Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/127

 their softly-melancholy coo! coo! coo! penetrated this humble home from the clumps of trees near by. May no ruthless innovator remodel your simple adobes! no insatiate gringo invade and despoil your sacred domain! But throughout all time, may you and your honest people continue to live out your lives, undismayed and undisturbed by any progressive, distracting or contaminating influence! In primitive blissful ignorance and innocence may your children live out their allotment of three-score-and-ten years, bare-footed, bare-headed, and unsullied by contact with modern galvanized institutions!

I watched Cosme with a humorous interest while he was preparing

for our return home. He looked at his valiant steed now and again furtively, shaking his head and muttering something about not going so fast on our return. Poor Cosme! It was the old story of man proposing and a higher power disposing. The air was fine and bracing, and when we were all in our proper places for the homeward journey, I will confess to no small amount of uneasiness concerning Cosme.

The numerous and long-continued adios of our kind host and his family, and their friends, were wafted to our ears by the evening breeze, and in a twinkling we were out of sight of the house and dashing along the highway toward home. The horses attached to our vehicle, were apparently fresher than when we started in the morning,