Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/279

 Rh "The pulque—about forty cuartillas of pulque"

"Twenty cuartillas of pulque" says the master, ruthlessly cutting down the estimate by half. "Well, what next? Speak up!"

The peasant, one of the laborers by the year, perseveres, in his humble, soft voice, regularly making his estimate for each article twice the real figure, and having as regularly cut down. He caps the whole by demanding four reals for a sombrero, well knowing—and knowing perfectly well that his master knows also—that the kind of sombrero he would be likely to want costs but one real.

We had proposed to witness the festivities of this christening, but unfortunately delayed too long at table on the evening of its occurrence, and lost it. But the sky was gloriously full of stars as we went out among the huts and barracks. A woman came out of one of the tenements and made a complaint of a neighbor with whom she had had a row, but got no great sympathy, and hardly seemed to expect any. They are admirably polite, these poor rustics nobody can deny them that. As we sat by the road one day at Amatlan, sketching, some of the women called to us as they went by:

"Buenos dias, señores! Como han pasado, ustedes, la noche? Adios, señores"—"Good-day, sirs! How did you pass the night? Good-bye, sirs!" We had not in any way first addressed them, and they did not stop, but went swiftly onward, scarcely turning their heads to look. These and many more of the sort are but their ordinary salutations.

The immediate family at the hacienda consisted of one of the several heirs, "Don Eduardo," his wife, mother, and two small children, and their Indian nurses. They were in the habit of spending but a small portion of the