Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/97

Rh of the Creoles as bread and coffee; but I like it only in its natural state.

The ladies in this country have very light house-keeping cares. The cook, always a negro-woman, and if a man-cook, a negro also, receives a certain sum of money weekly, with which to provide the family dinners. She goes to market and makes purchases, and selects that which seems best to her, or what she likes. The lady of the house frequently does not know what the family will have for dinner until it is on the table; and I can only wonder that the mistress can, with such perfect security, leave these matters to her cooks, and that all should succeed so well: but the faculty for, and the pleasure in all that concerns serving the table, is said to be universal among the negroes, and they compromise their honour if they do not serve up a good dinner.

Mrs. S. sits during the morning and reads with her two little girls in a hall, the doors of which open upon the piazza, and thence to the street or high road, and as the country people (Monteros, as they are here called, and who are always men), pass with their little horses heavily laden with vegetables, fruit, or poultry, now and then, one of them will stop at the door and call to la signora, inquiring whether she will purchase this or that, and she says a couple of words in reply in that melodious Spanish tongue, and the whole is done in few words, without her needing to rise from her seat. Life might be very easy here. In the evening, after tea, we sit in rocking-chairs in the piazza, dressed as lightly as propriety will allow, and enjoy the air and the dolce far niente. All is then quiet in the little village; to breathe here is to live and enjoy!

My kind friends have taken me to the beautiful gardens of some of the aristocracy of the neighbourhood,—they are splendid but formal. Everything is set in rows along the gravelled walks, and the tropical trees, the forms of