Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/119

 suffering from enlarged tonsils, which it had become necessary to remove. The girls belonged to different families, and this fact set me to speculating as to whether enlarged tonsils were contagious, customary, or due to the climate. Having already received so many proofs of their martyr-like devotion to their customs, I was prepared to adopt the second hypothesis upon the slightest evidence. When the surgeons were ready, the father of the eldest girl, with great tenderness, placed her in a chair. The mother fled to the corral to avoid the sight of her child's distress and pain. As soon as the girl was in a position ready for the instrument, she would jump, and wring her hands, crying and solemnly declaring, she could not, and would not, submit to the operation. All the neighbors came in to look on, and with difficulty she was finally held down by the strong arms of her father and one of the surgeons,—and the work was done. The father with deep concern, murmured something, to my ear almost inaudible, but he kissed the girl again and again; and at last the words came: "My poor child! my baby! my sweet, good girl!"

The other girls were soon induced, by the gay spirits and complacence of the first, to be seated and have a similar operation performed. I thought of the well-known fable of the fox, when the tree had fallen on his tail, depriving him of that useful appendage, when with characteristic cunning, he told the other foxes that to wear no tail was the mode, and thereupon no-tailed foxes at once became the prevailing style. An old woman, who looked like a servant, came in and performed various, and, to me, amusing incantations with the forefinger of her right hand; keeping up at the same time a continuous mumbling of some incoherences peculiar to her class.

The curiosity that was manifested by the crowd, and the earnest inspections that took place after the operations were made, and the vigilance with which the girls watched the disposition of their bereft members provoked a smile. It reminded me of childhood days, when we jealously guarded a tooth when it fell out, for fear that a pig might get it, and the dire consequence follow of a pig's tooth taking the place of the lost one.