Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/124

122 coal-black hair, and a full, waving beard. A long staff in his hand, and a dull red zarape wound about the body, he looked as much like St. Joseph in the pictures of the Holy Family and the Flight into Egypt as if some artist had assisted at his reproduction. It was a living tableau. We have seen many similar ones since.

As the time comes for leaving this lovely country, its attractions increase, and its discomforts diminish in geometrical progression. The dust, the smells, the heat, the fatigue — what are they now, compared with the full measure of delight which memory has heaped with treasures? What, indeed, have they ever been but passing hinderances, interfering no more with the ultimate sum of happiness, than the fluttering of a swallow's wing breaks the beauty of his swift flight? These two months, taken from the dreariest portion of the Christian year, from sleet and snow and marrow-chilling winds, and given up to largesse of sunshine and flowers, to the superb abundance of a richer summer than we had ever dreamed of before, are something to have lived for. So many unnoted strange excellences clamor now for mention before this most inadequate record closes,