"The Simple-Minded And Superstitious Paraguayans Reverenced A Pai, Or Father, As The Immediate Representative Of God.

They blindly and implicitly followed the instructions given to them, and did whatever was required at his hands.

Many of the licentious brotherhood took advantage of this superstitious confidence placed in them by the people to an extent which, in a moral country, would not only shock every feeling of our nature to relate, but would, in the individual instances, appear to be incredible, and, in the aggregate, be counted as slanderous on humanity."

During my stay in Pagwaomi, a dance was held on the sward outside one of the houses, and the national whirl, the sarandiy, gave pleasure to all. The females wove flowers in their hair, and made garlands of them to adorn their waists. Others had caught fire-flies, which nestled in the wavy tresses and lit up the semi-darkness with a soft light, like so many green stars. Love whisperings, in the musical Guarani, were heard by willing ears, and eyelight was thus added to starlight. As the dancers flitted here and there in their white garments, or came out from the shade of the orange trees, they looked ethereal, like the inhabitants of another world one sees at times in romantic dreams, for this village is surely a hundred years behind the moon.

From this scene of innocent happiness I was taken to more than one sick-bed, for it soon became known that I carried medicines.

Will the reader accompany me? Enter then - a windowless mud hut See, lying on sheepskins and burning with fever, a young woman-almost a girl-wailing "Che raciy!>" (I am sick!) Notice the intense eagerness of her eyes as she gazes into mine when I commence to minister to her. Watch her submit to my necessarily painful treatment with child-like faith. Then, before we quietly steal out again, listen to her low-breathed "Acuerame" (Already I feel better).

In a larger house, a hundred yards away, an earthenware lamp, with cotton wick dipping in raw castor oil, sheds fitful gleams on a dying woman. The trail of sin is only too evident, even in thoughtless Pegwaomi. The tinselled saints are on the altar at the foot of the bed, and on the woman's breast, tightly clutched, is a crucifix, but Mrs. Encarnacion has never heard of the Incarnate One whom she is soon to meet. Perhaps, if Christians are awake by that time, her grandchildren may hear the "story."

In that rustic cottage, half covered with jasmine, and shaded by a royal palm, a child lies very sick. Listen to its low, weak moaning as we cross the threshold. The mother has procured a piece of tape, the length of which, she says, is the exact measure of the head of Saint Blas. This she has repeatedly put around her babe's head as an unfailing cure. Somehow the charm does not work and the woman is sorely perplexed. While we helplessly look on the infant dies! Outside, the moon soared high, throwing a silver veil over the grim pathos of it all; but in the breast of the writer was a surging dissatisfaction and - anger, at his fellow - Christians in the homeland, who in their thoughtless selfishness will not reach out a helping hand to the perishing of other lands.

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