Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/274

268 The tableau was broken by the cavaliers and pages passing down from the stage and serving each guest with liqueurs and wines in tiny glasses, and delicious sweets prepared in the household.

This posada sprang from the fertile brain of the General himself, and all the actors therein were members of the household and invited guests. He proved himself an adroit "stage manager," as few of the participants knew the extent of the varied and humorous programme.

Two young ladies of the household, dressed as nuns, then presented us with those curious and grotesque rag dolls—the invention of the natives—almost as large as real babies.

We had scarcely recovered from the effects produced on our risibles by the dolls, when the gens-d'armes entered bearing trays. On one, dainty little parcels were arranged, tied up most artistically in bright-colored silk handkerchiefs. The other contained lovely bouquets and boutonnières, and cornucopias of what we supposed to be sugar plums, but on our opening them proved to be hair-pins! The silken bundles enveloped the homely peanut and tojocotes, the most insipid fruit in Mexico.

Thus did our genial host keep us constantly amused and entertained with his rapid and ingenious transitions from the grand and gorgeous to the mirth-provoking and ridiculous.

One of the elegant courtiers who figured upon the stage, came to me at this moment stating that in the patio there was another posada of a still more interesting nature, and he wanted me to witness it. We there found assembled a crowd of excited children with the servants of the household, in addition to those who came with the guests, all eagerly enjoying the sport of breaking the piñate, which was in the form and about the size of a five-year-old girl. This figure was clothed in a white dress of some diaphanous material decked with tinsel; long black hair, plaited and tied with ribbon, hung down her back. Suspended by wires she swung in mid-air, calmly unconscious of the severe castigation in store for her. I was politely invited to join in the drubbing, but all my efforts failed to demolish her. When