The word _bayeta_ is merely Spanish for _baize_. Great quantities of
this were made in England for the Spanish and Mexican trade, the major
part of which was of a brilliant red color. In this way English _baize_
became Spanish _bayeta_ to the Indians of the American Southwest.
Familiar with the art of weaving, these Indians unraveled the bayeta,
retwisted it into one, two or three strands, and then rewove it into
their blankets, which are now almost priceless. This old blanket was
picked up by the author in a New Mexican corral, for the purpose of
wiping his buggy axle. It was covered with filth and mud. A number of
washings revealed this glorious specimen of the weaver's art.
Accepted by a cultured and talented belle, Lincoln, according to his law
partner, had already been refused by Sarah Rickard, an obscure miss of
sixteen, of whom apparently nothing further is known.
It was twelve feet from the rock into the water. As he stood looking
down it seemed twenty. His eyes being five feet from his heels made it
seem by that much higher than it was. He had never dived from such a
height in his life. He had climbed up there to dive and he must dive or
yield. What would he yield? At least it was something he did not intend
to yield. He tried his best to imitate the others, he stood on the edge
and plunged. It seemed to him that he plunged. As a matter of fact he
dropped over the edge with his body bent almost double so that his
thighs hit the water with a stinging impact, also the lower part of his
belly, also the top of his head. He did not feel certain of himself for
a moment or two after rising to the surface. That was about enough.
Memory began to fill the blank of his mind.
There it was still, the men around Mrs. Chain's table on Locust St.:
$3.50 a week. A week? Yes, three-fifty a week. And that place in Leipzig
where they had only half cooked fresh pork. _Schwein schlacherei_! Bah.
One week was enough there. Fraulein Dachs, _pflaumen suppe_. That purple
and sweet soup. The white cakes they sold on the station platform near
Malaga, what were they called? It seemed to be some native bake peculiar
to the place. The devil fish in a black sauce in Seville. Big lumps of
dough, big as snowballs, _sauer braten_. But Mrs. Chain's prunes were
the most wonderful. Watery tidbits. It was prunes or applesauce. Her
daughter was simple I guess. Did her best to land one of the students,
kept it up for twenty years. At that table I met one of my dearest
friends. Will you have some bread? Yes. That look. It was enough. Youth
is so rich. It needs no stage setting. Out went my heart to that face.
There was something soft there, a reticence, a welcome, a loneliness
that called to me. And he, he must have seen it in me too. We looked,
two young men, and at once the tie was cemented. It was gaged accurately
at once and sealed for all time. The other faces are so many prunes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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