St. Anthony of Padua is a very hard-worked saint. He has placed upon him the double duty of furnishing suitors for all the young women and of leading the armies of the Republic to victory. No wonder this overworked saint gets into trouble. Young women place him in their rooms, burn candles and offer prayers before him. He is dressed up in the finest toggery and is given great honor. If, however, after awhile he does not bring along the suitor, he is given a sound beating, or he may be hung head downwards in a well or stood on his head under a table. These indignities are heaped upon him in order to force him to produce the suitor which the young lady very much desires. He is also the military saint. In the time of the Empire, he was carried at the head of the army and had the rank of a colonel. Even after the Empire was abolished, he retained his rank for many years and received from the government the salary of a colonel. Such an idol was in Bahia and his salary was discontinued only five years ago. The money went, of course, to the priest in the church where the image was kept. Every town, village and country seat has its protecting saint. In time of drouth they in many places carry the saint through the streets in procession. He is taken from his place in the church to some hut, maybe, where he is placed beneath the altar. This is done in order to cause him to bring rain. After the rain comes he is taken out and with great distinction is replaced in his original niche. They do this sometimes in the case of a scourge of insects or disease. Late one evening, after Missionary Ginsburg and I had returned from a trip into the interior of the State of Bahia, we arrived in the city of Nazareth. It is a town of about 10,000 inhabitants. We were to wait here until the following morning for the boat which was to take us to Bahia. As we went down the street we saw a great throng of people surging about an image which was being carried upon the shoulders of some men. Two priests walked in front to direct the movements of the procession. More than half of the people in the city must have been in the procession. They paraded far out into the country, crossed to the opposite side of the river, wound themselves back and forth through the narrow streets until a late hour at night. At eleven o'clock just before we retired, we stood for some time watching the procession pass the hotel where we were stopping. It was a miserably ugly little image, gaudily decorated. It was being paraded through the streets for the purpose of staying the plague of smallpox, which at that time was scourging the town. When we saw the procession last it had been augmented by such numbers that it appeared as if the entire city was following this image. They seemed to believe that it could really charm away the smallpox.