LIMA
CHAPTER IX.
SKETCHES OF LIMA.
EDUCATION OF FEMALES.—MARRIAGES.—LAPSES FROM VIRTUE.—THE SUNSET BELL.—SILK FACTORY IN A CONVENT.—HABITS OF THE INDIANS.—THE HALF WEDLOCK.—BLIND PEDLER.—PROTESTANT YOUTH IN LIMA.—RELIGION OF THE LIMANIANS.—INTRIGUES AT COURT.—MODES OF LIVING.—THE ZAMPAS.—CHURCHES.—INDIAN DOCTORS.—FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY.—OLD SPANISH FAMILIES.—MASSES FOR THE REPOSE OF THE SOUL.
“I say in my slight way I may proceed
To play upon the surface of humanity;
I write the world, nor care if the world read,
At least for this I cannot spare its vanity.”
Saturday, April 18. A girl here at the age of ten or eleven is as far advanced in her social and matrimonial anticipations as she is with us at seventeen. She expects in her fourteenth year to sway hearts, as the moon the troubled tide. For this period she trains herself with an ambition far beyond her years; and when it arrives, she is armed with all the brilliant weapons of beauty, wit, repartee, and a lively self-possession. Her wit never wounds, her repartee never gives offence. She is thoroughly amiable in all her sallies, she means to make you think well of her, and is equally anxious that you should think well of yourself. She understands how to inspire self-complacency without any broad flattery. She is sportive, but it is with dignity; and will sooner excuse a liberty than a slight.
When this hey-day of life has been sufficiently enjoyed, she marries, not from having fallen in love, but for the sake of an establishment. If her husband devotes himself to her, she is generally faithful; but if he spends his nights in clubs, at the billiard and card table, she is apt to permit the intimacy of some one whom she ought not to love. This is rarely, if ever, followed by a domestic explosion. She feels secure of all that forbearance and silence which the most jealous regard to the peace and reputation of the family can suggest. With us, the injured party, though first himself in the fault, yet in his resentment often turns his own hearth-stone into a tomb. Guilt never fails to carry with it, in the end, its own punishment. There is a serpent in the cup of guilty pleasure, whose fang will inflict wounds on which the tears of repentant anguish will yet fall big and fast.