20 cts., or a brace of turkeys for 40 cts.; its almacenes,
where one may buy a pound of sugar or a yard of cotton, a measure of
charcoal (coal is there unknown) or a large sombrero, a package of
tobacco (leaves over two feet long) or a pair of white hemp-soled
shoes for your feet - all at the same counter. The customer may
further obtain a bottle of wine or a bottle of beer (the latter
costing four times the price of the former) from the same assistant,
who sells at different prices to different customers.
There the value of money is constantly changing, and almost every day
prices vary. What to-day costs $20 to-morrow may be $15, or, more
likely, $30. Although one hundred and seventy tons of sugar are
annually grown in the country, that luxury is decidedly expensive. I
have paid from 12 cts. to 30 cts. a pound. Oatmeal, the Scotsman's
dish, has cost me up to 50 cts. a pound.
Coming again on to the street you hear the deafening noises of the
cow horns blown by the streetcar drivers, or the pescador shrilly
inviting housekeepers to buy the repulsive-looking red fish, carried
over his shoulder, slung on a thick bamboo. Perhaps you meet a beggar
on horseback (for there wishes are horses, and beggars do ride),
who piteously whines for help. This steed-riding fraternity all use
invariably the same words: "Por el amor de Dios dame un centavo!"
("For the love of God give me a cent.") If you bestow it, he will
call on his patron saint to bless you. If you fail to assist him, the
curses of all the saints in heaven will fall on your impious head.
This often causes such a shudder in the recipient that I have known
him to turn back to appease the wrath of the mendicant, and receive
instead - a blessing.
It is not an uncommon sight to see a black-robed priest with his hand
on a boy's head giving him a benediction that he may be enabled to
sell his newspapers or lottery tickets with more celerity.
The National Lottery is a great institution, and hundreds keep
themselves poor buying tickets. In one year the lottery has realized
the sum of $3,409,143.57. The Government takes forty per cent. of
this, and divides the rest between a number of charitable and
religious organizations, all, needless to say, being Roman Catholic.
Amongst the names appear the following: Poor Sisters of St. Joseph,
Workshop of Our Lady, Sisters of St. Anthony, etc.
Little booths for the sale of lottery tickets are erected in the
vestibules of some of the churches, and the Government, in this way,
repays the church.
