Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/469

458 new efforts are being made to add to liis qualities. Had a fractional part of these labours been bestowed on the oppressed and neglected ass, he would not be the miserable dwarf that we too often see. And when we have such elements to deal with as the hemippe, the gour, the kiang, the hemione, and the three zebras, each more brilliantly coloured than the other, why should we not, like the Queen of Portugal, have our zebra teams, or, like the Zoological Society, our zebra tandems? Why should we not have our phaétons à quatre hémiones, and scour the Bois de Boulogne with our hemippes au grand galop as the Chaldeans drove them over the Mesopotamian Plain?

Their mouths are a little hard, perhaps, but hand and patience would overcome that difficulty, and after two or three generations of careful breeding they would gradually acquire as an hereditary quality that aptitude for direction so astonishingly developed in the horse — a quality which, though multitudes use him, but few indeed fully understand.

grant you health to send many children to glory.” Such was the salutation given by Juan Perez, the dandy par excellence and the best songster of the village of Chiclana, as he entered, guitar in hand, to take a prominent part in the song and dance, customary on such occasions amongst the lower orders in Spain.

And what was the motive for congratulation? The death of an infant. It was conceived to have been regenerated by baptism, was too young to have known sin, and therefore its soul was believed to be at once admitted to eternal bliss: no Hades, no purgatory for that lamb without blemish. It had left this sod world of passing joys and prolonged sorrows, of fleeting smiles and many tears, of trials, temptations, and struggles, of sickness and pain, and had soared in happy flight to heaven.

No outward garb of mourning is worn in Spain on the demise of a child under seven years of age; but it is only on the death of a young infant that the salutation is congratulatory, instead of sympathetic, and the reunion of relatives and friends a joyous one, and not one of condolence.

The room was scrupulously clean; the walls were freshly whitewashed; the brick floor was of a bright red; black painted low chairs with rush-bottom seats were closely ranged in a circle; a charcoal brazier in its wide-rimmed wooden stand (which serves as a footstool) was placed in the centre. In one corner a “velador,” or very small but high circular table, used exclusively as a stand for the “velon,” a brass lamp of a quaint and very ancient form, jutting out into three light holders from the centre, and fed with a triune wick, the same as those used by the Jews in their synagogues from the time of the Levitical law; as also with them the triangular chandelier, everything I being a type of the Trinity — the Three in One — whether prophetical as -with the Jews, or in memoriam by the primitive Christians. Many of the iron and clay Roman lamps were of the same triune form, though without the pedestal.

This room opened into the kitchen. Copper saucepans, bright as burnished gold, were hung against the wall, and within the large chimney were suspended strings of onions and garlic; and in a netted bag the far-famed sausages, one of the principal ingredients of the “olla,” the daily and universal dish. On a wooden table in the middle of the room was a large porous jar full of water, one tray of sweet biscuits and cakes, and another of “panales,” a sweetmeat made of white of egg and sugar, which it is customary to take before or whilst drinking water.

There was no light in this room, yet it was bright from that reflected from the other, not by the solitary velon on its tripod stand, but from the blaze of light in the opposite comer.

The parents were poor; but they would, if necessary, have pawned everything they possessed, rather than not have purchased the eight large wax lights, that illumined the image of the Virgin and Child on an improvised altar, and the features of the dead in its little open coffin, placed on trestles: on the comer of each trestle was fixed a candle, and four others on the altar: both were strewed with fresh flowers.

The babe was dressed in its christening clothes, its little hands clasped over its chest, and holding some everlastings and a tiny rude wooden crucifix. The long black eye -lashes rested on its dark pallid cheek, and the ebon curls pressed out from the toca (muslin shawl), put over its head and crossed over the breast.

One chair was placed out of the circle at the foot of the wee coffin, and there had sat the young mother until the arrival of the guests, when she placed herself by her husband’s side to receive the reiterated salutation, “May God grant you health to send many children of the same age to glory.” A short gracias (“thank you”) was the father’s reply, as he puffed his paper cigar. The mother smiled a welcome, but the quivering lip and stifled sigh proved how great was the effort to control her grief.

Juan Perez stood at the door installing him - self as master of the ceremonies. He was the best barber, the best singer, and the best dancer in the village, handsome too withal, and a bachelor; and many a rustic beauty’s eye beamed with pleasure as she received a passing compliment when he stood at his porch, or a flower for her hair from his little garden. He was now in his element.

“Your eyes are large as my desires, dark as my despair,” he half whispered to one.

“Your breath is like orange-flowers distilled through pearls and rubies,” he said to a girl whose coral lips and white teeth deserved the simile, as she smiled on saluting him.

“I trust your skirt is sufficiently short to show that taper ankle and well-formed pantorilla when you dance the first fandango with me.”

A happy nod of acquiescence, as the first to dance with the village favourite, was the reply.

For each, as she passed the porch, he had an appropriate compliment, and his speaking eyes acquiesced in the admiration he expressed.

Almost every woman brought in her hand a bunch of flowers, which she strewed over the babe as she