It was to me a strange and interesting sight and, not only on this particular Sunday but afterward, almost every day I was in the city, in fact, I spent some time studying this procession, noting the different figures and the different types of which it was made up. It was at this gate that I observed one day a peasant woman haggling with the customs officer over the tax she was to pay for the privilege of bringing her produce to town. She was barefoot and travel-stained and had evidently come some distance, carrying her little stock of fruit and vegetables in a sack slung across her back. It seemed, however, that she had hidden, in the bottom of the sack, a few pounds of nuts, covering them over with fruit and vegetables. Something in her manner, I suppose, betrayed her, for the customs officer insisted on thrusting his hand down to the very bottom of the little sack and brought up triumphantly, at last, a little handful of the smuggled nuts. I could not understand what the woman said, but I could not mistake the pleading expression with which she begged the officer to let her and her little produce through because, as she indicated, showing him her empty palms, she did not have money enough to pay all that he demanded. I had heard and read a great deal about the hardships and cruelties of the tariff in America, but I confess that the best argument for free trade that I ever met was that offered by the spectacle of this poor woman, with her little store of fruit and nuts, trying to get to market with her goods. Not far outside the city the highway runs close beside a cemetery. From the road one can see the elegant and imposing monuments that have been erected to mark the final resting places of the wealthy and distinguished families of the city. The road to this cemetery passes through a marble archway which is closed, as I remember, by massive iron gates. Standing by this gate, I noticed one day a young peasant woman silently weeping. She stood there for a long time, looking out across the fields as if she were waiting for some one who did not come, while the tears streamed down her face. She seemed so helpless and hopeless that I asked the guide who was with me to go across the street and find out what her trouble was. I thought there might perhaps be something that we could do for her. The guide, with the natural tact and politeness of his race, approached the woman and inquired the cause of her grief. She did not move or change expression, but, while the tears still streamed down her face, pointed to a pair of high-heeled slippers which she had taken off and placed beside her on the ground. "They hurt my feet," she said, and then smiled a little, for she, too, saw that there was a certain element of humour in the situation. I looked at her feet and then at her shoes and made up my mind that I could not help her.