In even the poorest houses there is a shrine and a "Saint." These deities can answer all prayers if they choose to. Sometimes, however, they are not "in the humor," and at one house the saint had refused, so he was laid flat on the floor, face downwards. The woman swore that until he answered her petition she would not lift him up again. He laid thus all night; whether longer or not I do not know. Having heard much concerning the _moralité_ of the people, I asked the maid at a respectable private house where I was staying: "Have you a father?" "No, sir," she answered, "we Paraguayans are not accustomed to have a father." Children of five or six, when asked about that parent, will often answer, "Father died in the war." The war ended thirty-nine years ago, but they have been taught to say this by the mother. As in Argentina the first word the stranger learns is _mañana_ (to-morrow), so here the first is _dy-qui_ (I don't know). Whatever question you ask the Guarani, he will almost invariably answer, "_Dy-qui_." Ask him his age, he answers "_Dy-qui_" To your question: "Are you twenty or one hundred and twenty?" he will reply "_Dy-qui_." Through the long rule of the Jesuits the natives stopped thinking; they had it all done for them. "At the same time that they enslaved them, they tortured them into the profession of the religion they had imported; and as they had seen that in the old land the love of this world and the deceitfulness of riches were ever in the way of conversion to the true faith, they piously relieved the Indians of these snares of the soul, even going so far in the discharge of this painful duty as to relieve them of life at the same time, if necessary to get their possessions into their own hands," [Footnote: Robertson's "Letters on Paraguay."] "The stories of their hardness, and perfidy, and immorality beggar description. The children of the priests have become so numerous that the shame is no longer considered." [Footnote: Service.] As the Mahometans have their Mecca, so the Paraguayans have Caacupé; and the image of the Virgin in that village is the great wonder-worker. Prayers are directed to her that she will raise the sick, etc., and promises are made her if she will do this. One morning I had business with a storekeeper, and went to his office. "Is the caraî in?" I asked. "No," I was answered, "he has gone to Caacupé to pay a promise." That promise was to burn so many candles before the Virgin, and further adorn her bejewelled robes. She had, as he believed, healed him of a sickness.