The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1874-01-15
The Life of a Spanish Peasant.

Ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-clothed, i'll
taught, or rather untaught, and un-
cared for hopeless, obiectless being,
feeling no responsibility for the present
or the future. Such is the peasant of
the interior, be he -laborer, black
smith, fruit-seller, water-c carrier, gipsy,
householder, or whet he nay. He
seems to be unable to read, or write, or
think, or love, or hope, or pray, or
plan. With him there is no light. Into
darkness, social, moral, and intellectual,
he is born as his heritage; in that dark
ness he spends, and in that darkness he
is content to end his days. Come with
me for a stroll into the campo, or wild
country, and visit the hut of a poor
frrit-seller. His little shanty stands
alone near his dry, half-tilled garden
and you look in vain for smiling vii
lage, or O substantial farm or country
house. His hut-let us call it "shanty"
stands alone amid the thistles, its
poverty its best protection. 1t is form
ed of three walls of rude, unfashioned,
unhewn stone, bounl together with no
mortar. You must stoop low to enter
it it is rooted with reeds from the
Guadalquivir, or with brushwood and
rushes from the neighboring bosque
(coppice.) There is one rough settle in
the dark room. The floor is the earth
and dust. Here is tho mistress, a
knife stuck in her girdle. You must
not look for beauty or tidiness in her
wooden, mahogany-colored face, and
you wonder at her stride, like q mans,
and her muscled arms and rough voice.
Yet, remember, she has to work verJ
hard, and the Spanish old woman of
the lower class is always masculine
looking. She has no chair, but courte-
ously apologises for its absence, and
throws down a "manta on the floor
for you to sit on. Suddenly, you hear
at your ear the cackling of hens, the
growing of cock she sees, with ready
Spanish perception, that you are puz-
zled, and pushes aside, not the bed
linen, but the brush-wood, and there,
under the settle, is the "roost full of
poultry. There, too, is her little jarra
of water, and the provisions, the fiat
cake of coarse bread, and the melon, or
the white grapes. She will tell you,
with a woman's tact, eve are all III
the rough, for the winter rains are
coming, and then we go tc takes house"
(she means a quarter of q ROOM in
the town." The little vineyard, or
melon, or vegetable-ground of this man
is close to his house, and daily he takes
his produce to the Plaza (market-square)
of the adjoining towns. Just now he is
taking his siesta, rolled in his manta in
this room, too indolent to move. At
sundown he trots behind his donkey,
with its panniered sides well CALLED
with "melones or grapes and we
will follow him along the dusty track
we boast no roads-with his baggy
canvas trousers, esparto-grass sandals,
and huge knife stuck in his faja. About
ten o'clock he arrives in the street,
which, running out of the market,
serves for stables for the beasts, and
bedroom forthe owners Of fthese panniers
OF fruit. He loosens his pannier from
his donkey's back, and let's the air get
to the inside of the packet of fruit
then tethers his donkey to the side of
the street, rolls himself up in his
manta, lights his cigar1llo, and falls
fast asleep by his fruit. 1t is strange
sight to pass about midnight along
these streets adjoining the fruit market
the rows of donkeys, the hundreds of
sleeping forms, undistinguishable from
the fruit and sacking, the fresh, slckly,
damp smell of fruit hanging heavy on
the air; and just beyond the Plaza,
with its every tent now lying on the
ground covering the fruit, and a tiny
oil lamp burning family to show where
the stall and the stall-keeper and the
fruit are, all lying under the rough
tent like lot of half-empty sacks. At
half past three the market opens, and
at four to five it is, in truth, a lively
Sipht