Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/49

Rh and contrast it with the delicacy which made us appear as if we were conferring a favor instead of infringing a law. Truly we have much to learn.

Within the city, the sabbath silence was not so apparent. The native shops, booths, and markets were doing their full business; perhaps a little gayer than usual with branches of flowers and fringes of green palms, but otherwise the same. The crowd on the plazas had a more holiday look; the men's white trousers and shirts fresh and clean, the women's skirts starched and ironed, and all the humble, contented, happy world chewing sticks of fresh sugar-cane, or a tlaco's worth of the small sweet cakes which meet you at every hand's turn through the kingdom. At every door a group of dusky babies, and above it the inevitable mocking-bird in his rustic cage; from the open church porches, the rolling diapason of the organ, and chanting voices of the choir; in the small stone balconies of the windows, crowds of mischievous, chattering, bright-eyed senoritas, gay in the lightest summer dresses, floating ends of ribbon, and softly fluttering fans. The same look of thrift and bright cheerfulness that distinguishes here always town from country life, solely, we are now quite