Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/281

Rh swords and guns, parade the streets, making an animated scene. It is a holiday that any mortal who cares for St. John may enjoy inexpensively.

A legend received by the common people has it that ablutions made in honor of the Herald of the Saviour "give beauty to the maiden, vigor to the matron, and freshness to the old maid."

Regardless of the truth of this, the bathing establishments everywhere are liberally patronized on this day. Such pushing, jostling, screaming, and lofty tumbling as these devotees of St. John do, is enough to call forth tears from the Mexican Mars.

The public is entertained with as much freedom as though it were a bull fight, and it shows a generous appreciation in long and continued applause. In one tank one hundred and fifty or more bathers may be seen at once, throwing themselves head first, diving and swimming, or standing half submerged, or perhaps jumping from the spring-board.

To all these gyrations add the screams of the multitude, the shrieks of the bathers, and the people on shore selling a thousand and one articles beneath the rays of a scorching sun, to complete the scene. Though many pursuits and avocations are carried on, the dominating and supreme desire of the crowd is to get wet.

This feast of water costs but a real, and on that day the populace shows its appreciation of the opportunity for so insignificant a sum to be made wet from crown to sole.

Superb masses, probably not surpassed anywhere in the world, are celebrated for the dead. A very grand occasion of this kind was when the Spanish Colony honored their dead king at the Profesa Church. This was the most imposing church service that I witnessed. The interior attested the faultless taste of the decorator. An immense catafalque stood in the center with white and silver drapings. The bust of Alphonso was wreathed in immortelles, the whole surrounded by the arms of Spain. Columns were draped with black and great black streamers were suspended from the dome and gracefully festooned from the altars. Wax candles of remarkable size and length