The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1909-09-04
OBSERVATIONS OF A GADDER
BY FLORENCE JOHNsTON

1t is theory of mine that people who
go around the world in sixty days, or
whatever the record is now, see as
much of it as those who take the reg
ulation six months or a year. AS a
matter of fact, in sight seeing, the i'm
preston from the car window, or the
tonneau, or the led camel of the cara
van, or the end of the prairie schooner
Is as complete as anything you can get
except by careful study and long assC-
citation You must live in a place to
really know it, There are many things
you must miss in a flying trip any
where and unless you are awfully up in
art and all that and have seen many
pictures and much statuary and archi .
lecture and know them well, art ga
1eries are among them. / have always
said that when went to Europe for SIX
weeks 1 should not set foot inside an
art gallery. Not because I don't like
pictures but because I have to see
picture many times and fairly live with
it before 1 get much out of it. And if
i try to look at great collection OF
pictures with my unframed eyes I
carry away only a confused blur and
no sharp, lasting or valuable impress
Sions. There is good gallery of art
and a wonderful museum in the Mexican
capital and the city and vicinity are
full of magnificent churches bUS we
didn't even peep into the gallery OF
museum and we also sidestepped mos
of the churches. We walked through
the cathedral in the city in the wake
a garrulous guide, who was one walk
ing handbook of information about
the height of affairs, and the cost of
paintings and the age of carvings lie
would have put the Village Statistician,
who knows the age of every female
white child ever born on the TOWNSHIP,
to shame. We didn't even go IG
Guadalupe, the most marvellous cathe-
dral on this continent, and 1 suppose
we should blush to admit it. To ex-
cuse ourselves we had intended to
boast about it, brazenly, and claim the
distinction of being the only tourists
who ever went away from Mexico with
out seeing Guadalupe, but it was denied
us to make a virtue of necessity (the
We didn't have time, as afore-hinted)
because when We came back we learn
ed that Tom Frost, who lived in Mexico
for nine or ten years, had never visited
the shrine.
We went to mass in the cathedral the
second Sunday we spent in the city arc
heard the great organ which if the full.
complement Of players was at work
had fifteen organists at the keyboards
and pedals. It seems always to be a
Saints day in Mexico and this may OF
may not have been an unusual cere-
mony of the mass, but there was d
procession of great length with richly
robed prelates under a silken, fringeJ
canopy and the candles burned dimly
through the rich gloom, heavy with in
cense and the mingled odors of that
strangely varied congregation in viii III
the poor greatly outnumbered the ric.,
There were some beautiful carriagee
which drove up and emptied vel
dressed occupants who brushed in past
the beggars at the gate of which there
are always so many, and we noticed
that the mendicants reserved their
eupplications for tourists and let the
natives of happier fortune pass by ult-
interrupted. The cathedral was crowd
ed, for in addition to the regular mas s
and the great congregation which fol-
lowed the procession around to Inc
different affairs, there was a special
mass. probably for the dead. in one
of the smaller affairs which began be-
fore the other ceremonial and proceed
ed calmly in spite of it, and quite
without disturbing it, and many other
worshippers who dropped in and knel.
unostentatiously near the entrance Or
at one of the affairs for their private de-
votions. 1t was strange to our eyes to
see the beggars-a little crippled girl in
particular remember and a tiny boy,
morseI of an infant in his little arms
who crawled around in front of the
worshippers and piled their trade while
the latter prayed 1t should have been
q favorable time one would have
thought, for surely it is a blunted sense
that could resist such appeals were one
on ones knees in the name of him who
said "Give to him who asketh and Of