Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/84

78 He gave me his history in exaggerated negro style: how he had been in the war with his young master; had been taken prisoner, made to serve as cook on a Yankee gun-boat, had escaped, married a Mexican; and, after so many vicissitudes, had not forgotten his early training in his manner of addressing me.

Foremost among the objects that claimed my sympathy were the poor, over-laden, beaten donkeys; they seemed ubiquitous, and the picture my window framed never lacked a meek-eyed burro, until I could not separate them from their surroundings. They were typical figures, and



at last I came to regard any scene from which they were absent as incomplete.

They passed in a never-ending procession, bearing every imaginable commodity. I soon noticed that if the leader or "bell-wether" of the gang stopped, the rest did the same. If goaded to desperation by the merciless driver, the only resistance they offered was to quietly but doggedly lie down.

Often dozens of them passed, with green corn on the stalks, suspended gracefully about them, and in such quantities that nothing was visible but the donkeys' heads and ears, the corn spread out in fan-shape, reminding me of a lady's train, or a peacock in full plumage. The burros moved evenly and silently along, without an