The fruit venders have beautiful voices, and sing out their wares in
such a charming manner that one is sorry when they disappear around
the corner. They are sometimes quite picturesque with the fruit and
vegetables tied up in their rebozo and baskets in their hands. Why the
women have all their skirts plain behind and pleated in front I cannot
say, but such is invariably the case. The men have horrible voices
when they are out selling. There never was anything to equal them. I
wonder if our florists would not like to buy orchids from the man who
passes our door every morning with about a hundred of them strung to a
pole which is suspended from his shoulder, only two reals (twenty-five
cents) for exquisite plants, with the rare ones but little higher.
Mr. A. Sborigi, a Pittsburger, was in Mexico on a visit. When he landed
in Vera Cruz he went into the country to see the place. Hearing music
in a small cabin he drew nearer and recognized familiar tunes. "Wait
till the clouds roll by," and Fritz's lullaby. A man came out and
invited him in, and after a short time he said he was a colored man,
that his name was Jones, and he came from Pittsburg, Pa. He is married
to an Indian woman and has about twenty children, ranging all sizes.
Mr. Jones is king of the villa. In one room he has a floor, a thing not
possessed by any other inhabitant there, and his cabin is superior to
all others. He is very proud of his wife and children, and has not the
least desire to return to the Smoky City. He speaks Spanish, French,
and English fluently.
When Mr. Sborigi was asked for his ticket on the Vera Cruz line, he
jokingly handed the conductor an envelope that he had put in his pocket
at New Orleans. On it was printed in English, "Tickets to all points
of the world." The conductor took the envelope, looked at it, punched
it and returned it to the donor. Quite amused, Mr. Sborigi tried it
on others, and he not only traveled the entire distance to Mexico,
but traveled on at least half a dozen branch roads leading from the
Vera Cruz line to beautiful towns in the country. He took the punched
envelope back to Pittsburg as a memento of the cheapest journey he ever
took.
CHAPTER XIII.
IN MEXICAN THEATERS.
Mexico does not know how a nation mourned for one Virginius like
McCullough; has never witnessed Barrett's Cassius and David Garrick,
or been thrilled with O'Neill's Monte Cristo; has never looked on Mary
Anderson's exquisite form and cold, unsympathetic acting; has missed
Margaret Mather's insipid simper and Kate Castleton's fascinating
wickedness; is wholly unconscious of Little Lotta's wondrous kick and
Minnie Palmer's broadness; has never seen pretty Minnie Maddern's "In
Spite of All," and a mother of fifty odd years successfully transformed
into a child of nine--Fanchon; is in blissful ignorance of "Pinafore"
and "Mikado," and yet she lives and has theaters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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