Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/414

402 meeting, or a log-cabin preaching. The table has nice white ware, also of the latest Yankee pattern; the Yankee candle stands in its shining brass candlestick in a plate in the centre. Surely here is no antiqua Renosa, but one most modern. But even this word is modernized, for the name they gave me was, Los Renos a Viejo, or some such affair; Viejo is too old-fashioned a word, and so gives place to La Antigua—"old" to "ancient."

The dinner, at eleven o'clock at night, is being got ready. Not old that; they never prepare that till the passengers come. The coaches from Matamoras have just arrived, and quite a crowd criss-cross at this out-of-the-way corner. Longfellow's "Wayside Inn" could much more properly have been written of this spot than of Sudbury, where such characters as his could no more have been weather-bound than born.

A good meal follows, and a good sleep, though all too short; for at four we are off, half asleep still.