When Don Porfirio took things in hand the boys were made to dress to go to school, and as a last touch of fashion made to tuck their shirts inside their trousers. It appears, however, they only tuck them in as they enter the school door, pulling them out when they are released.
... But Aunt L. says she is tired of it all—the naked children, the barren stretches, the carpe diem, the ultimate unrelatedness of her life to its frame, though I kept thinking of Henley's line, "and in her heart some late lark singing." ...
... Each life, it seems to me, short or long, is wonderful when it becomes a perfected story, if we could only get it in perspective, against its own destined background; not blurred and mixed with other unrelated lives, but by itself, in relief, as the great artists show their masterpieces. I can't feel the ordinariness of any human life. Some are dreadful, some beautiful, some undeveloped; but each in its way could be an infinitely perfect story were the artist there to record it.
January 10th, evening.
To-day we drove over to Juchitan, the "county-seat"—Aunt L. to get some papers witnessed and signed at the jefatura, and to show me the ravages of the revolution of November.
The country, as we drove along, was scorching, dry, light-colored, with only an occasional tree and the irrepressible mesquite growing everywhere out of the sandy soil. We passed dreadful, screaming, wooden carts, with their solid wooden wheels, drawn by thin oxen, trying to nibble the withered grass; and there were herds of skeleton-like cattle dotted over the thorny cactus-covered fields.
There is a great hill, Istlaltepec, which separates San Gerónimo (fortunately, I should say) from lively Juchitan; and on the side of it away from San Gerónimo are prehistoric tracings and remains, studied, at various times, by various savants. It's a country with sandy, flat stretches and blue hills bounding them, and the river of Juchitan flowing to the near Pacific. The village of Istlaltepec was a blaze of color, white-washed or pink- or blue-washed dwellings, fig- and palm-trees, and over all the brilliant, blinding light.
At Juchitan we stopped a moment at a hotel, but it was so dilapidated and shot with bullet marks, and so desolate and mournful-looking inside, that we went to a small, native place of refreshment, kept by a one-time servant of Aunt L.'s. She was old, but welcoming. Her daughter, a fine, tall woman of thirty or thereabouts, was coming down the street, with one of the great, painted gourds on her head filled with a variety of highly colored things, and with the walk of a queen, a majestic, gentle, swaying movement.
They spread a spotless cloth, in a dim, sandy, red-tiled room with a glimpse of a palm in the old patio behind, that would have been a back yard, and a hideous one, if it had been "at home." The old woman told her ailments, and the daughter, aided by the granddaughter, served us a sopa de frijoles (bean soup), a perfect omelet, with a hard-crusted, pleasant-tasting bread, but no butter, and black coffee.
Goat's milk was offered; the goat was in the patio—but "goat me no goats."