. The church of San Augustin is a public library. Many churches have been converted into schools. Others have been pulled down, and modern buildings erected in their stead. The cloisters and chapel of the monastery of the Franciscans are leased to laymen, and have become the hotel Jardin. What churches the Republic did not need to use, it has been willing to rent to the Roman hierarchy for the religious uses of the people. So many have been these edifices that, despite the government’s appropriations and private occupations, there yet remain church buildings innumerable where the pious may worship and the priesthood celebrate the mass. But the Roman hierarchy has no longer the wealth and will to keep these buildings in repair and in all of those I visited there was much dilapidation.

      While it is true that the stern laws of the Republic debar the Roman Church from owning land, yet, it is said, this law is now evaded by a system of subrosa trusteeships, whereby secret trustees already hold vast accumulations of land and money to its use. And although the church cannot go into court to enforce the trust, yet the threat of dire pains in Purgatory is seemingly so effective that there is said to have been extraordinary little loss by stealing. The promise of easy passage to Paradise also makes easy the evasion of human law.

      VI

      Vivid Characteristics of Mexican Life

Hotel Iturbide, Mexico,November 22d.

      This limpid atmosphere, this vivifying sun, – how they redden the blood and exhilarate the spirit! This is a sunshine which never brings the sweat. But yet, however hot the sun may be, it is cold in the shadow, and at this I am perpetually surprised.

      The custom of the hotels in this Latin land is to let rooms upon the “European” plan, leaving the guest free to dine in the separate café of the hotel itself, or to take his meals wherever he may choose among the city’s multitude of lunch rooms and restaurants. Thus I may take my desayuno in an “American” restaurant, where the dishes are of the American type, and my almuerzo, the midmorning meal, in an Italian restaurant where the dishes of sunny Italy are served; while for my comida, I stroll through a narrow doorway between sky blue pillars, and enter a long, stone-flagged chamber, where neat tables are set about and where the Creole French of Louisiana is the speech of the proprietor. Here are served the most delicious meals I have yet discovered. If you want fish, a swarthy Indian waiter presents before you a large silver salver on which are arranged different sorts of fish fresh from the sea, for these are daily received in the city. Or, perhaps, you desire game, when a tray upon which are spread ducks and snipe and plover, the heads and wings yet feathered, is presented to you. Or a platter of beefsteaks, chops and cutlets is held before you. From these you select what you may wish. If you like, you may accompany the waiter who hands your choice to the cook, and you may stand and see the fish or duck or chop done to a turn, as you shall approve, upon the fire before your eyes. You are asked to take nothing for granted, but having ascertained to your own satisfaction

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