Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/372

360 age. In the centre is a round table, on which this is being written, that is not quite so venerable. The red of its varnish still largely covers it, but it makes up in dust for what it lacks in years. A single chair is present, alike venerable, too venerable to be in service, like a worn-out preacher not well supported with Conference gifts. One fears all the time that it will break down in its present occupancy, as one fears a like breakdown in a like superannuate if he is put to work belonging to his prime. A like dilapidated bed-stead stands in each of three of the corners of the room. All together do not seem strong enough to uphold their probable present occupants, let alone two hundred pounds more.

The floor is of cement, like a good cellar bottom, well covered with dust. The paper is torn off half up the walls, and is badly rent in the ceiling, which is of the same unsubstantial stuff, as is not unfrequently the case in this country. A door opening into another apartment has three of its six window-panes knocked out. Truly one might well sigh for some other lodge in this vast wilderness.

Yet every cloud has its silver lining. The "rolling forties" at least roll well. What are the good points about this cuarti? First, it is roomy—fifty feet at least long, and twenty wide. It will make a good chapel for us one of these days. Then it has a fine picture of the Virgin—of course it could hardly be of any body else here—a picture that an artist made, her sweet looks raised heavenward, a dove in one hand resting over her heart, an exquisite bouquet in the other lifted to the skies. I should like to carry it off, both for its beauty and for its lack of fitness to these disagreeable surroundings. Then it opens on a sunny court surrounded with flower-pots, but not many flowers, though roses and geraniums give it a home-like look, and feeble agave varieties show that we are in the tropics, but getting out of them. Birds line the walls, singing merrily their vespers. The chico is the favorite in number, if not in melody. This is not so very small as its name signifies. Perhaps cage-life has made it greater in size as well as song. It is gray and white, not unlike our ground chip-bird, though larger