Page:Six Months In Mexico.pdf/70

68 them with holy water and crossed them repeatedly. The band played "Yankee Doodle," and the bride, holding on to an embroidered band on the priest's arm, the groom doing likewise on the other side, they proceeded up to the altar, where they knelt down. The priest blessed them, sprinkled them with holy water, and said mass for them, the band playing the variations of "Yankee Doodle." A man in black robes put a lace scarf over the head of the bride and around the shoulders of the groom; over this again he placed a silver chain, symbolic of the fact that they were bound together forever nothing could separate them.

After the priest finished mass he blessed and sprinkled them once more. Then from a plate he took seventeen gold dollars the groom had furnished and emptied them into his hands. The groom in turn emptied them into the hand of his bride, and she gave them to the priest as a gift to the Church and a token that they will always sustain, protect, and uphold it. Now the ceremony, which always lasts two to four hours, is ended, and the newly married pair go into an adjoining room to receive the congratulations of their friends.

The marriage festivities are often kept up for a week. After that the husband claims his bride, and right jealously does he guard her. Her life is spent in seclusion eating, drinking, sleeping, smoking. The husband is desperately jealous and the wife is never allowed to be in the company of another man. Life to a Mexican lady in an American's view is not worthsliving.

When death takes one away the dust remains buried for ten years, if the husband is wealthy. At the end of that time the bones, all that remains in this country, are lifted, placed in a jar and taken home and the tombstone used as an ornament. "See that case?" said a Mexican. "My first wife is in that, even to her fingernails, and that is her grave-stone." So it was, there in the parlor, a dismal ornament and memento.

Mexican carelessness does not extend to the saying of mass. A man had three daughters, and each was to inherit $3,000,000. For this reason he would not allow them to marry. One died, and the anniversary of her death was celebrated in fine style. High mass was said, and a coffin arranged on a catafalque forty-four feet high