Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/199

Rh Some of their utterances were so powerful that my companion asserted that the organ accompanied them. This I denied, and though we both sat directly under that instrument, it is a disputed point between us to this day whether there was any sound but the human voice. I heard none but that was full of deepest and strongest and most united exclamation. Puebla is very religious, as was Athens, and very superstitious, and worships the unknown God with a devotion worthy a clearer faith. May it soon attain this needed grace!

It is likely so to do. The brisk business men begin to see that it needs closer relations with the outside world. It was left thirty miles off the track when the road from Vera Cruz to Mexico was laid out, though it was offered direct connection if it would build that thirty miles. Its refusal to make this investment is charged to its priesthood, and that does not make them any the more popular. It will make connections with other routes, and regain some of the trade it is losing. This ambition makes it more willing to tolerate all faiths, and to adjust itself to the future of Mexico. Still that toleration in this town will be slowest of the slow. Persecution must precede such liberty.

That Sabbath night the crowds in the Alameda showed little thought of the bitter wailing of the cathedral company. A multitude in carriages, on horseback, and afoot, thoughtless, fashion-following, were without God, if not without hope in the world. The golden glory on the snowy brows of the mountains—was it a sign of a new advent that should make the Sabbath a delight, holy unto the Lord, honorable?

There is a cross to be taken here by the saints of the Lord ere that grace dawns. On the show-bills, at the entertainment for the next Sabbath night at the Theatre Hidalgo, was a play entitled "The Destruction of the Protestants" (La Destruction de los Protestantes). I do not know but that I would have overcome two scruples, visiting the theatre and breaking the Sabbath, had I been there that Sunday, in order to have seen of what spirit some of the Pueblanos yet are, and how they would have received the portrayal