Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/91

 add, one was finally obtained for love. My generous little Mexican neighbor and friend, Pomposita, taking pity on my despair, gave me one—which enabled me to return the half-worn borrowed broom of another friend.

Owing to the exorbitant demands of the custom-house, such humble though necessary articles were not then imported; and the untutored sons of La Republica manufactured them on haciendas, from materials crude beyond imagination.

Once or twice a year long strings of burros may be seen, wending their way solemnly through the streets; girt about with a burden of the most wonderful brooms.

These brooms were of two varieties; one had handles as knotty and unwieldy as the thorny mesquite while the other was still more primitive in design, and looked like old field Virginia sedge grass tied up in bundles. They were retailed by men who carried them through the streets on their backs.

For the rude character of their brooms, however, the manufacturers are not to blame, but the sterility of the country, and the failure of nature to provide suitable vegetable growths.

Every housekeeper takes advantage of the advent of the escobero (broom-maker), to lay in a stock of brooms sufficient to last until his next visit. It was two months before an opportunity of buying a broom, even from a " wandering Bavarian," was afforded me, and during that time I came to regard Doña Pomposita's gift as the apple of my eye.

"Mer-ca-ran las es-co-bas!" One morning a new sound assailed my ears, as it came up the street, gathering force and volume the nearer it approached. I heard it over and over without divining its meaning. But at last a man