Soon After Sunset All Retire To Their Trestle Beds.
In early morning the women hurry to mass.
The Criollo does not break
his fast until nearly mid-day, so they have no early meal to prepare.
Even before it is quite light it is difficult to pass along the
streets owing to the custom they have of carrying their praying-
chairs with them to mass. The rich lady will be followed by her dark-
skinned maid bearing a sumptuously upholstered chair on her head. The
middle classes carry their own, and the very poor take with them a
palm-leaf mat of their own manufacture. When mass is over religion is
over for the day. After service they make their way down to the river
or pond, carrying on their heads the soiled linen. Standing waist-
high in the water, they wash out the stains with black soap of their
own manufacture, beating each article with hardwood boards made
somewhat like a cricketer's bat. The cloths are then laid on the sand
or stones of the shore. The women gossip and smoke until these are
dry and ready to carry home again ere the heat becomes too intense.
In a description of Argentine village life, I could not possibly omit
the priest, the "all in all" to the native, the temporal and
spiritual king, who bears in his hands the destinies of the living
and the dead. These men are the potentates of the people, who refer
everything to them, from the most trivial matter to the weightier one
of the saving of their souls after death.
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