# Creole Sketches/A Mexican’s Gratitude

A MEXICAN'S GRATITUDE
A pretty little story comes to me from Algiers.
Some years ago, during the spring months, a vessel sailing from Vera Cruz arrived at this port with a swarthy Mexican crew. While toiling under the hot sun, one of the men became seriously ill; and when the vessel was ready to sail, it was found necessary to leave him behind. The circumstances are not precisely known to us, beyond the fact that a young girl found him early in the morning lying in the shadow of a pile of timber, a prey to one of those strange fevers that make one shiver with cold even under a sky of fire. He asked for water in his broken English, and the girl procured assistance from her home, which was not far off. Pity ​prevailed over all other considerations, and the stranger soon found himself in a comfortable bed with good medical attendance. The girl and her mother watched by his bedside and nursed him until he got well again. As he was only a poor sailor, utterly penniless, he could not even offer to recompense them: and as he could not speak English beyond such few words as a stranger picks up in a foreign port, he could not even thank them by word of mouth. Before he had even fully recovered his health, he left the house in spite of the old lady's remonstrances, and, kissing her hand with every sign of gratitude, he went his way. As he was never seen there again, it was supposed that he had been able to ship upon some Spanish vessel.
. . . Long afterward, it happened, by some strange chance, that the young Algerine above referred to found herself in ​the City of Montezuma. She had been married and was accompanied by her husband. One morning, just as the two had turned from the Plaza into a side-street a small, swarthy man, with gold rings in his ears, and carrying a large basket on his back, approached them, fixed his black eyes for a moment on the young lady's face, and with the sole explanation, "Madre de Dios! es la senorita!" fell upon his knees in the dirty street, and, seizing her hands, covered them with kisses, while tears of gratitude streamed down his bronzed face. The husband, a Cuban, who had often heard the story of the sailor, naturally understood and accepted the situation; while the little Mexican poured out his soul in comparisons of the young wife to guardian angels and saints and virgins, and in those strangely beautiful Spanish compliments which, when sincerely uttered, caress the soul of ​the hearer. And then, unfastening the strap of his basket and exposing its tempting cargo of luscious fruits and rich flowers, he besought her, upon his knees, to permit him to bear it to her residence as a gift.
"Tell him," she said to her husband, who acted as interpreter, "that we cannot accept his present, and that the pleasure of having been able to help him when in need is more than sufficient compensation for the service."
He begged so hard, however, that she was obliged to accept a handsome bouquet of flowers, and, imploring all the saints of Heaven to bless her, he departed sadly with his basket.
But it seems that he followed her home unawares; for every morning afterward, during her stay in Mexico, just as the mountain-peaks commenced to flush in the rosiness of dawn, the servant was ​awakened by a knocking at the street-door, and opened it only to find there a basket of fair fruits and tropical flowers that exhaled a perfume as passionate as the gratitude of the giver.
* ↑ Item, April 12, 1880.
* ↑ A suburb of New Orleans.