"In one of these, he thus piously philosophizes: 'Rivers, torrents, and streams move onward to their destination. Not one flows back to its pleasant source. They must onward, hastening to bury themselves in the bosom of the ocean. The things of yesterday are no more to-day, and the things of to-day shall cease to-morrow. The great, the wise, the valiant, the beautiful,—alas, where are they?'"
"The compositions of Nezahualcoyotl," observed the Grumbler, as the Antiquary folded away his finished paper, "though strictly founded on fact, are not exhilarating. His family was too large; and the wonder is, not that his odes and hymns are depressing, but that he should have the heart to 'drop into poetry' at all!"
"We are told," rejoined the Journalist, "by his descendant with the unpronounceable name, that once in every four months his entire family, not even excepting the youngest child, was called together, and orated by the priesthood on the obligations of morality, of which, by their exalted rank, they were expected to be shining examples. To these admonitions was added the compulsory chanting of their father's hymns."
"Poor beggars!" pitied the Grumbler; "how they must have squirmed under this ever-recurring royal 'wet blanket!'"
"You forget," said Leon Starr, coming to the rescue of the poet-father, "that in view of their inevitable mortality the bard had already advised them to 'banish care, to rejoice in the green freshness of their spring; to bind their brows with the fairest flowers of the garden, seize the joys of the present, and'—in short, had given them leave to have no end of larks, which, of course, they naturally and obediently did."
"It is a noteworthy fact," observed Mr. Morehouse, "that many aborigines—though but scantily supplied with clothing, as the natives of Samoa and the Sandwich Islanders—take great delight in adorning the body with flowers. To this liking the Tezcucan king especially appeals in his odes and hymns. The Mexicans have from time immemorial doted on flowers. This taste three hundred years or more of oppression has not extinguished."
"Do you remember, dear," asked Mr. Bixbee, turning to his wife, "the flower market in the Plaza at Mexico?" (The pair had, a year or two earlier, explored that city)—"that iron pavilion partly covered in with glass, and tended by nut-brown women and smiling Indian girls?"
"Shall I ever forget it?" was her enthusiastic response. "The whole neighborhood was fragrant with perfume of vases of heliotrope, pinks, and mignonette; and such poppies, and pansies, and forget-me-nots I never elsewhere beheld!"
"One can believe in absolute floral perfection," said the Journalist, "in a country which embraces all climates. 'So accurately,' observes Wilson, 'has nature adjusted in Mexico the stratas of vegetation to the state of the atmosphere, that the skilful hand of a gardener might have laid out the different fields, which, with their charming vegetation, rise, one above another, upon the fertile mountain sides of the table-land.'
"Along with many other important vegetable growths, the cotton-plant is supposed to be indigenous to Mexico, as Cortez, on his first landing, found the natives clothed in cotton fabrics of their own manufacture. Its culture continues to the present day, but with very little improvement in method since the earlier time of the Spanish Conquest."