When I ventured to suggest my notion, or call
it dream, to our young guide, he instantly imagined it in its full
beauty, and he led us directly to a shop in the principal street which
for the richness and variety of the coloring in its display might have
been a florist's shop. Donkeys' trappings in brilliant yellow,
vermillion, and magenta hung from the walls, and head-stalls,
gorgeously woven and embroidered, dangled from the roof. Among them and
under them the donkeys' harness-maker sat at his work, a short, brown,
handsome man with eyes that seemed the more prominent because of his
close-shaven head. We chose a headstall of such splendor that no heart
could have resisted it, and while he sewed to it the twine muzzle which
Spanish donkeys wear on their noses for the protection of the public,
our guide expatiated upon us, and said, among other things to our
credit, that we were from America and were going to take the head-stall
back with us.
The harness-maker lifted his head alertly. "Where, in America?" and we
answered for ourselves, "From New York."
Then the harness-maker rose and went to an inner doorway and called
through it something that brought out a comely, motherly woman as alert
as himself. She verified our statement for herself, and having paved the
way firmly for her next question she asked, "Do you know the Escuela
Mann?"
As well as our surprise would let us, we said that we knew the Mann
School, both where and what it was.
She waited with a sort of rapturous patience before saying, "My son, our
eldest son, was educated at the Escuela Mann, to be a teacher, and now
he is a professor in the Commercial College in Puerto Rico."
If our joint interest in this did not satisfy her expectation I for my
part can never forgive myself; certainly I tried to put as much passion
into my interest as I could, when she added that his education at the
Escuela Mann was without cost to him. By this time, in fact, I was so
proud of the Escuela Mann that I could not forbear proclaiming that a
member of my own family, no less than the father of the grandson for
whose potential donkey I was buying that headstall, was one of the
architects of the Escuela Mann building.
She now vanished within, and when she came out she brought her daughter,
a gentle young girl who sat down and smiled upon us through the rest of
the interview. She brought also an armful of books, the Spanish-English
Ollendorff which her son had used in studying our language, his
dictionary, and the copy-book where he had written his exercises, with
two photographs of him, not yet too Americanized; and she showed us not
only how correctly but how beautifully his exercises were done.
