Puslapio vaizdai
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Pilgrims singing as they cross the mountains in early spring

a cry of wonder at the discovery of the empty grave, and simultaneously with the cry the veils fall from altars and pictures, and the black curtains from the windows, letting a flood of light pour down on the crowded, excited flower-bed. The longsilent organ, augmented by choir and orchestra, breaks out in triumph, the halfmasted flags of the city run to the masthead, and all the bells clash out their pæan of joy.

POLITE AND TEAR-SHEDDING POLICEMEN

THE note of anguish is rare with these people, and the tears that usually lie near the surface, close to their laughter, are not always thrilling. The policemen sometimes weep when making an arrest-those mannerly police of Ponta Delgada, who raise their hats when you pass and never refuse a cigarette or wait till off duty to smoke it.

When a foreign ship is in port, they are busiest, these guardians of the peace; drunkenness is too great a crime among the Portuguese for an Azorean ever to be seen in a state of intoxication, and liquor is too plentiful and too cheap for a sailor on leave to be seen in any other state. So it not infrequently happens that the entire Ponta Delgada police force, nine men in all, is employed in using persuasion on one Celt or Saxon sailor, an act from which, being better diplomats than boxers, they will later pick themselves out of their several recently allotted places in the gutter to bind in sorrow the hands of their struggling guest, contributions of official neckties and handkerchiefs preventing chafe of inhospitable cords. If he be ever so slightly hurt, tears fall and hands are wrung in silent sympathy; all is done for his comfort as the dejected victors and unconquered captive start for the quay.

If a shower threatens, an overcoat is forthcoming, that the rain may fall evenly. on the just and the unjust, and while awaiting the ship's boat, the whole legal company busies itself readjusting their guest's disordered clothing, and as he is lowered, still thanklessly kicking, into the boat, a soothing cigarette is lighted and put between his lips.

"But why on earth don't you gag him and throw him into jail?" is your natural inquiry, for the jail is the finest building in the city, and its officials show signs of speedy dissolution through lack of occupation.

"Oh, we never could do that, Senhor," is the reproachful answer, as they repair damages. "If we used a stranger so, what a memory he would have of our island!"

Two burned-out craters form the island of St. Michael's. The western and smaller one, Sete Cidades (Seven Cities), is the pride of the Michaelense heart, but interesting to the stranger merely for its incomparable view of sea and valley from the narrow knife-like edge of the summit; the eastern crater, called Las Furnas, contains the remarkable springs, first brought to notice by an American, which make St. Michael's famous.

It is up here in the Furnas, six hundred feet above the sea and two thousand below lower mountain-peaks-here where the terrible Mouth of Hell vomits and belches thunderous dangers day and night, and where little stone cottages stand on ground that cracks and trembles, burns and steams, that the real life of the Michaelense peasantry is seen at its truest and best-a life of primal simplicity, of a race still in its childhood, with the beauty of other days about it, to which from earth's worn places the travel-stained will turn with eagerness.

The hills of St. Michael's are a temptation to the pedestrian which even his respect for Azorean opinion does not help him to overcome.

"Walk while the sun is up? Go out after sundown? Sleep with a window open, too, perhaps, eh? Ah, well, Senhor

English, this year, yes; but next year you will sleep with the violets in the cemiterio."

On the other hand, you cannot convince the "crazy English" that the Azorean is quite compos mentis on the subject of dampness and drafts, against both of which his chief defense is his umbrella, that trusty friend which protects from rain and sun and wind, from dew on moonlight nights, and from rocket-sticks in festa-time. But the senhor must know fresh air is not the only means of suicide. Ask for a fire some miserable winter day when the high ceilings and stone floors add bleakness to the dreary rain without.

"A fire? Ah, no; we love the querido Inglez too well. Listen. My beloved uncle had a stove, and all day long he sat over it and was careful, so careful, that never a door or window should be open. Then one day he went out to take a little fresh air, and it was cold. The rain came suddenly, too, and my poor uncle was very wet, and came home to his bed and died. Ma de Deus! he who had lived ninety-three good years till that stove came! No, Senhor; never again a fire in my house!"

There is a palace in Ponta Delgada with a stove-pipe projecting from one of its windows, left as a monument to the folly of an octogenarian countess, dead these many years, who owed her untimely taking off to the stove she would have, though chimney there was none.

The Azoreans themselves keep warm by taking off their shoes and stockings and wrapping up their heads. A swathed-up head is the panacea for all evils.

Despite superabundance of clothing and wrappings, the people's cleanliness is above reproach; that is to say, the personal cleanliness. In other ways-ah, good San José, there is reasonableness, as in all else. To wash the outside of a milk pitcher when only the inside is used, to try to keep the kitchen floor clean when food touches only the spotless tables, and the floor will have its nightly scrub, anyway, after the donkeys and pigs are in bed, and to clean windows that are washed every

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time it rains, are open in sunny weather, and unseen at night-such things are indeed foolishness to the Michaelense, and a senseless waste of time that might be given to dancing.

The fine old order of inherited service still pertains-service that keeps its ancient dignity of ministration, and the master's guests are the master himself. Forget and carry something up-stairs for yourself, and your host's servant meets you with damp reproach in his big eyes.

"Manoel does not like to see the senhor a servant. Manoel is his servant. Ah, but perhaps the senhor does not want Manoel to touch his things? Ah, paciencia!" and the sigh haunts you for days.

The land is tilled in terraces, rising one above the other to the mountain-tops. On this, in late autumn, one may see a solitary figure, perhaps, in dull-orange or somber-purple smock, flat against the brown hillside, with lean oxen and primitive wooden plow, crossing and recrossing, as the lonely first man may have toiled against the world's brown desolation.

They thresh with a flat stone-boat drawn by oxen around a smooth circle cleared on a hilltop, where the wind may help, and where driver, man or woman, may loom big and grand, as Millet loved to see the thresher.

To winnow, a girl stands vestal-wise on the door-step, with sieve held high overhead and grain pouring down to her feet, singing the one song she knows-a hymn to the Virgin.

To sift this same grain, an old woman, with the quiet mouth of age and the patient eyes of labor, sits cross-legged in a corner of the cloistered courtyard all day long, never once ceasing that skilful rotary twist that earns her six and a half cents a day. But do not tell her how much it is, please, for to her it is a hundred and twenty-five reis.

There are "touches of things common" even in the city below, in Ponta Delgada itself. Pass down a street in the late day as the shadows lengthen, and a door, opening suddenly, pours out an army of girls in lençoes and shawls, all of those inde

scribable colors that are not former bright colors faded, but hues that have always been soft and pure, like milk opals. Roomful after roomful of the loose blossoms and scattering petals come tumbling out and go dancing and fluttering down the road with bare, noiseless feet, making the walled and flower-topped street a narrow lane of throbbing color against the reddening sun. Imagine these dainty Azorean maidens of the big eyes and tender mouths as factory laborers, workers in the tobacco factory! Would they not shrivel and wither, these flower things, in the gray misery of Western factory life?

A capering, singing line of motley figures, with fruit and flowers, dances down the narrow pass. It is not a bacchanalian revel, but a senhor's servants returning with fruit from his quinta, or farm. The fruit-laden baskets on their heads are trimmed with boughs and scented leaves, their arms are full of hydrangeas and lilies; and, because music lightens a load and shortens distance, some one in front strums on a viola, that island cross between mandolin and guitar; and because feet must answer when music calls, the whole merry company comes dancing down the steep descent, a swirling, gladsome crew left over from the world's young days. At the edge of the town the music stops; the men fall respectfully back to the rear; shawls and kerchiefs are redrawn, to veil modestly figure and hair; the chaperon looks grave once more; and the nimble, bare feet slip into clogs, and walk decorously through the streets.

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At night the padre goes by to carry the host to the dying, but not in the solitary, ominous haste we are used to. Half the village follows him, with chanting, bell, and book, bearing lighted tapers or quaint old lanterns, while all the while the church bell rings out its desertion, and along the route lamps or candles are set in doors and windows "to light o nosso senhor on his way"-the god that in less friendly lands must walk alone in the darkness.

You are lulled to sleep by feathery violas in some favorite song and the curious

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swish-swish of rhythmically dragged feet, and in the morning you walk to a funeral chant as the villagers, with flower-hidden coffin slung between them,-young girls carry the dead of their own sex,-troop after the padre through the high-walled street to the cemetery, a wavering line of gentle colors, unmarred by black.

In the gathering darkness weird forms dash past, bearers of fire, not stolen from heaven, but borrowed from a neighbor to cook the evening meal. And once, as you wander home in the evening, light from an open door makes you stop curiously, for within, bright against the night, kneeling figures cluster about a bed where amid the candles an old woman is dying. A dark girl in the darker background leans over to support the eager figure on the bed; other dim forms stand at the back. The kneeling ones pray with faces turned to the bed. You may enter and join them, too, if you wish.

"Mother of God! it is nothing; new lives come daily, and it is well for the old to die. Many candles are lighted, the padre has been in, and Our Lady is surely near, well pleased. A few aves help the dying and count to your credit." So they chatter between prayers in easy familiarity, robbing the sting of death with the warmth of human fellowship.

They have been variously described, these Azore Islands: the lost Atlantis, the home of the Hesperides, the Fortunate Isles, and the Blessèd Isles, of course. They are really the Islands of Desire,

reached from the New World by sailing eastward in the path of the rising sun. In them dwell a rare and gentle people with no history other than the story of their hills and sea, who have seen their mountains belch fire, and their rivers rise in flood, and have uttered no protest, raised no wail, but recognized the voice of the Lord their God when it spoke, and planted their crops afresh. They flit by you, sweet, gentle colors fluttering past for the last time like flowers; now scarcely more than loose petals floating down the moonlight of dreams with fragrance of the world's lost youth about them still, creeping into your heart, and making heaviness there when parting comes.

There is a word in the Portuguese language, quite untranslatable, which Victor Hugo is said to have declared the most beautiful word in any language. Your dictionary interprets it as "tender longing," "sweet regret," "ineffable yearning." No, it is a sob, a lump in the throat, a pain, a memory, a grief. Ah, it is everything, Ma de Deus! if one could explain! And they wring distressed little hands till you laugh perforce at such childish intensity. Yes, you laugh now, but later, when the seas and the years have intervened, when city noises deafen, and factory smoke chokes, and brick walls. stifle, when street lamps spoil the night, and street traffic mars the day, your heavy heart steals across the seas to the Islands of Desire, and comes back to you again with saudades.

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