“_I_ did not know then, and told him so, and he said: ‘Well, I will tell
you what I mean by a phiz.’ He took a pencil and note book from his
pocket, made a few strokes on the paper and handed me a picture of
myself. ‘Oh, no.’ I said, on seeing what he meant, ‘I cannot make
pictures.’ He left the house, saying he would be back in one-half of an
hour. He came as he promised, and brought a little black box, which he
said was a _camera_. He showed me how to use it, and I consented to take
it with me the next time we went to carry _la ropa_ to the hotel, and
take a picture of the man and woman, also one of the room. I did so, and
here it is. Also my phiz.” She handed the pictures to the Governor, and
while looking at them intently, he said:
“Can it be possible, child, that this is the picture of the great
counterfeiter who operated in Mexico for so many years, and whom I
delivered into the hands of the United States authorities? It is, it is.
I _remember_ him well. And this, dear child, is your ‘phiz,’ is it? It
is not unlike you now. But you were older then than at present, were you
not?”
“I was older. I am eight now, and I was eleven when that was made.”
“Mr. Mortingo, the President of the great United States of America,”
laughed Governor Lehumada, “was a secret service man in the year 1898. I
remember him well. He was a jolly, generous chap, and on coming to
Chihuahua I remember the remark he made when he first called upon me. He
said:
“‘Uncle Sam has sent me down here to catch some birds who are in your
city. They are molding and shoving the queer.’”
“Yes,” said Catalina, “that is what he kept telling me—that they were
‘shoving the queer’”—to which the Governor replied:
“I understood very little English at that time, but the official
interpreter put it into the best Spanish he could and I at once saw the
point. The Americans were much given to the use of slang then, much of
which had a singular fitness. I committed the phrase to memory and never
forgot it. Let me see the other picture; the interior of the room.”
The child handed him the picture, and pointing to a certain place in it,
said: “There is the lump of silver they were chopping up as we went in.
In the kettle over the fire is lead.”
“Ha! ha! ha! ha!” laughed the Governor. “That is very interesting to
know. I wonder what will be the feelings of the President, should he
remember?”
“I have several packages of spaghetti he gave me to use on feast days.
He showed me how to cook it. We learned to like it so well, he declared
that my forefathers were Italians. And sure enough, my mother began to
hunt up old family history, and she discovered that her
great-grandmother was an Italian noblewoman,” said Catalina.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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