The DeSmet leader. (DeSmet, Kingsbury Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-05-08
A DINNER WITH AN AZTEC.


The Sort of Reform Most Needed IL
Icxico--At the Family Hoard.
The way came to end the old count I
have been describing was this: ] was try-
ing to locate the SPIT where Cortes landed
from his brigatines, when no came down
from Te.cuco and destroyed the city altar
months of siege And by chance fell IN
with Mexican Indian whom l had known
in California, and who was now married,
had Ia Sc family, an lived In one Of the
wretched hcu es at No IL
Mexican hospitality il pro Terbial And
how wished It wa not a eau Q for serious
ofense 10 decline the invitations TO dinner
after had looked in upon tais kindly but
wretched family Here was q most beautt-
ful girl Of is, brown as berry; the pretti-
est dinpled little hands an / hair that fairly
cleaned in its glossy blackness There were
three miserable, puny little boys; one big
boy, u man grown, who held q small COM
mission in the army; and then the wrinkled,
hollow eyed AM sallow old mother. Yet
all this family, with ell the light shut out,
with death in the damp, desp walls down
under the rotting floor, and all about them,
in fact lived in this one room; did their
cooking there ate their food there, AMI, In
deel, did not feel at all inf arior to oshecs-s
Mexican homa Come down here some
Christian, and build cottages. Heavensl
why could not another Cortez come and lay
al those dens Lowell with the dusti / think
you now can begin to soe what sort Of 70
form is most needed in Mexico
At the dinner the Aztec head OF the house.
who, 10y the way, is a clecS in the palace,
and SO, you see, no ignorant mendicant, sat
with myself an a small Indian officer at q
table But tho family ate from q grass
mat on the floor 1hs sveet'y pretty girl
l may msnt on, left tie house when en-
tered and did not cou,e ba X during all the
dinner. This is a custom I might cal on
my old California friend thousand times
and yet each time the pretty girl would
quietly slip away with orly q word or two
The moiesty and the purity o the women
here in Mexico is most remarkaole one of
the pleasantest features OF all this pleas
ant land. Mexican Indfaa dinner IL
singular compoun OF pePFers. soups and
corn cakes, or tortllas ~1sh peppers tre-
men iouly in the as on ant 10 make .
frank confession 10 YOU, betore / got half
was through that dinner I shed SO many
tears that was rather glad the pretty girl
was gone.
i suppose was the first white man that
had entered that unwaolesome csurt-ex
cept TO collect rent, bring in or take out :
collin, and SO on; and there were crowds oe
little children all aronnd, but not one cams
TO pee in ut the open door or take any no-s
tice Of my presence
The head Of the house. the old Californis,
friend, read a short grace from book In
Spanish, when we sat down, in which all
the family joined reverently as they eat
around their beans and peppers on the floor,
for these people arc all very religious, brt
beyon that nothing notable took plaeA
The dinner was som over, and wo wsnt
sauntering back over the canal or wall into
the city and under the warming sun, a. ths
Aztec quietly said, II love God, but hate
the Spaniarda joaquin Miller's Mexican
Iettar