Page:Vol 6 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/637

Rh personal finery; otherwise, the surplus goes to feasts and gambling and drinking instead of adding to home comforts. Under colonial rule, a number of restrictive laws tended to check these propensities, but since then the lower classes have been allowed to drift and yield to the perverting influence surrounding them. A few days' labor now and then, even at low wages, suffices to provide for all their simple wants, and why care for the morrow?

There is one representative element among these classes, of purely national type, whose character and condition form a brighter picture, and that is the ranchero, or petty farmer, and cotter, known in some parts, as in Vera Cruz, by the name Jarocho, and presenting in many respects traits superior to those of his confrère in Europe, especially in manners and accomplishments. He is modest in his belongings, content with an airy shed for dwelling, and a small patch of soil on which to cultivate a little maize and chile, some beans and yams, and sustain a few head of live-stock. Trees laden with figs and oranges, and the plantain and banana, add to his larder, and to the picturesque appearance of his home, with its background of stately palms and variegated undergrowth.

Woman is regarded by the man rather as a toy and ornament than a companion. Nevertheless, she is here above all entitled to the term better half, because she fills better than the man the narrower sphere assigned to her, exhibiting less of the weak effort and half success which characterize him in economical and political affairs. It has been observed that in