Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/90



were overshadowed by the dome of a magnificent cathedral, the exterior of which was embellished with lifesized statues of saints. The interior presented a costly display of tinted walls, jeweled and bedecked images, and gilded altars. Its mammoth tower had loomed grimly under the suns and stars of a hundred years, and the solidity of its perfect masonry has so far defied the encroachments of time.

The city of our adoption boasted an Alameda, where the air was redolent of the odor of the rose and violet, and made musical with the tinkling of fountains; and where could be seen the "beauty and chivalry" of a civilization three centuries old, taking the evening air.

Plazas beautified with flowers, shrubs, and trees, upon which neither money nor pains had been spared, lent a further charm. Stores were at hand wherein could be purchased fabrics of costly texture, as well as rare jewels—in fact, a fair share of the elegant superfluities of life; and yet in the midst of so much civilization, so much art, so much luxury of a certain kind, so much wealth, I found to my dismay, upon investigation, that I was at least fifty miles from an available broom!

Imagine the dilemma, you famously neat housekeepers of the United States! A house with floors of pounded dirt, tile, brick, and cement, and no broom to be had for money, though, I am pleased to