Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/154

152 rites many suggestions of the more innocent forms of their old worship. He is evidently as widely read in the modern classics as El Periquillo Sarniento was in the ancient, French, English, German — all literatures have laid their flowers at his feet, and his versatile fancy culls from each in turn to adorn his page. But it is when he relies upon himself that he is most attractive. The legend of "Our Lord of the Holy Mountain" is enriched by a sketch of the holy friar. Father Martin de Valencia, of whom it is recorded, that "every morning, as he went out of his cave, after passing the night in prayer and meditation, the little birds did gather in the trees above his head, making gracious harmony, and helping in praise of the Creator. And as he moved from place to place, the birds did follow; nor, since his death, have any been ever seen there."

Reminiscences of the author's boyhood in the little city of Tixtla, with the entire population following the procession of Corpus Christi through streets arched with green boughs, and garlanded with blossoms, remind one of the Passion Play of Oberammergau. Such ardor of devotion, such