Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/251

Rh During all this time we had heard not a word from home, and knew nothing of the passing events in the United States; as a matter of course, we were anxious enough to finish our journey and be once more in communication with the outside world.

As we were passing along the road I observed an incident which my readers may think hardly worth recording, but which struck me at the moment as very affecting. In a narrow part of the road we met a little Indian girl of perhaps twelve years, carrying a large basket filled with some country produce upon her back, and guiding her father at the same time. The father was old and blind, but still strong, and carried a heavy burden, likewise, on his shoulders. To guide himself he kept one hand resting lightly upon the basket carried by his daughter, and when our coach came suddenly upon them, and she sprang out of the track to give it room, he followed, keeping exact pace with her, evidently, reposing in perfect confidence upon her judgment and discretion. Something which she may have said in an undertone, or more probably her start of surprise and attitude of attention, led him to think that there was something unusual in the spectacle presented, to her eyes, and with a blind man's instinct he laid his other hand gently and with a loving caress against her cheek, as if he sought to divine her thoughts from the changes which passed over her features, as fear, wonder, or animated curiosity affected them. Of all the scenes, which I witnessed in Mexico, grand, beautiful, or painful, none impressed itself more vividly on my memory than that of this timid, shrinking child, bearing life's, burden in all its fullness thus prematurely, and her blind old father, bending beneath the load of years and