This liking, or, rather, passion for the press, was not fruitless, as we have said. Even in his youth he had sent two letters to a weekly paper published in Lancia, called "Autumn," describing the annual festivities that took place in Sarrio in the month of September. These letters were read with profit and no little pleasure in the town, which encouraged him to write three more the following year, giving an account of the marvelous number of rockets that were sent off in Sarrio on the 13th, 14th, and 15th of the month, the beautiful illumination of the 16th, and the magnificent ball given at the Lyceum on the night of the 17th.
After tasting the sweets of publicity, Don Rosendo could not do less than indulge in them from time to time.
The least pretext sufficed for him to send a letter or a communication to the papers.
Sometimes he signed them with his name, at other times with some pretty pseudonym or anagram.
If the fisher-folk had a festival in honor of St. Telmo, Don Rosendo immediately wrote his letter to the "Progress of Lancia" or to the "Bee," describing the decorations, the bonfires, the mass, the procession, etc. If a banquet were given in the new school buildings on their inauguration, three or four days later the Lancian paper contained a letter publishing the speeches and improvised sonnets. If a bricklayer fell from a scaffolding, there was a communication from Don Rosendo asking for better protection for bricklayers who have to go on scaffoldings. If the son of Don Aquilino sang at a mass, there would be a letter from Don Rosendo describing the touching ceremony and praising the clear, musical voice and the serene appearance of the young priest. If the tides were high and strong and broke away some stones from the end of the pier, a letter; if the boats from Bilbao declined to take on board the pilots of Sarrio, a communication; if a harvest of maize were lost by the drought, a letter; if the prevailing winds were from the northeast, a letter.
In short, nothing happened on terra firma or in the atmosphere of the town worthy of mention without its being tackled by the clever, flowing pen of our merchant. How much work will the future historians of Sarrio be saved by this valuable material, accumulated by one of its most enlightened sons!
With advancing years Don Rosendo Belinchon's letters assumed a character less romantic, we won't say frivolous (for it would not be either correct or respectful to apply such a term to that estimable gentleman); but it was noticeable that the subject-matter was not so much the junketings and recreations of the townsfolk, but something that would tend, directly or indirectly, to forward their moral and material interests. The trades, the schools, the salvage from shipwrecks, the building of a church or a prison, were the matters that he now most frequently treated to his own glory and to that of his birthplace.
One of them, of vital interest for Sarrio, as he maintained, was the slaughter-house. He had not hitherto approached this question, because he knew that his opinion was at variance with that of a large number of his fellow-townsmen. But he considered "that the time had now come to express it without any perambulation or circumlocution."
The letter he now read, the first he had written on the subject, was addressed to the "Progress of Lancia," and it ran thus:
"THE SENOR DIRECTOR OF THE 'PROGRESS OF LANCIA.'